There Are 5 Stages Of Customer Data Maturity. Where Does Your Business Stand?
September 30, 2021When I talk with my clients about their existing customer data and communications solutions, many have a roadmap about where they want to go but are at different stages of maturity in terms of their CDP adoption and roll out.
The martech landscape varies by situation, and sometimes businesses have a CDP solution in place that falls short of their expectations because its capabilities don’t align with their customer data and experience roadmap.
In the CDP Institute’s recent report, the industry’s CDPs are segmented into categories:
- Data
- Analytics
- Campaign
- Delivery
CDP Categories 2021
54% of CDPs are categorized as ‘Campaign’ CDPs, according to the report. The definition of a campaign is all-encompassing in terms of ‘planned activity that allows you to reach a specific goal’, but this does reflect the different stages and scenarios that customers may be at or want to achieve.
NGDATA is classified as a ‘Campaign’ CDP, although we have comprehensive data and analytics capabilities. As a pure play platform, we’ve enhanced our Intelligent Engagement Platform over time to ensure our Customer DNATM is truly data and customer experience-centric.
As mentioned, businesses have different levels of sophistication in terms of their customer data and engagements. Our maturity model assists in identifying and mapping where brands are and where they want to be on their journey to true 1-to-1 personalization. And that having individualized engagements doesn’t mean creating loads of content.
NGDATA’s maturity framework model
1. Customer Information Integration – Customer Analytics & Insights
This scenario usually means there is data in place, but no insights to action in a meaningful way. If there is a CDP or data lake in place centralizing or unifying the data, the next stage is to discover customer insights through analytics. This enables businesses to highlight opportunities and increase revenue per customer.
At this stage, there can be some confusion around the difference between a CDP, data lake, DMP or CRM, and these are explained in a bit more detail here.
My top tip before putting data into a CDP is to ensure the data quality is good in terms of fundamental data hygiene – ‘garbage in, garbage out’ is an adage that applies here. Even with advanced machine learning and AI, the basic principles apply.
2. Customer Analytics & Insights – Automated Customer Interactions
At this stage, marketing automation may be in place but lacking in intelligence and decision-making.
Here there is the need not to let a scheduled communication flow define what a customer sees or receives as the next message. It is important to consider and reflect on context and customer behavior.
The key is not to replace the automation. In fact, we integrate with marketing automation platforms. The Intelligent Engagement Platform comes in by providing the intelligence to design the channel journey.
It is critical to have Customer DNATM that consists of multi-attribute data to inform trigger-based communications so they feel more personal and less logic-based.
Here a CDP provides an end-to-end view of your customer engagements, with an intelligent layer that provides visibility of all customer touchpoints across your marketing platforms and channel infrastructure.
3. Automated Customer Interactions – An Intelligent Customer Experience
At this stage, a CDP solution that connects data sources and allows you to engage in real-time with customers based on their data and behavior – from basic to more advanced use cases – is what is required.
The ability to calculate, in real-time, the next-best-offer a customer should receive is a game-changer. Ranking between offers can adapt based on changes in behavioral and demographic data. This intelligence at scale is how businesses can maximize CLTV and customer satisfaction because the messages are timely, relevant, and considered.
This article highlights how to create next-best-offers for customers and develop a very clever customer experience.
4. An Intelligent Customer Experience – True 1-2-1 engagement
Going beyond the next-best-offer here, contextual customer engagements are designed based on what the next-best-experience should be.
At this level, the most sophisticated real-time scoring defines the best possible ‘next-best-experience’ via real-time interaction management. This enables true 1-to-1 personalization at scale and in real-time. The balance between relevance and annoyance is realized.
Where do I start?
Maturity is not achieved overnight. We can see from the evolution of the CDP Industry that we are all growing up to be the best version of ourselves.
Whatever the stage of maturity, there’s a solution to take you a step further to a truly customer-centric and personalized experience that enables 1-2-1 engagements at scale. Even if businesses don’t feel ready, there’s a need to lay the foundations now by building Customer DNA and gaining the single customer view. With a CDP solution you can start small and grow over time.