The number of digital buyers is increasing every minute, and businesses are capturing mountains of customer data. More data equals more insights, and more insights mean better customer targeting. That should be good news for businesses, right? Not exactly.

E-commerce companies are seemingly dealing with a paradox. The more data they generate, the more difficult it is to make use of it.

The explosive growth of e-commerce has made it harder for businesses to keep up with fragmented customer data from websites, retail stores, blogs, social media platforms and other points of interaction. That’s where customer data platforms (CDPs) have stepped in.

Customer data platforms offer a unified view into customers’ needs so you can create truly personalized omnichannel experiences.

The CDP (Customer Data Platform) Value Proposition

A customer data platform lets you stitch together vast amounts of data from multiple sources. You can then use this data for all your marketing efforts, making market analysis and strategy more manageable.

One of the biggest problems digital marketers currently face is fragmented data. CDPs address this effectively by collecting three types of data:

Behavioral data: CDPs record all customer actions during their website sessions or app usage – even behavior like visits to a store if cell tower location data is available. The data can be used to calculate customer engagement, reach, and impressions.

Demographic data: CDPs can ingest and store basic contact information and personal details that customers share.

Transactional data: CDPs allow you to collect data on transactions and returns made by customers, in-store, and on e-commerce websites. Transactional data is used to calculate return on investment (ROI) and customer lifetime value (CLV).

 

The Personalized Omnichannel Solution

 

Adopting a personalized omnichannel solution offers the flexibility to analyze customer intent and analyze data from all platforms, including apps, online websites, physical stores, and more in one place.

Personalizing these interactions with customers is the end goal of omnichannel solutions, and it can be achieved through CDPs. Leveraging CDPs and artificial intelligence (AI) can help you deliver targeted products and services via multiple channels and maintain the same customer experience, regardless of platform.

Consistent Brand Experience: Inconsistent brand experiences can erode customer trust and make your brand synonymous with poor quality. A CDP can help you identify inconsistencies and eliminate them. It can analyze data from your website and identify where you’re making mistakes. You’ll be able to form content and communication guidelines to ensure there are no inconsistencies and all customers get the best experience possible every time they interact with your brand.

Unified Customer Profile: Multiple components make up a unified profile, and a CDP can collect all the necessary data and let you take actionable decisions. Some of the data that goes into the creation of customer profiles include intent signals, which showcase if a customer is willing to buy a product or not, as well as engagement metrics that highlight how users of a website or app have interacted with the company in the past. 

All the data is collected by CDPs, then AI-based predictive scoring methods are used to offer users recommended products or services. The data also helps businesses segment or categorize personalized messages sent during communication based on user interaction.

Identity Resolution: Customer data platforms can anonymously profile customers based on data collected. With anonymous data, marketers don’t know any identifying information. But you can identify traits and collect actionable decisions to improve the user experience for everyone. By understanding the average visitor’s purchase experience, you can perpetually optimize the experience as an ongoing process.

Profile Activation: Many businesses make the mistake of going for channel-first activation, which can lead to ineffective reach and a lack of personalization. The problem with this is that customer experience (CX) efforts only target customers of a specific channel.

But with audience and profile activation, brands can connect customer interactions on any applicable channel to create a decentralized customer profile and an omnichannel CX.

Conclusion

CDPs can create trusted customer profiles, collect behavioral, transactional, interaction, and psychographic data and consolidate them in one place. The result is a seamless CX and higher customer satisfaction.