CDP Institute

A Forbes Insight report, sponsored by marketing operations platform Aprimo, found that 74% of marketers cite “agility of marketing operations” as a key challenge.

Yesterday's newsletter was so drearily fact-filled, and on the eat-you-broccoli topic of data protection, no less.

Speaking of big pictures, Snapchat is rumored to be working on a technology to overlay virtual billboards on real-world surfaces. “Augmenting reality with more branded content” is how the article describes it. The “more” in that sentence is delightfully ambiguous: does it express excitement or dread?  And how much branded content is already in augmented reality?

Here’s another mixed blessing. The new chief of the Federal Communications Commission is expected to overturn rules that required consumer consent before Internet Service Providers like Verizon and Comcast could monetize the behaviors of their customers. Net neutrality is on the chopping block too. Ad industry leaders are happy. Privacy advocates, not so much.

Data Privacy Day came and went last week with little notice, but the May 2018 deadline for complying with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is coming closer whether you’re paying attention or not.

If you’re wondering why stronger data protection might be needed, how about a finding that identity fraud hit 15.4 million U.S. consumers last year. That’s 6.15% of ALL consumers. Which means, if attacks are randomly distributed, YOU have a 60% chance of being hit over a ten year period. But attacks are not randomly distributed: active social networkers or ecommerce shoppers are more likely to be hit. Sound like anyone you know? Study was from Javelin Strategy & Research, sponsored by identity protection vendor LifeLock.

Maybe you think you’re safe from identity fraud because you don’t make dumb mistakes about exposing your data. Think again. A study by Princeton and Stanford researchers found anonymous browsing history – which is widely available – was enough to correctly uncover a user’s true identity up to 70% of the time. Time to find an identity? Less the one minute.

Let’s talk about email today, shall we? First, we have an integration of LiveIntent with LiveRamp. In case you’re getting your lives mixed up, LiveIntent inserts advertisements into publisher and brand emails, using predictive analytics to find the best ad for each person. LiveRamp matches email addresses to cookies and other digital identifiers so marketers can send display ads to email customers. The deal will make it easier for marketers target the same people across both media.

Next, we have email data provider TowerData announcing real-time “access to recent browsing and search-based purchase intent data aggregated from 10,000 stores and 7,500 brands across thousands of shopping sites”, which can be used for Web site personalization in addition to email targeting. Having access to all that data is what’s new for Tower. But this is really more about cross-channel integration than email.

Finally, a bit of research. CRM software provider SuperOffice sent a two question email to 500 companies and monitored their reaction. It reports that 41% of companies never responded and the rest took an average of more than 15 hours to reply. Only 11% answered questions on the first try. A whopping 99% didn’t follow up to see if customers were satisfied with their answer. Not shocking but still sad.

I had at least a half-dozen separate conversations last week about using CDP data for measurement, as opposed to marketing execution.

Speaking of measurement: Customer Data Platform vendor mParticle has added a connector for measurement vendor comScore. This spares developers from embedding comScore’s own System Development Kit (SDK) within their products. mParticle specializes in gathering mobile app data and feeding it to other systems.