CDP forges brand new paths for business and marketing

Alfred Choy is the head of APAC Partnership at mParticle, a leader in CDP  that offers AI-driven Customer Data Platform powers the entire customer data stack by combining data quality and compliance protections with rich insights and predictions. With a solid business development and marketing background and years of professional experience under his belt, Alfred has become influential in helping mParticle unlock new market opportunities throughout Asia-Pacific.

The digital market today is a heavily saturated environment for businesses. Competition has never been more fierce. To stay on top of the game, many businesses today are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for automation, data analysis, and elevated decision making. Among the most popular strategies is adopting a customer data platform or CDP as the foundation of Customer Data.

At mParticle, we believe that data drives business transformation and enriches customer experience. This is why CDP will be the beacon of change that puts businesses at the forefront of digital transformation.

What is a CDP?

Customer Data Platform (CDP) refers to marketing software that merges and unifies customer data to create a single, easy-to-access Customer 360. A CDP is usually responsible for four different business functions: 

• Unified Customer View
• Identity resolution
• Real-Time Personalization
• Decision Automation or Decision Engine
• Data Orchestration
  
  

Following the initial steps of data collection and unification, CDP offers data governance capabilities and turns data a full-360° view of the customer profile.  CDP will empower marketers by providing a centralized platform for managing and leveraging customer data, enabling them to create more personalized, targeted, and effective marketing strategies.

The Benefit of CDP

A CDP consolidates customer data scattered across various sources, both online and offline. This integration is highly advantageous for businesses, not just in terms of managing and activating customer data, but also in enhancing customer experience, boosting sales, increasing revenue, and more importantly, turning customer data into customer joy.

With comprehensive data collection, businesses can stay current with shifts in customer behavior, enabling real-time personalization. A CDP makes it possible for companies to maintain brand relevance and positively influence customer attitudes toward specific products or services.

Additionally, businesses can leverage the benefits of cross-brand marketing, which simplifies the management of different business units or brands. CDPs provide a lasting solution to issues like incomplete, inconsistent, or duplicated customer profiles, proving especially valuable when executing large-scale marketing campaigns.

Finally, a CDP captures a broad spectrum of customer data, builds real-time data pipelines, and orchestrates targeted audiences to their preferred communication channels. This not only allows for the integration of additional data but also ensures that customers receive the most relevant ads and campaign content tailored to their preferences.

CDP vs CRM

The primary distinction between a Customer Data Platform (CDP) and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system lies in the type of information each handles and how they operate. 

A CDP aggregates comprehensive customer data, such as user transactions, website traffic, and offline interactions, from multiple sources. This creates a unified and holistic view of the customer, enabling businesses to track and analyze behaviors across various channels.

On the other hand, a CRM focuses on organizing and managing logged customer and sales information, typically related to direct interactions with the business. This includes details like contact information, sales history, and customer service interactions.

The way these systems operate is also fundamentally different. A CDP functions in real time and is fully automated, leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms to continuously update and refine customer data. This real-time capability allows businesses to respond swiftly to changes in customer behavior, providing timely and personalized experiences.

In contrast, a CRM requires manual input, often relying on in-person interactions and updates from sales or customer service teams. This makes CRM systems more akin to a historical record, capturing snapshots of customer interactions over time.

While both CDP and CRM systems offer unique strengths, they fulfill different roles. The key difference between a CDP and a CRM is that a CRM focuses on organizing and managing interactions between customers and your team, whereas a CDP gathers data on customer behavior within your product or service and streamlines the integration of that data with other third-party systems.

Both systems offer significant advantages, in reality, these 2 systems always work together. A CDP feeds comprehensive data into CRM and CRM supports your customer-facing interactions.

The role of AI in CDP

AI plays a crucial role in bridging advertising and customer segmentation by connecting the dots and making accurate predictions. However, the real challenge lies in preparing clean, high-quality data to build reliable data models. This is where CDPs come into play, offering a robust foundation for creating high-quality customer data essential for effective and efficient data modeling.

By integrating AI within a CDP, businesses can enhance their focus on intelligent decision-making and achieve better business outcomes. For instance, a marketing team aiming to target specific ads to users likely to purchase a particular product group can go beyond relying solely on historical data. With AI-driven predictions, they can identify customers with a high likelihood of conversion. AI in a CDP not only enables this predictive capability but also ensures that the data used is of high quality, helping to determine the optimal model and parameter settings to maximize business success.

The future of CDP

I believe that CDPs will evolve into the decision-making engine for marketers. We’re already witnessing the significant impact of CDPs on customer experience, and their applications are expected to expand even further in the coming years.. Why? When businesses get lost in a sea of data, instead of tossing them a couple of life jackets, CDP sends an entire lifeboat. 

Alfred Choy  Head of APAC Partnership at mParticle Alfred is a professional sales and consultant with a strong track record in digital transformation, marketing cloud, e-commerce, SaaS digital solution and business development.