Sneak a Peek at the Diary with CDP: The Hidden Gem of Customer Truth

Some of us have trouble organizing our thoughts. A cavalcade of unconnected musings march into every corner of our brains, seemingly at random. To help with this, we might keep a diary, sorting our thoughts to get better insight into why we think and feel what we think and feel. In order to improve  — exercise more, eat better, fight with our siblings less — we need to make sense of the glut of information we have about these things. Cataloging that inner narrative often helps.

In other words, a diary helps collect and unify your thoughts into something meaningful and useful.

Unification is beneficial for a variety of things, not just our thoughts. Salesforce Customer Data Platform (or MC CDP) allows businesses to collect and unify customer information. This software acts much like a diary, allowing marketers to make sense of data and better target customers in a personalized way.

One Place, One Goal

Most of what Customer Data Platform helps achieve falls under the umbrella of understanding your customer. This software allows you to access customer data across different channels in one place. So, no matter whether you have an in-store rewards program or data from ecommerce or your Shopify store, you can access it in one location. WIth Customer Data Platform, the data is not only centralized but it is also homogenized for uniformity, making it simple to interact with. It’s easy-to-use interface eliminates the need to jump between sources like flipping through various chapters of an encyclopedia.

Centralization allows you to effectively segment your customers, slicing the information you have about them in any way you choose. With a drag-and-drop interface, you can create segments on the fly while having a hyper accurate count of the customers in your defined group. This allows you to construct your audience as you see fit quicker than ever. Sharply focused customer segments are possible through strings of contacts or sales, marketing or customer service data.

Another benefit for customer segmentation is that it bolsters customer retention and upsell by activating existing customers. Not only does segmentation allow you to retain customers, it also can secure you new customers by creating  lookalike audiences. Say you sell high-quality safety razors. Without even thinking about it, you know a few things about your customers right out of the gate: they are men and they likely have enough disposable income to afford your razors. A look at your data might reveal a more detailed picture of those customers — their age, location, maybe their ethnicity.

With lookalike data modeling, you can hone in on customers similar to those that already purchase your product and target them. In doing so, you are maximizing efficiency by knowing which customers are not likely to want your product. This pinpoint accuracy in targeting gives potential customers what they want — indeed, perhaps something they didn’t even know they wanted — while ignoring segments of the market that aren’t likely to buy from you. Like an insightful and intuitive spouse who knows exactly what to get their significant other for his or her birthday, such behavior is a good look for any business.

Context and Synergy

Further, using data about your customers allows you to personalize every exchange at every touchpoint. Safe provisioning measures, easy opt-out procedures and consent flags allow you to stay compliant with the California Consumer Privacy Act and General Data Protection Regulation. Tailoring content to customers through segmentation can pay dividends by aligning your marketing to customer preferences, giving them what they want on the channel they want. These preferences can be explicit or implicit, that is to say stated preference or revealed preference. A customer’s declared favorite brand is explicit as opposed to something teased out by examining, say, their page clicks.

Additionally, CDP allows you to contextualize every customer interaction. Having insight such as a customer’s engagement score or lifetime value allows greater connectivity between marketing, sales and service. Once you put that data to use across a messaging or advertising platform, it can begin working for you. Making use of loyalty information — membership status, point balances, ect. — across platforms will allow you to tap into marketing and advertising segments like never before.

CDP connects easily with the plethora of Salesforce apps like Tableau and Datorama (currently known as MC Intelligence), allowing you to gain insight synergistically. Our team can help set up and connect CDP, ensuring you garner the insight most relevant to your business. Make the most out of the best source of truth about customers.

Sneak a peek at the diary with Customer Data Platform.