Customer Data Platform – A key element in your omnichannel strategy

Oct 06, 2020 | Customer Data Platform

By Helle Vad Jespersen

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The customer journey is omnichannel. Companies are therefore under constant pressure to deliver personalized marketing on a broad scale and in real-time. Especially because customers engage with their brand across different channels, whether it’s through email, web, SoMe, or even offline.

In this context, one of the hardest challenges businesses face today is to unify their customer data across channels, devices, and platforms to deliver seamless customer experiences – offline and online.

But how do you solve this challenge?

By gathering all your customer data in one place, to get a full overview of every single customer’s interaction with your brand across all channels, devices, and platforms.

Data silos are the omnichannel killer

The number of different tools, channels, technologies that companies have with first-party customer data is increasing every year, which makes it harder and more difficult to create a Single Customer View.

The problem happens when these channels, tools, and platforms are isolated from each other and the rest of the tech stack. This means that the data stays in the individual channels, tools, and platforms which gives an incomplete view of the customer’s interactions with a company’s touchpoints – this applies both online and offline.

When customer data is isolated, you can easily lose track of your customer’s journey and interactions with your company, and you are for example not aware that a customer has already bought the product from your physical store when you target the customer online.

You are simply not able to deliver relevant and personalized marketing if you have a fractured view of your customers.

That is why you need a Customer Data Platform.

What is a Customer Data Platform

A Customer Data Platform allows you to consolidate first-party behavioral data across all customer touchpoints, to create a Single Customer View. This makes you able to actively use all the collected customer data in unity to deliver consistent messages through all channels.

In a Customer Data Platform, you can unify all your collected data from every channel and customer touchpoint such as Email, SoMe, CRM, POS, ERP, DMP, etc. – into one platform.

So, a Customer Data Platform allows you to unite customer data from multiple channels and use it actively to create advanced audience segments which then can be activated in all available channels.

Single Customer View

With a Single Customer View, you can also track whether the individual customer has purchased a product in your physical store, so you e.g. don’t spend your online marketing campaigns targeting a customer that has already purchased a specific product offline.

All the information you have collected about your customers is stored in one place, and you don’t have to look in various systems, to see how engaged the customer has been with your brand.

A single customer view is especially important when you engage with your customers through multiple channels. Since customers expect consistent messaging based on their preferences – this allows you to be more precise in your targeting as well as being able to personalize the customer journey.

Achieving a Single Customer View, without a Customer Data Platform is nearly impossible.

Profile Unification

To recognize a customer across online channels, offline sources, devices, and platforms you need a connection in the form of unique identity markers. Unify data sources based on Raptor User Profiles, which is a keychain technology tracing and combining user IDs across various data sources, such as e-mail address, cookie-, device-, user-, and token ID.

Companies with loyalty clubs have an advantage when it comes to connecting offline and online interactions to the same customer because they have created an additional identity marker. When an offline customer registers his purchase in your loyalty club, it’s possible to recognize the customer whenever he interacts with your brand through digital channels.

Audience Builder

The Raptor audience builder provides operational access to the Customer Data Platform. This is where strategic business logics is incorporated and defined by available customer data from various channels.

A Customer Data Platform’s core output should lead to experiences that meet or exceed customer expectations while delivering measurable business value. While this primarily requires more efficient data management, it must also include tools for:

Creating and managing rule-based audiences/segments
Orchestrating cross-channel campaigns
Real-time activation of audiences through all available channels
Advanced segmentation features that include automated segment discovery or propensity models

Online

Offline

Consolidated

Key takeaways

Being omnichannel is a need. Therefore, you can’t afford to not invest in recognizing your customers across all channels to deliver personalized omnichannel customer experiences. So, the time to act is now if you don’t want to be overthrown by your competitors.

Customers expect you to know their joint history – accurate profile unification
Remove irrelevant communication – real-time updates of audiences
Data-driven decisions require clean data
First-party data should be considered a competitive advantage
A Customer Data Platform is a resource not only for your team but the entire company