CDP Institute

As advertising involves more technology (see above), it’s no wonder that tech experts are playing a larger role in the industry. Here’s a very interesting piece from Ad Week on investments in ad agencies by giant tech firms like Accenture and IBM. Did you know that Accenture already has 36,000 design and creative professionals worldwide?  If you’re wondering what this means for marketing technology and CDPs, here are some additional thoughts.

Email marketing vendor Campaign Monitor yesterday announced its purchase of Customer Data Platform vendor Tagga. It’s interesting on several levels: one of the few CDP acquisitions so far (surely more to follow); illustrates recognition of the need for more powerful data handling than conventional email systems provide; shows point solution vendors expanding footprint to compete with broader platforms/clouds/suites (also shown by recent Marketo/Infor deal). Beta integration due by end of 2017.

Customer Data Platform vendor Signal announced a partnership with cross-device identity platform Tapad. The deal will help Signal clients associate multiple devices with customer profiles. Tapad has been licensing its identity graph since 2015 so nothing too new here.  But it’s still evidence that cross-device is becoming a standard way to create more complete customer profiles.

Online/offline identity matcher LiveRamp also adds new partners all the time.  But its deal with Data Management Platform (DMP) vendor Lotame shows Lotame expanding beyond traditional DMP territory (anonymous profiles for ad audiences) to profiling known individuals across online and offline channels. That’s CDP turf.  Lots of DMPs are doing this. Free advice to buyers: ask pointed questions about how DMP technology supports a use case so different from its original purpose.

Yesterdays’ newsletter mentioned the growth of industry-specific CDPs.

Clicktale is another vertical solution for customer analytics, although it’s limited by channel (Web and mobile apps) not by industry. They’ve just launched a “digital experience cloud” that uses the super-detailed behavioral data they’ve always captured (down to in-page hovers, scrolls, pinches, and zooms) for advanced path analysis, business impact analysis, and “psychological analytics” to infer customer motivations and intent. Data and metrics are exposed to other systems via APIs and SDKs. Too narrow to replace a CDP but a valuable supplement and potential input.

IT staffing and services provider TEKsystems asked 250 senior marketing executives about their digital initiatives.

One CDP trend we watch is systems for vertical markets. As a CDP for sports, entertainment, and membership businesses, Umbel fits nicely. They’ve just launched a “digital sponsorship suite” that makes it easier for franchises to sell sponsorships by gathering data from fans and sending them targeted advertising. Speaking of trends, Umbel’s combination of database building, analysis, and messaging clearly marks it as software for marketing departments, not an enterprise-run resource.  This is something we’ve been discussing on the Customer Experience Matrix blog.

Maybe marketers don’t need more software.  In this Sailthru survey, 73% said they have in place the foundation and structure needed to excel at multi-channel/cross channel campaign management. Consistently, just 4% cited technology as their top challenge in 2017.  Top challenges were resources (21%) and growth (16%). A whopping 66% said they’re already using artificial intelligence, mentioning search, recommendation engines, and programmatic advertising. They’re not totally jaded, though: personalization ranked first as the innovation creating most excitement for 2017.

If you don’t have all the tech you need, join the CDP Institute and AgilOne on March 22 at 10 a.m. Pacific to learn about requirements for enterprise CDPs. Lots of real-word examples on how CDPs give brands a competitive edge. Plus prizes for asking questions!

Accenture Interactive has added Genome to its personalization suite, which already includes a clustering engine, business intelligence, recommendations, multivariate testing, technical performance monitoring, and retail assortment optimization. Genome extracts attributes from customer interactions and uses these to predict future preferences. Not quite as revolutionary as Accenture makes it sound, but definitely a step beyond “customers who bought this also bought…”

ZyloTech, a MIT spin-off launched in 2014 as DataXylo, has announced its own solution to understand customers based on their data.