What is a Customer Data Platform?
So here's the deal, your customer's online shopping journey is no longer linear - it's fast and complicated, almost unpredictable.
Online shoppers use several channels and platforms to buy products. They move from ecommerce websites, product listings online to even physical retail stores. This spells out a zillion customer touchpoints and interactions. Clearly, in times like these, your age-old methods fail to hold good. So how can your online store play catch-up?
Make way for Customer Data Platform or CDP. The CDP as a tool is your best bet to get a unified view of your customer's needs and preferences. The Customer Data Platform is a software that picks up relevant customer data across a range of touchpoints both in the digital and the physical world. CDP then structures it in a way that is easy for businesses to visualize and act upon.
It’s a system that’s built and configured to cater to the specific needs of businesses, both big and small. Reports state that the CDP market size is expected to shoot up from USD 2.4 Billion in 2020 to USD 10.3 Billion by 2025. CDP aids marketers to get a comprehensive view of their customer profiles, allowing them to better segment, and target their customers.
How does a CDP work for an ecommerce business?
Data is crucial to ecommerce businesses, but many online business owners are unsure of how to make the best of it. CDP is a tool that integrates data from first, second and third-party sources such as CRM, email marketing, and social media activities.
CDP enables online ventures to build ideal customer profiles by capturing the customer’s behavior across these touchpoints.
Say there are multiple sources from which the data is picked up - CDP can link the data from different sources to the same customer.
The data developed by CDP can be qualitative or quantitative, which simply means that it gives you a comprehensive view of the consumer behavior and their attitude towards the products or services offered on your online store.
How does CDP set itself apart from CRM and DMPs?
Difference between CDP & CRM
You resort to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) when you have to engage with customers by creating a customer profile using historical data and general customer data.
However, CRM is not designed to absorb huge volumes of data from various sources. A CDP, on the other hand, can connect a plethora of customer data, be it internal or external, structured or unstructured, batch or streaming. This way, you can have a much more full-fledged view to understanding your customers even better.
Difference between CDP and DMP
It is easy to get mixed up with a Data Management Platform (DMP) and a CDP. DMPs target anonymous users and use cookies to target their customers. A lot of the information provided by a DMP is unknown and expires after 90 days, which is a cookie’s lifetime.
On the other hand, CDPs create a more persistent profile of customers, storing a large amount of data, retaining the history of customer engagements, and combining them all into a single record.
What are the key benefits of CDP for your online store?
Ecommerce businesses leverage CDP to improve the customer’s buying journey and focus on a more one-on-one relationship with their customers. Here’s how CDP powers online store owners:
- CDPs help enhance customer loyalty and retention: Ecommerce businesses have a vast amount of data concerning their users’ buying habits. Determining Customer Lifetime Value is key to these online businesses. With CDP, you can have a centralized customer database, but you can create campaigns and experiences customized to those CLVs.
- Personalizing the customer experience: Businesses should aim at creating and delivering personalized experiences to their customers. CDP helps achieve this. It leads to a better conversion rate, increases user engagement, and adds value to your business bottom line.
- You can avoid data silos: Data silos are the data that are available to only one department and which can’t be accessed by the rest of your organization. They aren’t any good for your business. CDPs help you avoid them by creating a centralized digital hub that calls departments and access, providing hands-on information at all times.
- Helps you measure the success of your ecommerce business: CDPs help you track your metrics and KPIs, thereby helping you gauge the success of your initiatives better.
That being said, it is essential to make sure you are bringing your A-game in addressing customer queries. DelightChat’s omnichannel ecommerce help desk is just what you need to service your customer right.
