First thing’s first! What is a CDP?!
The CDP Institute defines a CDP as packaged software that builds a persistent unified customer database accessible to other systems. They’re often used to integrate customer data into one database.
David explains: “It’s a persistent unified customer database where you store other data; you don’t just move it from one place to the other like an integration platform might do. It’s a customer database so you have all the information about each customer, which creates a unified view of that customer.”
A CDP takes all the data and stores it for as long as you want, and it’s accessible to other systems so that the data can be shared out to others that need to use it as opposed to just pulling it together and using it for your own purposes.
Especially in B2B marketing, you want your buyers to have a clear understanding of not only a product, but the company as a whole. And B2B buyers want to have the right information and experience, which is why a CDP can come in handy if you’re specialising in ABM for example because you’ll be able to access all the data you’ll need all in one place.
The difference between CRM and CDP
One might wonder: can’t we just use a CRM system? It might be easy to confuse the two systems, but there is a difference. Although a CRM is a packaged software, it can only work with the data that the CRM system generates. In addition to this, it doesn’t bring in data from other sources. Therefore, it’s not a complete view of a customer, just a partial one.
Furthermore, David mentions that most CRM systems aren’t very good at sharing other data with other systems. Those who need a CRM usually decide to use that set of data for their own purposes.
David says: “They’re built for different purposes. CRM systems are built for salespeople or sales centre agents to pull up a record of a customer to take notes and attract that relationship on a human-to-human basis. A CDP system is built to signal data from all kinds of places and using it for more analytical purposes as well as for personalisation.”
What to consider beforehand
Now that you know what a CDP is, it’s important to question whether your company needs it in the first place. A common pitfall marketers make when investing in a new technology is knowing exactly how that tech is going to fill in specific gaps within their organisation.
David says: “They need to understand what a CDP can and can’t do for them because it’s not just a magic bullet. It only serves a particular purpose. Beyond that, they really need to understand what they’re trying to accomplish, what programmes they’re wanting to run, what’s stopping them from running those programmes, and whether those are gaps the CDP is going to fill.”
If the real problem is that you can’t write enough content, the CDP isn’t going to write content for you. If the problem is that you don’t have a complete view of your customer and what message to send to whom, that’s more of a CDP gap to be closed.”
Once you confirm that you’re in need of a CDP, it’s important to start looking at which vendor to invest in. Some include features such as personalisation, campaign management and delivery. In addition to this, there are a number of specialist B2B CDPs than generalists.
You have to look in depth and find a system that truly works for your company because it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ in this case.
The benefits of using a CDP
There are several benefits, with the most obvious being that you’ll be operating on one set of data and, let’s face it, there are a lot of things marketers want to do that require data from more than one system.
David says: “That intermediate platform is what a CDP provides, so anybody that finds themselves struggling or has a requirement to obtain data from multiple places is going to find themselves needing a CDP.”
With different sets of data, it’s so important to provide consistent messages across all channels and, with a CDP, you’ll get just that. With a company like Amazon, where all data is in one place, customers and B2B buyers have come to expect companies to treat them consistently over time and across channels.
A lot of the time, they just assume you know everything about them already and therefore are going to give them this great experience and understand their needs and anticipate them. However, the reality in B2B marketing is that there usually are several channels being juggled at a time, and you need to unify all the data in all the different systems. Not only would this ensure consistent messages, but it also ensures that silos in your company will start to fall apart if they’re working with the same set of data.
David continues: “It’s not just in sales interactions, but service interactions as well, such as making it easy to do returns. We already know when, where and how you bought something, so we can accept that return without asking for a lot of detailed information because it’s already available to us. With a customer service system, they can see what you already bought, so you don’t have to go through a bunch of questions.”
