Customer data is important for every business, no matter what industry you are in. Data helps us determine customer behavior, and can help us understand their purchasing decisions (and therefore your sales too). It stands to reason, therefore, to create a unified system for this information whereby you can view every little detail about your customer on a single platform. A customer data platform or CDP is basically a market-managed system that can make a unified, consistent database consisting of all possible information on your customers. These systems compliment all the latest software and marketing initiatives, thereby enabling your company to build beautiful and long-lasting customer relationships.
Are you wondering why you should invest in a customer data platform? If you want to grow as a brand, you have to enhance your customer experiences. Having this kind of platform will help you achieve this. A CDP system presents normalized, consolidated, and accurate customer details obtained from several online and offline sources. This data is centralized for analytics, campaigns, as well as any other needs your business may have. It will inevitably help your brand stand out from the competition.
Here, we have put together a few interesting ways in which this kind of customer data platform can benefit you. Take a look.
- Also Read: 7 Benefits of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) [Infographic]
Easy usage
CDP’s are easy to use. It will organize the customer data for your immediate use with minimal effort. Otherwise, businesses would have to work on data warehouses that traditionally have inflated setup and maintenance costs. All this would also require technical expertise to deal with potential issues. But with a CDP, you do not need such things. With simple technology, you can have a system able to get a single view of the customer quite easily.
Single customer view
Speaking of a single view of the customer, you should know that this kind of customer data system can help you get one extremely beneficial customer view. It can help you visualize all your collected data about customers through their individual profiles. It helps in building that 360-degree view of the user by just tapping into one, uniform, central data repository. Having such easy access to data allows your company to create more relevant, engaging, and attractive brand marketing strategies more efficiently and at a faster pace.
Unifies information
Usually, companies have to pull relevant user information from different sources, both online and offline, to create a useful customer profile based on which brands will plan their marketing strategies. But this method of pulling data from multiple sources can be monotonous, inconvenient, and tedious. It also leaves room for errors and technical glitches. The CDP platform will unify all the relevant information from various sources and give it to you on a single platter. This makes the process not just fast but quite smooth. It eliminates all the inconsistent and irrelevant details and provides you with a precise user profile that is also reliable for further customer engagements. For instance, data silos are an outdated data management system. With the help of a customer data platform, you can help your company eliminate these silos. It unifies customer data and provides access to every marketer looking for this kind of user information, and enables marketers to provide the user with a better and more enriching experience.
Third-party access
Sometimes, you might require campaigns for your brands that will involve third parties. While building and coming up with such campaign ideas, you will realize that you need customer-specific information so that you can serve them better. This will also improve your customer experiences and thereby increase sales. But if the third-party software or the campaign delivery software cannot access information about your customers, this will not be possible. This process can be extremely easy if you have a customer data platform. And if the company has a variety of campaigns going on, then this CDP will be able to unify all the marketing efforts across many channels through a consolidated and accurate database.
User analysis
You can gain a lot of meaningful and significant insights about your customers through this system. You will be able to retrieve real-time data, boost machine learning with highly improved data quality, identify the high-value segments, and foresee the future behavior patterns for all your customers. This analysis will help you create more effective and relevant marketing plans to be able to engage more and more customers. As for your existing customers, you can understand how to keep them engaged with personalized offers, and continue to get their loyal support.
Democratization of data
A customer data platform will democratize information access, get rid of bottlenecks such as technical issues. It will also help you get access to customer information for improved marketing, enhanced customer services, and will also support smart business intelligence. All these factors are extremely important and required in the digital age of businesses. With each passing day, you should understand how important it is to upgrade your technology and be ahead of the curve. This kind of 360-degree view of the customer is a big step in the right direction.
Understand customer perception
In order to retain your customers, you have to first know them intimately. How a particular customer experiences an interaction with your company will have a huge influence on the customer’s perception. You must remember that in this day and age, users use multiple channels and devices. It is expected that each of these channels will have a unique and tailored customer experience.
For instance, if you provide your customers with an advertisement of a product that they already have or are not looking for, they may get annoyed. This will create a negative impact. Since a CDP will help you get a vision of the purchase history and the purchasing pattern of your customers, you will be able to understand the nature and personality of your buyer and will also learn more about the sort of products they need. This will enable your company to create a database with no blind spots. Improved customer experiences will lead to greater retention and greater customer loyalty.
Managing customer information can be one of the biggest challenges in brand marketing but it is essential to do so if you want to reach the heights of success. So, if you are planning to effectively manage your customer information, a customer data platform is the right solution for you.
