Skip to main content

Customer data platform (CDP)


A customer data platform (CDP) is software that allows non-technical marketers to digitally manage customer relationships easily and efficiently. The term was coined by martech consultant David Raab in 2013. Raab defines CDP as any system that can gather customer data from multiple sources, identify when data is related to the same customer, perform predictive analytics using the database and allow marketers to use the results to make informed decisions.

A customer data platform combines customer data from internal and external sources in a variety of formats, including structured and unstructured data, to create a single profile for each customer. In addition to being able to handle queries like a regular database, CDP software can also include tools for data management and operations, along with ancillary features, such as analytics and reporting. Some CDP products also use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in their feature set.

Many vendors have begun to offer CDP products including Amperity, BlueConic, Evergage, Foshpa, Leadspace, Optimove and Segment.

How do CDPs work?

A CDP ingests data from internal and external sources to create a unified view of the customer. Ingested data may come from exported files, such as a CSV file, or from real-time access through APIs and microservices. Most CDPs are built on a NoSQL database.

Once data is collected, it is displayed in a centralized platform. A unique identifier is used to link all of an individual customer's information from multiple sources so that it is accessible to all relevant teams and systems. Marketers can then use the customer data to complete tasks such as measuring marketing campaign performance, conducting predictive modeling or performing customer segmentation.

Benefits of CDPs

A unified view of a customer and their relevant data provides an understanding of customer usage and behavior that is more complete and thorough compared to a set of discrete and separate views (e.g. per delivery channel). Having this unified and accessible view of customer data facilitates better customer experiences via personalization, product delivery and customer support.

CDP's provide fast and cost-efficient access to customer data for marketers and related business users. Because a CDP is commercially available, off-the-shelf software, it is quicker to implement compared to an internally-sourced, custom development project.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black swan

A  black swan event  is an incident that occurs randomly and unexpectedly and has wide-spread ramifications. The event is usually followed with reflection and a flawed rationalization that it was inevitable. The phrase illustrates the frailty of inductive reasoning and the danger of making sweeping generalizations from limited observations. The term came from the idea that if a man saw a thousand swans and they were all white, he might logically conclude that all swans are white. The flaw in his logic is that even when the premises are true, the conclusion can still be false. In other words, just because the man has never seen a black swan, it does not mean they do not exist. As Dutch explorers discovered in 1697, black swans are simply outliers -- rare birds, unknown to Europeans until Willem de Vlamingh and his crew visited Australia. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb uses the phrase black swan as a metaphor for how humans deal with unpredictable events in his 2007...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a computer chip that performs rapid mathematical calculations, primarily for the purpose of rendering images. A GPU may be found integrated with a central processing unit (CPU) on the same circuit, on a graphics card or in the motherboard of a personal computer or server. In the early days of computing, the CPU performed these calculations. As more graphics-intensive applications such as AutoCAD were developed; however, their demands put strain on the CPU and degraded performance. GPUs came about as a way to offload those tasks from CPUs, freeing up their processing power. NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and ARM are some of the major players in the GPU market. GPU vs. CPU A graphics processing unit is able to render images more quickly than a central processing unit because of its parallel processing architecture, which allows it to perform multiple calculations at the same time. A single CPU does not have this capability, although multi...
Post a Comment
Read more

6G (sixth-generation wireless)

6G (sixth-generation wireless) is the successor to 5G cellular technology. 6G networks will be able to use higher frequencies than 5G networks and provide substantially higher capacity and much lower latency. One of the goals of the 6G Internet will be to support one micro-second latency communications, representing 1,000 times faster -- or 1/1000th the latency -- than one millisecond throughput. The 6G technology market is expected to facilitate large improvements in the areas of imaging, presence technology and location awareness. Working in conjunction with AI, the computational infrastructure of 6G will be able to autonomously determine the best location for computing to occur; this includes decisions about data storage, processing and sharing.  Advantages of 6G over 5G 6G is expected to support 1 terabyte per second (Tbps) speeds. This level of capacity and latency will be unprecedented and wi...
Post a Comment
Read more