Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is software that collects, unifies, and activates customer data from various sources to create one centralized database with profiles for each customer. CDPs provide companies with an efficient way to manage customer data and drive personalized, data-informed customer experiences across the organization. Often being linchpins for overarching CX software solutions, CDPs are flexible and scalable solutions that help businesses dynamically adapt to changes in customer journeys, customer needs, and customer trends.

CDPs commonly integrate with numerous other business systems to help companies scale customer experience strategies with clean, unified customer data. For example, CDPs often work hand-in-hand with Customer Intelligence software to analyze data and provide customer insights. However, some CDPs also provide inbuilt customer intelligence features. CDPs can also be integrated with CRM software to empower sales teams with granular customer insights, to help personalize sales strategies and drive more revenue.

Key Capabilities & Features of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

• Data Collection: CDPs collect data in all formats from various internal and external sources, including native integrations, third-party APIs, and SDKs. CDPs can collect structured data, unstructured data, and behavioral data. Some examples of the data collected by CDPs include:
  • Sales Transactions
  • Customer Addresses
  • Chat Transcripts
  • Web Logs
  • Social Media Comments
  • App Installations
  • Cart Abandons

• Data Unification: CDPs analyze all the data collected to identify patterns and unify information into customer profiles. Data unification is valuable for creating accurate, effective audience segments and delivering a personalized customer experience based on data insights and customer patterns. Collected data points include (but aren't limited to):
  • Purchases
  • Preferred Channels
  • Past Interactions
  • Loyalty Status

• Data Activation: CDPs use collected, unified data to create new insights such as lead scores, recommendations, customer behavior predictions, and audience segments. These insights, together with customer journey mapping tools, can be used to craft personalized experiences for customers.
• Data Analytics: Leading CDPs provide inbuilt data analytics and reporting so that companies can analyze customer data to identify customer sales trends and behaviors, determine Customer Lifetime Value, and predict churn rates.