For years, marketing executives have gone after an elusive 360-degree view of their customers. Today, the very nature of customer data analytics and designing the customer experience is evolving drastically within the organisations.

In the marketing technology space, the adoption of customer data platforms (CDPs) is quickly gaining momentum. Serving as a central repository for all the customer data of an organisation, enabling teams to capture, process and unify data, and then activating it through several marketing channels, a CDP can dramatically change the way marketers go about their business.

The CDP industry has seen rapid growth in recent times. The market size is forecast to reach $4 billion by 2025, according to IndustryARC. Once you have evaluated whether or not your organisation needs a CDP, different use cases and CDP vendors, it’s time to get prepared for a successful implementation of CDP in your business.

Identifying business use cases

Defining all the relevant CDP use cases that can work for your business and then choosing CDP is of utmost importance. A vendor shouldn’t be chosen because of its reputation in the market. You need to dig deep and see if the CDP solution you have opted for can adhere to your specific requirements. For instance, outbound marketing programs is one of the major use cases. You may be integrating the CDP with various MarTech applications and digital advertising platforms. Such considerations help you figure out the right kind of CDP setup for your organisation.

Data strategy

A CDP thrives on data. More the data marketers feed into it, the better will be its performance in terms of assimilating and unifying it under every user. So, it’s important to have a proper understanding of how your data will be ingested into the CDP and leveraged for broader marketing objectives:

• Emphasising upon data integration and collection: Ensure that you allocate relevant time and resources needed to get your data clean and ready for import into a CDP. Otherwise, the CDP implementation can expose poor data quality and a dearth of the cleanliness of the underlying data set.
• Data mapping to particular fields: Ensure that the ingested data is mapped to specific fields. Also, make sure that validation rules are defined and data for future analysis is categorised. A CDP that has APIs built-in would streamline this process and enable the process of exchanging data with other systems with efficacy.
• Opting for a hybrid CDP: Organisations who aren’t sure about sharing their first-party customer data with CDP can look for a hybrid CDP implementation. This makes it possible for them to store their secretive information on-premise and other remaining data on the cloud.

Good provision of support

While CDPs are mainly marketer-managed and are run by them on a daily basis, they need the help of a support team during the installation process and post-implementation. Your CDP should have a solid support team that not only quickly solves basic as well as business-critical issues but also remains available 24X7 on-call.

Conclusion

Marketers have increasingly looked for ways to make sense of reams of customer data and build a 360-degree view of the customer. The customer data platforms have experienced a rapid rise in popularity in recent years as a marketing technology solution. To successfully implement a CDP and use it to its full potential, the best practices have to be followed. Reach us at [email protected] for knowing how we can help you implement a robust CDP solution.