It’s become increasingly clear that data, not applications, is the new hub of digital marketing. This may help explain why a new category of solution, the customer data platform (CDP), is getting so much attention recently, being the subject of a new analyst report, as well as the topic of new research findings by a vendor association.
Last week, Gartner Research released Innovation Insight for Understanding Customer Data Platforms to help marketers understand the challenges and opportunities associated with the new category of solution, including specific recommendations. The report, which lists Ensighten as one of 16 CDP vendors, is the first major analyst report on the topic. It follows Gartner’s initial recognition of the category as an “innovation trigger” in its Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising 2016, released in July. Meanwhile, Ensighten continues to see strong interest from large brands in its CDP, which includes enterprise tag management, mobile tag management, omni-channel data collection, profile creation and activation, and privacy enforcement.
“The CDP is garnering interest from marketing leaders, thanks to a compelling promise – providing a holistic view of the customer to help execute and optimize personalized journeys,” Gartner Analyst Christi Eubanks wrote in the new CDP report, available through Gartner.com.
The CDP Defined
According to Gartner, “a customer data platform is an integrated customer database managed by marketers that unifies a company’s customer data from online and offline channels to enable modeling and drive customer experience.”
The platform represents far more than just the latest point product, but rather has the potential to serve as a lynchpin of the entire marketing technology stack, unifying rich sources of first-party data into unique profiles, then making them actionable across many of the programs so important to marketers.
“For marketers using multiple point execution tools, the CDP provides the connective tissue between and among them to integrate the marketing stack and enable orchestration across the web, mobile, email, social and so forth,” the report states.
Data unification and cross-device identity resolution are among the most important CDP criteria.
“The CDP’s purpose is to unify customer data from disparate sources, linking identity, behavior, purchase and demographics together in a single record — including both dynamic, contextual data and persistent and trusted identity data,” Eubanks states.
There are also challenges facing the CDP, including lack of awareness among marketers, and confusion with other solutions with overlapping capabilities. When looking for a CDP, Gartner recommends doing a customer data audit, prioritizing use cases, and evaluating the identity and profile management capabilities of current tool.
What else should a CDP offer? Check out Ensighten’s blog post on the topic, 10 Things a CDP Should do For You.
New Survey from the CDP Institute
Meanwhile, the Customer Data Platform (CDP) Institute, a new vendor-based association founded by technologist David Raab, has just issued results of a survey exploring CDP best practices (note: Ensighten is a founding sponsor of the new association).
The survey, entitled Best Practices in Building a Unified Customer Database, was undertaken in October and November of this year to find out about the “current state of the customer database, including reasons companies want one, obstacles that get in their way, and best practices to ensure a successful project.” Among survey findings were:
- Seventy percent of respondents rated a single customer view as “very important” or “extremely important,” but just 14 percent have a shared customer database in place.
- Top use cases for a single customer view were personalization (70%), customer insights (65%) and measurement across channels (51 percent).
- Budget was cited as the top obstacle for obtaining a single customer view (41%), data extraction from source (39%) and organizational roadblocks (31%).
For more information about Ensighten’s leading CDP capabilities, request a personalized demo.
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