Blog

CDP Institute Roundtables, September 26, 2024

October 6, 2024

Americas/EMEA Roundtable

Speaker: Giovanni Lorenzoni, CEO, BitBang and Chair, CDP Institute Italy Chapter

State of CDP in Southern Europe

– CDPs still emerging in South EMEA, using less advanced use cases, few local vendors in market

– buyers still unclear where CDP fits into enterprise or martech stack

– European companies have less money to invest vs US, so more reluctant to buy new system when already have cloud database and marketing automation

– often debate between IT and marketing about who owns CDP adoption and choice, and whether to buy a CDP or supplement existing systems in the composable model

– CDP is often confused with Customer360 but that is just part of CDP, no longer the primary use case.

– need to educate the market, to highlight primary and then secondary use cases

CDP Data Requirements

– don’t always need perfect data for CDP; can start with purely digital use cases, which are easier to put in place at the start; but for most use cases do need data management in place

– in most cases, CDP vendor will provide automated connectors for digital channels; becomes harder to make connections to enterprise data sources

– only some CDPs do data matching and build golden record across all channels

Comments from Dirk Rohweder, Teavaro

– harder to unify data outside of digital channels.  Some companies start and end with login IDs, to support cross device.  Some use more sophisticated approaches such as service email clicks. 

– In Europe, is emerging Utik service by telcos, semi-stable identity across mobile

– have found average of 10 duplicates per customer (inc. anonymous profiles). 

– Many people are loading all data into their warehouse without following privacy regulations

CDP Deployment

– should select CDP based on primary use cases.  It’s hard to plan three years in advance so consider CDP for two or three years and then reassess.  Are not building for the ages.  Need something agile and easy to adapt. 

– majority of Salesforce and Adobe CDP clients probably buy them to simplify procurement.  Big vendors offer many pieces that are not necessarily well connected, so you have to involve architects and engineers to understand the best approach.

– Stand-alone CDPs take less effort to be deployed, so can activate use cases more quickly.

– CDP is being used more outside of marketing.  Sales related use cases are for sales agents in store or field to assist customer based on better knowledge of their preferences and history.  See customer service and support teams using CRM data but not adding CDP to orchestrate relationship messaging.  These are missed opportunities.

– realizing value from CDP is limited by organizational readiness, including training, cooperation across the organization.  Users often don’t know what to do with it, don’t want to change their current processes.

– business should control the CDP because they are the primary users.  Maybe manage in Center of Excellence for customer insights and activations. 

– need to demonstrate value of CDP, so need measurement

– CRM is different from CDP; CRM is a function and CDP is a tool. 

– rankings in analyst reports should not be a concern.  You pick a CDP that meets your needs.

– most vendors are embedding AI and GenAI.  Expect to see GenAI for data quality, natural language querying, data discovery, and audience building.  Currently see some journey optimization.

APAC Roundtable: September 26, 2024

Speakers: Dr. Dinh Le Dat and Serm Teck Choon, co-founders of Antsomi and past Chair, CDP Institute SouthEast Asia Chapter

Issues in SEA

– 83% of SEAsians are cutting spending, over half looking for best values

– providing value requires better CX, first party data, personalization

– challenges to companies: data silos, no single customer view, can’t deliver unified customer experience, how to use AI-driven personalization to drive business growth.

– CDP provides solution to provide better CX, leverage first party data, provide personalization.

Background

– in 1990s, CRM started to capture offline data to manage customer relationships. 

– Around 2014 start to use DMP to track web and third party data. 

– In 2016 CDPs start to emerge, use to unify customer data.

CDP vs Other Systems

– CRM provides known data; CRM lets understand VIP customers, segmentation, new customers, nurturing process to grow from new to repeat to loyal. 

– DMP provides anonymous data, is for upper funnel/acquisition marketing. 

– DMP is low adoption and becoming less important because Google, Facebook, Amazon, TikTok are not sharing data so you don’t need a DMP to use them.  CDP is middle funnel/conversion and retention, becoming more important. 

– CDP and AI are two different things.  Use AI for predictive recommendations and automated email sending, then can use for CDP to execute

– to scale, need AI to score customers and build segments; CDP provides unified transaction and demographic data to support. 

– AI is only part of marketing installations.  Still need people to create content and define next actions.

– CDP combines known and anonymous, enables to run marketing campaigns for omnichannel engagement experience, while still keeping their existing technology.

– CDP can support anonymous visitors by capturing their behavior and enabling analytics to determine best products.  CDP can also keep history on repeat anonymous visitors, e.g. content consumed & site they came from, to pick the best offers, do email retargeting, and show related offers when they return.  So CDP can help to convert.

Implementation levels

– best practice for implementation is start with CRM: knowing who are best customers, what is customer journey,

– then, second layer is marketing automation: more real time, automatic processes e.g. sending automation email, automated web push, messaging via What’s App or Instagram.

– third level is CDP: unify data to build customer profile

– is very hard to start with CDP because you need organizational maturity, metrics maturity to capture and optimize.

– need use cases for each level, before start talking about technology