Customer Data Platform – A key element in your omnichannel strategy
By Kenneth Boll
Reading Time: 3 minutes
The customer journey is omnichannel.
Companies are therefore under constant pressure to deliver personalized marketing on a broad scale and in real-time. Especially because customers engage with their brand across different channels, whether it’s through email, web, SoMe, or even offline.
In this context, one of the hardest challenges businesses face today is to unify their customer data across channels, devices, and platforms to deliver seamless customer experiences – offline and online.
But how do you solve this challenge?
By gathering all your customer data in one place, to get a full overview of every single customer’s interaction with your brand across all channels, devices, and platforms.
Data silos are the omnichannel killer
The number of different tools, channels, and technologies that storing customer data is increasing every year, which makes it hard and complex to create a Single Customer View.
The problem happens when these channels, tools, and platforms are isolated from each other and the rest of the tech stack. This means that the data stays in the individual channels, tools, and platforms which gives an incomplete view of the customer’s interactions with a company’s touchpoints. This applies both online and offline.
When customer data is isolated, you can quickly lose track of your customer’s journey and interactions with your company. For example, you may not be aware that a customer has already bought the product from your physical store when you target the customer online.
You are simply not able to deliver relevant and personalized marketing if you have a fractured view of your customers.
That is why you need a Customer Data Platform.
What is a Customer Data Platform
A Customer Data Platform allows you to unify first-party behavioral data across all customer touchpoints to create a Single Customer View. This enables you to use all the collected customer data in unity to deliver consistent messages through all channels.
In a Customer Data Platform, you can unify all your collected data from every channel and customer touchpoint such as Email, SoMe, CRM, POS, ERP, DMP, etc. – into one platform.
Single Customer View
With a Single Customer View, you can track whether the individual customer has purchased a product in your physical store. This way, you avoid wasting money targeting a customer that has already purchased a specific product offline.
All the information you have collected about your customers is stored in one place, and you don’t have to look in various systems to see how engaged the customer has been with your brand.
A Single Customer View is especially important when you engage with your customers through multiple channels. Since customers expect consistent messaging based on their preferences, this allows you to be more precise in your targeting as well as able to personalize the customer journey.
Achieving a Single Customer View is nearly impossible without a Customer Data Platform.
Profile Unification
To recognize a customer across online channels, offline sources, devices, and platforms you need a connection in the form of unique identity markers. Unify data sources with Raptor User Profiles, which is a keychain technology tracing and combining user IDs across various data sources, such as e-mail addresses, cookie-, device-, user-, and token IDs.
Companies with loyalty clubs have an advantage when connecting offline and online interactions to the same customer because they have created an additional identity marker. When an offline customer registers his purchase in your loyalty club, it’s possible to recognize the customer whenever he interacts with your brand through digital channels.
Audience Builder
The Raptor Audience Builder provides operational access to the Customer Data Platform. This is where strategic business logics are incorporated and defined by available customer data from various channels.
A Customer Data Platform’s core output should lead to experiences that meet or exceed customer expectations while delivering measurable business value. While this primarily requires more efficient data management, it must also include tools for:
- Creating and managing rule-based audiences/segments
- Orchestrating cross-channel campaigns
- Real-time activation of audiences through all available channels
- Advanced segmentation features that include automated segment discovery or propensity models
Read more: CDP Buyers Guide
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Offline
Consolidated
Key takeaways
Being omnichannel is a need. Therefore, you can’t afford to not invest in recognizing your customers across all channels to deliver personalized omnichannel customer experiences. So, the time to act is now if you don’t want to be overthrown by your competitors.
- Customers expect you to know their joint history – accurate profile unification
- Remove irrelevant communication – real-time updates of audiences
- Data-driven decisions require clean data
- First-party data should be considered a competitive advantage
- A Customer Data Platform is a resource not only for your team but the entire company
Do you want to learn more?
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