Blog

First Ever Customer Data Platform Summit at Shop.org 2017

September 29, 2017

This week, AgilOne hosted our Customer Data Platform Summit – the first conference of its kind focused entirely on Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and how enterprise B2C brands can benefit from them. The action-packed half-day event was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in partnership with Shop.org. Executives and practitioners from over 80 brands registered and attended the CDP Summit.

We were fortunate to have some of today’s hottest trendsetters and industry leaders presenting at the event. They shared inspiring success stories, innovative ideas, and tales from the trenches about managing customer data and leveraging it across systems of engagement. Our speaker roster included:

David Raab, Founder, Customer Data Platform Institute

Steve Miller, VP Marketing and Business Development, JOANN Stores

Michelle Kelly, CEO, Lilly Pulitzer

Carla Rummo, VP of Direct Marketing and Ecommerce, Serena & Lily

Jeremy Muras, Digital Director, Lion Capital

Julian Chu, Digital Marketing Executive, Castanea Partners

Highlights from the Sessions

The Customer Data Platform Summit featured four deep-dive presentations and a panel from a mix of speakers. Here’s an overview of each of these sessions.

The Rise of Customer Data Platforms for Enterprise Retailers, presented by David Raab, David shared his insights into the rapidly growing Customer Data Platform market, including how he sees the CDP market meeting omni-channel retailer needs, and where the market will evolve over the next year and beyond.

How to Implement a Customer Data Platform for Immediate and Long-Term Success, presented by Steve Miller Steve talked about the steps JOANN took toward choosing a CDP approach, selecting a CDP, and implementing a CDP that would deliver quick wins and future-proof JOANN for long-term success in stores and across digital channels.

Using Analytical Insights to Reveal Who Your Customers Really Are, presented by Carla Rummo Carla discussed how Serena & Lily used reporting to gain a comprehensive understanding of customers and to inform segmentation strategy.

Data-Driven Decisions and Organizational Mindset in an Omni-Channel World, presented by Michelle Kelly Michelle explored how data can be a change agent across the entire organization, and shared Lilly Pulitzer’s experience with leveraging insights from a Customer Data Platform to transform decision-making in many key areas of the business.

Interactive Panel: Customer-Centric Personalization for Retail Brands Michelle Kelly, Carla Rummo, Jeremy Muras, and Julian Chu discussed pressing issues pinpointed by the Customer Data Platform Institute, including: What is the best approach for managing customer data? How can marketing insights feed into the rest of the business? What is the best way to leverage data from stores?

AgilOne’s “Unsummit” – Roundtable Discussions for All Participants

One of the goals of the event was to facilitate meaningful conversations among the marketing executives and practitioners in attendance. The middle part of the day featured two back-to-back “Unsummit” roundtables. Here’s how it worked: Attendees were instructed to choose two topics of their choice from a list of five. Then, they were assigned to the roundtable matching their preferred topic, where a discussion leader had background information prepared and 5-10 discussion questions.

The room came alive with lively dialogue across all the tables – impassioned statements, pressing questions, productive conversations. Here were the five topics attendees discussed:

How First Party Customer Data Can Help with Acquisition/Adtech Use Cases Adtech systems are quickly becoming customer addressable, such as with Google Customer match, Facebook Custom Audiences, Criteo and DMPs, plus onboarding companies making first party data available. This allows marketers to targeting media using actual customers rather than broad demographics. Google claims Customer Match will be their biggest focus for 2017. For example, we found that using Facebook custom audiences reduces acquisition cost by 50%, using Criteo matching reduces media costs by 20%, and increases conversion rates by 2x. These are individual examples, but we’d love to learn from your experience or thinking.

Real-Time Use Cases Driven by Customer Data Platforms Real-Time is a buzzword in customer experience discussions. Depending on the context, some may be referring to near-real-time experiences also by this term. Let’s discuss the real-time use cases that are driven by the Customer Data Platforms. What are the realistic use cases driven by your CDP, which are already implemented by you? Which use cases do you expect to be realistic in the next 6-12 months? Which use cases will be realistic in a longer-term time horizon? And how do you measure the effectiveness of these use cases?

Getting the Most from Store Promotions One of the best ways to build awareness of your brand, engage your existing customers and attract new business is through event marketing. But figuring out what kinds of events to host and how to organize them can be daunting. The challenge to planning and pulling off successful marketing events is to make sure they grow organically out of your business. You don’t want to tack an event onto your brand without giving any consideration to what your brand means, who your customers are and why you’re hosting the event in the first place.

Solving for Issues Today and Tomorrow 66% of retailers agree that results will continue to erode unless they find a way to incorporate technology as part of their store experience (Forrester). Close to 50% of sales start with mobile search/information gathering. 80% of Internet users have smartphones, 40% read their email on mobile. Mobile provides location data crucial to store/geo-based engagement marketing. How are you planning to solve for trends such as the Internet of Things and other future issues and use cases?

Creating Urgency Within Your Organization to Set up a Customer Data Platform One of the challenges in setting up a Customer Data Platform is getting your organization behind the initiative. A person seeing the value of a customer data platform needs to get support from members of your marketing team, executives of the company and IT staff. Once everyone is on board, a person needs to create urgency around a CDP project that will benefit the business. But customer data lives in many more places than just marketing. Companies struggle as a whole with aligning around customer data, centralizing data, and leveraging it for use cases that go beyond what marketers need.

Stay Tuned for More

Now that we have the first Customer Data Platform Summit under our belt, get ready for more! We plan to replicate this template in more cities to come.