CDP Institute

Just in case you had doubts that Google is serious about competing with Amazon in retail, consider this: Google just invested $550 million in Chinese e-commerce merchant JD.com. Google doesn’t do much business in China so this is about expanding in other markets and listing JD.com as a seller in Google Shopping. Google also announced several enhancements last week that help retailers display their inventory on-line and drive traffic to local stores. See this from The Street for more thoughts on the JD.com deal.

Who manages customer data? It’s marketing at about one-third of the companies polled by DataIQ for the UK Royal Mail. Two-thirds cited a central data organization or IT. (Multiple answers were allowed so at some companies it’s both, and/or other groups including CRM and customer service.) Rather shockingly, one-third (32.7%) had no formal data quality process and 16.3% don’t validate internal data at all. Lots of other interesting data, including estimates of how much bad data harms the bottom line.

Should companies have a Chief Data Officer to focus on data exclusively? Experian found that 82% of CIOs think so, with the main reason being to drive business value. Oddly enough, just 45% of the CDOs in the survey felt their roles should move beyond control and compliance. Still more distressing, most felt they already spend too much time on improving customer experience. They’d rather work on operational efficiency and data innovation. Tsk.

A survey from ASG, Wipro, and the U.S. Financial Information Management conference (FIMA) also reported that many (45%) of CDOs are more focused on compliance than business improvement. In their defense, many are struggling with inadequate technology: just one third had a data lineage tracking system and only half had a data inventory.

CDP Tealium has launched a new user interface organized around the data supply chain. The company says the new interface illustrates its commitment to empowering marketers to manage data for themselves.

Analytics-focused CDP Datorama has also enhanced usability, in its case with a new suite of data visualization features. Users gain control over color palettes, design themes, visualization widgets, and “AI-powered image analysis for marketers to drag-and-drop a logo/image to generate a beautiful, automatically branded dashboard theme”. Yes, the dream has come true: AI-powered logo placement.

“When we do right, nobody remembers. When we do wrong, nobody forgets.” It’s the motto of Hell’s Angels but Facebook might agree. So let’s give them (Facebook) a little credit for requiring marketers to certify consent for custom audiences they upload to Facebook. But not too much credit: Facebook isn’t verifying that the certifications are valid.

CDP BlueConic has added a standard set of real-time behavioral attributes to its customer profiles. These include recency, frequency, momentum and intensity. Users were already able to define custom real-time attributes.

Digital agency SYZYGY asked U.S. consumers what they’d charge their favorite brand for the personal data already held online about them and found the average answer was $150. More than half said they wouldn’t sell at any price while 10% would let brands have it for free. Other studies have estimated the value of personal data at $240 (Wibson) or anything from $39 to $8,100 (Trustwave).

Then again, how reliable are consumer surveys to begin with? Let’s take a quick poll: raise you hand if you’re eager to spend more time reading food labels in the grocery store. Not many hands out there, I suspect. Yet a survey for SmartLabel found more than 70% of people would like more details than package labels now provide. No prizes for guessing what SmartLabel does.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is having its Connections conference this week, which has generated some news. First up, integration of Marketing Cloud with Google Analytics 360 to make journey analytics from each system visible in the other. According to this TechCrunch piece, Salesforce makes clear they are not sharing individual-level data. Ability to push audiences from Google Analytics 360 to Salesforce (and apparently other systems) is due for beta release later this year.

Also timed to the conference, marketing agency Merkle announced CRM 4.0, a packaged solution that combines Merkle identity resolution, data and analytic services with an integration between Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. What’s worth noting here is that connecting the two clouds is tough enough to require special integration services, and that additional services are needed for identity resolution and data management. Bear that in mind the next time someone tells you that Salesforce components just snap together like Lego Blocks.