What Is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)? | How a CDP Can Turn Your Marketing Up to Eleven

Hello, fellow marketers! Let me ask you something:  when you’re cooking in the kitchen, do you keep  
your ingredients organized, or do you just set  them down in random spots without thinking twice?  
Chances are, you like to keep your ingredients  in their proper places. Now, imagine trying to  
cook a dish when you’ve scattered all your  ingredients all over the place. It’d be  
frustrating and time-consuming - not ideal! Well, it’s kind of the same thing with your  
customer data. It’s frustrating when you have to  spend your time searching for bits and pieces of  
information. If only a tool existed that could  help you centralize and organize all of your data.  
Oh my gosh, hold on. It DOES exist. And it goes  by the name, “Customer Data Platform” or “CDP”. 
You probably already know that gathering  information about your customers can help  
you with your sales and marketing. First-party  data — which we have a video explaining — is  
super useful for understanding who your customers  are, especially as the usefulness of third-party  
data begins to disappear with the introduction of  enhanced internet privacy! But keeping all that  
first-party customer information in the right  places can be tricky without a CDP to help you. 
What is a CDP? That’s what we’re  here to tell you in this video. 
But really quick: We appreciate your support,  and if you have a second, hit that big subscribe  
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Now let’s keep this thing moving forward. What is a customer data platform? 
In short, a CDP is a tool for helping you  store and organize data about your customers. 
Think about all the different places you have  customer data being stored: your sales tools  
(like your CRM), your email marketing lists,  your existing customer lists — whether they  
come from your customer loyalty program,  or even just some accounting software. 
Each of these places is considered a silo of  data. The job of the CDP is to figure out where  
the data overlaps in these silos and merge it  all together automatically and in real-time. 
Perhaps a few email lists contain the same  email address as your CRM does. Wouldn’t it  
be nice if all the interactions you’ve had with  that one email were put together? Then you could  
see all the different types of communication  your business has had with that one customer. 
A CDP will then enable you to take action  on that data in other tools and strategies.  
By providing a centralized and unified  platform for managing customer data,  
CDPs help businesses to deliver more  personalized and effective marketing campaigns,  
build stronger customer relationships,  and ultimately drive business growth. 
Why should you use a CDP? By now, we’ve nailed down what a CDP  
is — but why should you use one? Let me put this  in the context of a very common, very effective  
digital marketing strategy: email marketing. Say you want to send an email to ONLY your  
best customers. Here’s how the CDP can help: First, your CDP can automatically collect  
and unify customer data, making it  much easier to build an email list.
Well, okay…connecting all your software with  a CDP isn’t necessarily easy. You may want  
some expert help to do that. But when it’s  all connected and running, it is awesome.
As I explained earlier, a CDP gathers your  data from multiple sources and creates a  
unified customer profile. This profile is made of  all the data points associated with a customer,  
including their previous purchases, interactions  on your website, social media activity, and more.
Say goodbye to hunting down spreadsheets  and asking five different coworkers in  
five different departments for all the  emails of people you’ve been in touch  
with. The time you save can be used to  fine-tune other parts of your campaign.
Second, a CDP can help you  analyze your customers’ behavior.
With the customer data stored in a CDP, you can  gain more insights into your customers' behavior,  
preferences, and needs — helping  you and your team create better  
marketing and better experiences  tailored to your customers’ needs.
You can segment your customers based on various  criteria, such as purchase frequency, total spend,  
or product preferences, to figure out  who your best customers actually are.  
It’s no longer a guessing game when  you want to communicate with people.
Third, you can use the data gathered by  your CDP to create targeted campaigns.
Once you've identified your best customers,  
you can create a targeted email  campaign specifically for them.
With your customer analysis, you have a pretty  good idea of the messaging and the creative that  
will work for your audience. So, when creating  your email content, you can personalize it based  
on your customers’ preferences, interests, and  past behavior. So you’re not only reaching the  
ideal audience, but you’re sending them  content that’s custom-made for them.
Lastly, a CDP lets you optimize  and measure your results. 
So, in this pretend-yet-realistic example,  you’ve sent your email to your best customers.  
You can use your CDP to track the performance  of your email campaign and measure its impact  
on your customers in just that email list. You  can see how many customers opened the email,  
clicked on a link, and made a purchase.  You can then use this data to optimize your  
future campaigns and improve your total ROI. And this example can apply to more than just  
email campaigns. Understanding the people  in your audience can benefit literally every  
marketing strategy you implement, whether  you use this knowledge to create targeted  
audiences for your digital ads or create website  content that addresses your customers’ needs. 
Having a CDP really gives you the full picture  of your marketing and sales strategy in many  
ways. As first party data becomes more  and more important, a CDP will, too. 
Well, that’s all for this video. But  you may still have questions about  
customer data management, or maybe  about marketing in general. If so,  
don’t worry — there’s still plenty more to learn. You can just subscribe to our YouTube channel,  
or our email newsletter, Revenue Weekly. That  way you can receive new marketing knowledge  
on a regular basis. See ya next time!