CDPs are digital platforms enabling you to gather data about your customers from all the available sources and integrate them in one place. This solution has obvious benefits, just to mention improved data analytics. Today, we want to show you what CDPs are all about and how they can help you improve your sales and marketing efforts.
If you operate online, you surely realize that customers do different things online, depending on the time, used device, and current needs. On the other hand, you, as a business owner, want to reach current and potential users effectively and provide them with impeccable UX. This element is especially important in e-commerce but in other types of online business as well.
Let’s use a simple example. You want to know about your customers and decide to integrate available information from different data sources. Let’s say you have a customer named John. From your website, you know what products John has browsed and purchased in the past. From social media, you know which posts are the most attractive ones for him, and from your advertising platform – which ads are most compelling. Put all this together, and your view of John and his interests and needs is much more comprehensive, correct? Data coming from your website is, of course, crucial, but that’s not the only source you can use.
The more sources you have under control, the more you know about your target audience.
And this is where the role of CDPs begins.
What are Customer Data Platforms?
Put shortly, these are online platforms that collect, structure, and give access to all customer data that is relevant to your business and the user experience you offer. And because everything is available within one relatively simple dashboard, you don’t need to spend a lot of time trying to learn and analyze all that information.
BENEFITS OF HAVING A CDP
With such a platform, you can:
- Gather insights from multiple data sources (internal, external, and natively integrated systems) more effectively
- Create more detailed user personas and sales funnels
- Create better, more compelling ads (as well as target audiences for them)
- Introduce advanced personalization and segmentation to your business
- Easily look for customers who have performed a specific action, e.g., downloaded your ebook
- Access your customer data immediately (usually, data from various sources is gathered in real time)
- Use different labels and attributes to select users you want to reach at a given moment. This includes demographic data (e.g., place of living), behavioral data (e.g., activities performed on your website), and transactional data (past purchases, past cart contents).
How do CDPs work?
CDPs use several different mechanisms to collect and analyze data. When it comes to registered users, things are relatively easy – with the necessary consent in place, you can freely analyze what your customers are doing and who they are. When it comes to anonymous users, things get a bit tricky, and CDP needs to operate based on cookies (here, it is vital to explain that the marketing industry is slowly moving away from third-party cookies; first-party cookies are still in place, and that’s the kind that enables you to monitor anonymous users on your website).
As you probably know, we have our own CDP here in iPresso. To make it more effective, we implemented something called iPresso ID. It’s a user identifier that allows you to maintain data consistency despite multiple sources and integration in such a way as to share data further in your systems and increase their value. With iPresso ID, it’s much easier to track hundreds of customers and analyze their activity and characteristics.
What about other software (e.g., CRM) I use in my company?
Excellent question! Many companies already use some tools to gather and analyze data about their customers. Such tools include:
- CRMs
- Email marketing tools
- E-commerce platforms
- Mobile apps
- Loyalty programs, etc.
The good news is our CDP can integrate with all these data sources through a commonly used solution known as API. It’s a protocol enabling the connection between two different programs or tools. Thanks to API, our CDP can be truly comprehensive and offer you a full view of what’s going on in your business.
What can you expect thanks to a Customer Data Platform?
We’ve already listed the major benefits related to adopting a CDP for your company, but there are two main purposes for using these platforms:
- More effective marketing: Because you know more about your customers, you know what “clicks” for them – what products and services they are interested in and what kind of assistance they need. As a result, you can create more effective ads, promotions, and special events in your company.
- Better UX: The knowledge about customers can also be used to improve customer experiences, both on your website and in other marketing channels that you exploit. Suppose your CDP shows that the vast majority of your customers communicate and browse your website using mobile devices, then you can decide to create a mobile app or a PWA for your business and engage more potential customers.
If these two reasons sound good to you, the obvious next step is to give a CDP a try. And that’s where our role begins.
Start using a CDP with iPresso
With iPresso, you don’t need to do much to try a CDP. We offer a free trial that includes access to our CDP. We also wanted to show you how our platform looks:
We’ve made sure every feature and every option is easy to understand and reach. Our CDP is simple to use and doesn’t require weeks of training. At the same time, our platform’s functionality is similar to the one offered by the most advanced CDP platforms.
Do you want to know more? Take a look at the subpage devoted to our CDP, and start your trial today!
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