A customer data platform (CDP) is a powerful tool for both your marketing and IT teams.

With a customer data platform in place, companies can integrate data from multiple sources and formats. They can manipulate it, understand it, report on it and use it to make smart decisions and drive business goals.

In short, a CDP is a way to incorporate and use data in a compelling, actionable way.

But what does a CDP mean for IT and marketing teams? For IT teams, it simplifies work and eases the burden on core operational work. For marketing teams, a CDP empowers the work and leads to more data-informed decisions.

What is a customer data platform?

A CDP takes information from myriad sources, including customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource management (ERM) systems, social media, and other sources. They are designed to help organizations bring data together to provide a 360-degree customer view. The information empowers marketers and salespeople to evaluate customers, add behavioral scoring and activate them.

A CDP should work closely with a data warehouse. Many use APIs to work with existing systems and store information in the systems that are providing data to the CDP.

Storing data in this way helps reduce the expenses associated with data, eases the burdens of multiple data transitions and reduces the rising costs of data management, cleansing and storage.

The close integration of a CDP and data warehouse limits the amount data to be moved, transformed and loaded into various systems.

Easing the burden on IT teams

Marketing teams rely on IT to turn data stored in a data warehouse into actionable intelligence. That means IT teams need to convert data segments into tools, such as emails, that can be used to reach business objectives.

IT staff need to build specific SQL tools to upload segments into ad or marketing tools. The work to manipulate and move data is time-consuming work.

Instead, using products such as Lytics’ CDP lets companies manage and use data using existing standards, processes and needs. A CDP eliminates the need for IT staff to learn more skills or purchase and deploy new software.

With the Lytics CDP, companies can streamline access to data – based on where that data lives today. It allows companies to access data without adding additional capabilities. You can use your security polices, unify data from multiple locations, and control access to what marketing teams need.

With a CDP, IT teams can take multiple data sources and complete identity resolution once the data is in the platform. Your IT teams will not need to consolidate data beforehand before sending it to marketing.

A Lytics CDP seamlessly delivers data to key platforms for email, e-commerce and social content delivery. IT teams can test queries in the data warehouse via copy and paste, adding in authorizations for access. This process lightens the IT workload and can be done using user interfaces that are designed specifically to meet the needs of marketing and IT teams alike.

Empowering marketing teams

Your marketing team will be on the receiving end of accurate, actionable and integrated data. The data received allows marketers to create and launch relevant, personalized content that strengthens the resonance and relatability of marketing campaigns.

The data can be used on multiple platforms for multiple purposes. The right data will be available to activate quickly based on real-time customer profiles based on information stored in various sources.

A CDP by Lytics allows for cross-channel customer experiences. AI tools allow for real-time adjustments to the marketing channels, messages and offers that marketing teams determine will be most effective to various customer segments.

Predictive modeling using data science including behavioral scores, content affinity and lookalike models allow for refined and precise targeting. The Lytics CDP uses the following to deliver more significant conversion rates, with increases from 17 percent to 200 percent:

• Quality of users’ cumulative activity with the brand over the lifetimes of customer relationships
• Frequency of user engagements with the brand over time
• Recency of user engagements
• Intensity and depth of the engagements with the brand
• Momentum indicators that measure the rate at which users engage with the brand
• Propensity to return indicators
• Consistency of user engagement
• Maturity of registered engagements
• Volatility measures that reflect how sporadic or consistent engagements are with the brand

Once a CDP is set up, it begins driving efficiency between IT and marketing immediately. The path from data to marketing initiatives becomes shorter with activation tools connected, data sources linked and static files integrated. The ROI can be measured in weeks – not months.

With the initial data in place and mapped, the work shifts to marketing, which can begin building profiles and audiences, pushing out messages and personalizing experiences.

Lytics CDP strengthens the relationships between IT and marketing professionals. It drives more actionable data to those who need it most without overburdening overworked IT staffs. It’s a powerful way to enhance marketing initiatives and results to meet critical business objectives.

Get the guide: Learn why 73% of brands say a CDP will be critical to post-cookied marketing efforts.

This article was originally published on Lytics website. Click here to see the original blog post.