Prepare for a Customer Data Platform

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe how to prepare for a CDP.
List what your CDP strategy should include.
Identify how to deliver your product.

The Recipe for Success: Customer Data Platforms

The era of customer data platforms, or CDPs, is here. If you're not familiar, a CDP helps marketers combine customer data from different sources in one place. By bringing data together, you get a complete view of your customer’s wants and needs. This is a powerful opportunity for marketers.

Setting up your CDP is similar to following a recipe. A series of small steps lead to something big.

Now that we know why taking time to prepare is important, in this module we explore each step of creating your CDP strategy—from preparation to personalization. Let’s start with the prep.

Prepare for a CDP

Prepare your organization.
Grab your ingredients.
Place your product.

Prepare Your Organization

Just like a world-class baker sets up their kitchen before beginning a recipe, a marketer must carefully plan and prepare before using a CDP. Here’s how to set yourself up for success.

For many businesses, the number one priority in planning their CDP strategy is getting buy in from across the organization. This is an important step because the ingredients for your strategy come from many different places, not just your marketing channels. And getting meaningful buy in takes time. So consider this the preheating stage.

Grab Your Ingredients

Now that you’ve started planning, it’s time to take stock of everything you need. To begin the process, let’s grab the key ingredients.

You may already have many of these ingredients, so use what’s in your cupboard—like your existing customer relationship management (CRM) system, marketing database, and so on. However, there are always instances—in both baking and business—when there are missing elements that you don’t have on hand. So start thinking about what data you might need for your strategy and begin building a shopping list.

Here’s a start to your CDP shopping list.

CDP Ingredient	What It Is	Where to Find It
Contact data	Your core ingredient that consists of unique identifiers, such as email address, mobile number, and nonunique identifiers, such as first name, street address, state, and country	Customer relationship management (CRM) aisle
Engagement data	An in-house ingredient that consists of data on engagement activities, like the amount of time customers spend browsing a web page	Marketing aisle within an email service provider (ESP), ecommerce system, or marketing platform
Purchase data	An in-house ingredient that consists of data on customer purchase history and makes your bake more substantial by helping you determine who receives what	Point of sale (POS) aisle, which can sometimes be part of both the marketing and CRM aisles
Preferential data	A sometimes in-house ingredient that consists of data on customer preferences, like contact preferences for email	In the marketing or CRM aisle, near the profile center section; if you don’t have this ingredient, then a third-party provider may sell it to you
Service interaction data	An ingredient from your customer service department that consists of data around customer service experiences, which helps identify problems and resolve issues to ensure customer satisfaction	Customer service aisle
Behavioral data	An in-house ingredient that consists of data generated by user actions, such as page views or email sign-ups	Across multiple aisles, including ecommerce, analytics, marketing, CRM, and customer service

Place Your Product

Now you need somewhere to display and share your offering. Let’s talk about your product placement.

Here are some of the appliances to consider as you think about sharing your delicious final product.

Appliance Name	What It Is	Key Considerations
ESP	An ESP is a key part of the delivery strategy because it ensures what you deliver to the inbox has the right ingredients, so customers consume them as intended.	Look for specific ingredients to include, such as name, location, and preferential and purchase data to personalize.
Marketing platform or database	A marketing tech stack is one of the most important delivery mechanisms because you’re likely going to connect through multiple channels.	Make sure you can take the batch segments you’re creating and easily move them over to different channels, like an ESP or social media platform, when they’re ready for display.
Real-time interaction management system (RTIM)	An RTIM system is essential because it helps you ensure you deliver specific interactions to specific guests, in real time, based on their previous decisions.	Take time to make sure you’ve connected your RTIM system to your CDP.
Digital advertising network	Digital advertising networks, such as social media ads, are key because they drive awareness to your finished product.	Ensure that ingredients within these include, at the very least, an email address or phone number, so you can easily share them with your end customer.
Marketing analytics/analytics platform	Marketing analytics and analytics platforms allow you to gain important insights to decide which specific products to enrich and which to discontinue.	Capture this information regularly so you can use the insight to fine-tune your ingredients and finished products.

In the next unit, we begin building a CDP strategy.