Customers today expect their brand experiences to be quick, simple, and relevant. Although there is plenty of customer data available, it needs to be compiled into one customer profile to truly understand your customers’ journeys. If you want to have a complete picture of what your customers need, their challenges, and how you can best serve them, it is critical to have a comprehensive view of each customer. The best way to achieve clear and cohesive performance measurement is with a CDP.

What Is a CDP?

A CDP, or customer data platform, takes all of your data about a customer and places it into one profile, giving you a 360 degree view of each customer. These unified customer profiles allow you to resolve both known and unknown identifiers for your customers across your CRM, mobile app, website, email marketing, and ad platforms. Not only can you collect data directly from your mobile and website users, but you can integrate second and third party data to improve your customer profiles. As a result, you get insights, segmentation, and recommendations to help drive growth. 

How a CDP Bridges the Gap Between Customer Data and Customer Journeys

A CDP is designed to help brands create unified customer profiles to enhance the customer experience. It provides you with the information you need to understand your customers’ journeys and learn where they become frustrated in the process. You can improve their experience and improve your sales. Take a look at five ways a CDP can help you improve the customer journey. 

1. It Provides a 360 Degree View of Each Customer

It can be challenging for brands to pull data from different sources and get it into one place. You have customer visits to your website, mobile apps, google, social media sites, messaging, and more. Your CDP gives you visibility into all of your conversions, your attributed conversions, and how the different marketing channels factored into the sale. Being able to attribute your conversions to the right marketing channel helps you understand which strategies are most effective, and you can make informed decisions that optimize your growth.

2. The Performance of Media Sources Is More Transparent

Your CDP will take the data from all of your media sources, whether they are owned, earned, or paid, and place them in one dashboard. You can take this information and learn where your marketing is most effective. 

It is important to understand how each media source fits into your conversions. For example, you may have a customer who clicked an ad on google, and then saw the ad on Facebook and made a purchase. Google would take 100% of the credit, when Facebook is where the conversion takes place. 

Your CDP could use any-click attribution to give full credit to all media sources involved in the conversion. It could give  full credit to both sources so that you can see the full impact and compare it with the conversions reported by different platforms. It also gives you first-click attribution, linear attribution, and last-click attribution so that you get a complete picture of the customer journey. Some CDPs can also figure out credit for display or video ad impressions that don’t result in a click but could impact the conversion indirectly. Such attribution is generally called view-through attribution.

3. It Helps You Transition from Third Party to First Party Data

As data privacy becomes more important to consumers, marketers need to find new ways to collect customer data. Transitioning from third party cookies to a first party tracker helps you see your online and offline customer data across all touchpoints. 

First party data is data that you collect directly from your customer, and it includes digital interactions, preferences, behavior, purchase history, and more. It allows you to personalize your marketing to appeal directly to what the customer is already interested in. 

Third party data was great for prospecting customers, but with first party data, you can improve the customer journey for your existing customers. Customer retention is critical to brands because it is less expensive and more profitable. When you are able to target your customers by responding to what they want and need, you can build brand loyalty and increase customer retention.

4. You Get Data-Driven Identity Graphs

The key to marketing today is better insight into your customers’ journeys. When the data surrounding your customers is scattered and disconnected, it is difficult to get a complete picture. With a CDP, you can pull everything into one platform and see comprehensive graphs based on first-party data.

This allows you to resolve any customer identifiers across your channels, including your website, CRM, mobile app, email marketing, ad platforms, and e-commerce sites. You can use ID resolution to create more robust profiles of each customer and enrich them with second and third-party data. 

You end up with a unified picture of each customer. You can see what ads appealed to them, which platforms they prefer, and where they paused their journeys. This allows you to create a marketing campaign that is personalized and helps each customer follow through and make a purchase. 

5. You Can Personalize Your Marketing Efforts

Having a complete picture of your customers’ journeys gives you insight into each customer’s wants, needs, and goals. When you understand their preferences, behaviors, and habits, you can customize their experience. This improves the customer journey and increases brand loyalty. 

For example, you may have a customer who searches for a pink hat. You can compare that with other customer data to understand whether this was a one time desire or whether the customer often searches for hats. As you learn more about what your customer wants, you can target them with ads that are relevant to them. 

Final Words

Customers today want to see ads that are relevant and fit into their own lives. They ignore impersonal blasts, and they scroll past ads that they don’t relate to. There is a lot of customer data available, but it needs to be organized in one place. You can use a CDP to pull data across platforms and truly understand the customer journey. This information allows you to offer experiences to your customers based on what they want and need.