What are the core capabilities of this technology? First up, CDPs support data aggregation, giving you a better and more unified view of your (prospective) customers. Second, they help you unify multiple data sources through a single ID manager, thereby facilitating ID resolution and management. Third, CDPs help you understand how customers act on different channels and thus enable you to predict consumer behavior. Finally, CDPs support customer activation. They’re first-party data tools that focus on making sense of different data sources, while executing effortless activation. 

Essentially, CDPs can help you diversify your brand’s targeting strategies and reach audiences at scale, all by leveraging your first-party data. If you ask our Associate Director of Customer Data Elia Niboldi, first-party data is your most valuable asset, not only because it’s durable and exclusive to your company, but also because it will be central to any future targeting strategy—and Customer Data Platforms are here to help you leverage this data. Niboldi sat down with Ian Curd, Global Consumer Data Director at Diageo, Martin Kihn, SVP Strategy, Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, Jackie Rousseau-Anderson, Chief Customer Officer at BlueConic, and Chris Thomson, Account Director, Strategic Finance Accounts at Treasure Data, to talk all things CDPs and why now is the time to dive into this complex technology.

CDPs are hot and happening, but what exactly is their purpose? Following Gartner’s definition, “a customer data platform is a marketing technology that unifies a company’s customer data from marketing and other channels to enable customer modeling and to optimize the timing and targeting of messages and offers.” There are three types, all of which aim to drive efficiency: “collection” CDPs, which primarily aggregate existing first-party profile data; “resolution” CDPs, which compress owned first-party profile data; and “activation” CDPs, which generate new first-party profile data. You get the gist, this marketing technology focuses on using first-party data. 

Considering the rising demand to harness the power of customer data, my team at Media.Monks and I continue to expand our CDP offering. Whether you’re working to become a data-driven organization or looking to enhance personalization, we’re here to help you set up the right platform. 

Tackling this topic through our CDP Evaluation Framework. 

We tell every brand we collaborate with to ask themselves: “What is the best CDP for us?” Companies, like people, do not live in a vacuum and should therefore make sure to account for every variable. However, not everyone knows this—since CDPs are relatively new to the scene, there’s still a lot of uncertainty in approaching this topic. Before joining forces with our team, many of our partners initially tried to go about it on their own, only to realize how complicated it is to juggle all the different vendors involved. With hundreds of platforms claiming to be a CDP, there’s an ongoing debate about what constitutes this technology, which explains why choosing the right one is not an easy feat. 

So, where to begin? First of all, we sit down with our partner and determine what exactly they’re hoping to achieve with a customer data platform. Many companies nowadays are looking to replace their Data Management Platforms (DMPs) and leverage their first-party data in driving efficiency, keeping in mind the upcoming third-party cookie deprecation. From here on, we focus on activating the user profile and picking the right tool. While both are really important, brands tend to struggle with these steps.  

This brings us back to the complex task of choosing the best CDP for your company. To smoothen and simplify the process, we’ve developed a CDP Evaluation Framework. As a strategic partner across data, media and content, we can demonstrate to brands how a specific CDP will drive value to their business. Our CDP offering consists of different phases. First, we conduct a tool assessment to understand what data you have and how it is managed. Then, we organize a discovery workshop to understand your digital strategy, define pain points and challenges, and identify digital objectives and business requirements. Hereafter, we focus on use case design. During this phase, we assess the feasibility of certain use cases based on your organization’s digital strategy and insights gathered in the discovery workshop. Finally, we recommend the right CDP for your business and, if requested, design a 12-month timeline, roadmap and activation playbook. 

Tapping into new capabilities. 

The Customer Data Platform is a hot new topic in the digital space—and for good reason, as it unlocks a number of capabilities. First of all, by creating a rich user profile, companies gain a better and more unified overview of their existing and prospective customers. In working with our partners, our main objective is to break down silos in information and data between different departments, making sure every team across the organization has a complete understanding of their users. 

Secondly, CDPs are first-party data tools that focus on deciphering different data sources in order to execute effortless activation. Such a strong first-party data strategy is increasingly necessary considering the upcoming third-party cookie deprecation, and thus helps future-proof your business. Thirdly, the centralization of user data enables companies to set up the customer journey across channels in a way that they can speak to existing and potential customers with the same tone of voice. This, in turn, makes customer communication more efficient and easier to evaluate. On top of that, leveraging user data is crucial because it helps companies predict future customer behaviors. 

Team up with an external partner to maximize your CDP’s value. 

The benefits of CDPs may be loud and clear, but actually achieving them can be quite challenging—and typically requires the support of a strong external partner. Over time, we have seen several companies pick the wrong CDP, which can reduce the ROI of the platform and, even worse, result in a loss. For example, one company came to us with the question why their CDP was not delivering the promised value. After evaluating the martech stack, we were able to conclude that they were, in fact, not getting the full value out of their CDP—because they were using the wrong CDP for their business, which was lacking certain necessary features to realize their goals. Consequently, this limited the total value that they could have derived from their first-party data. 

While some brands believe that setting up a CDP is a hop, skip and a jump into major success, our experience tells us otherwise. Bridging data sources through CDPs is just the beginning; when bringing data together in one place, the main challenge is to make sure that all the different departments work together on each activation. Interestingly, one of the main ways to achieve this is by working with an external party. This reduces the chances of attrition within an organization, as the external party is not biased and thus capable of driving activations that benefit every team within a company. 

Breaking down silos with first-party data. 

In short, setting up a CDP involves all departments and thus requires buy-in from many different people across a company. As a CDP necessitates cooperation between different teams, it’s both a technical and organizational tool that can help break down silos within an organization. While this can be challenging, we’re here to help you tackle this head-on and harness the power of first-party data.

Want to learn more? Get in touch or sign up for our virtual event “Data for Breakfast” on December 1st, where we’ll talk all things CDP. We’re looking forward to meeting you there.

In the latest episode of In a Monk’s Opinion, our SVP, Global Performance and Enterprise eCommerce Kashif Zafar sits down with special guest Holly Elliot, VP Growth Marketing at Hatch, and fellow Monks Robbie Wiedie, VP Creative Services, and Jackie Andreetta, Associate Director of eCommerce, to discuss the smart-sleeping giant’s approach to marketing and advertising and their most recent strategic decisions. Furthermore, they talk about Hatch’s partnership with Media.Monks, the value of starting a creative mission with data, the importance of keeping track of trends and meeting customers where they are, and why advertisers shouldn’t miss out on Amazon. The golden thread? Whatever you do, always test and learn. 

In case you missed it—you can watch the full conversation below.

Hatch has had creative consistency and an unquestionable brand ethos since day one, which was instantly clear to Holly when she joined the team in 2021. As any growth marketer knows, starting a new role shortly before Q4 can be quite intense, but luckily she was given a warm and well-branded welcome. However, in preparing the marketing and advertising for the upcoming holiday season, Holly discovered two gaps: channels were optimized in silos and creative work was conducted based on campaigns rather than evergreen performance—in short, nothing that Media.Monks can’t solve.  

Acting as an extension of Hatch’s creative team, our main task was to make memorable content that could also perform, keeping in mind the company’s paid efforts. “We like to think of performance creative as fuel for the media engine,” says Robbie. The secret to success is starting with the data. So, our team first looked at the performance data on all the creative work to date, and then took existing assets, learned to speak the brand language, and created iterations of the top performers. Through a post-production-only methodology, our team repurposed existing creative assets into channel-specific iterations in a fast and efficient way—with the first social ads going live within a couple of weeks, before moving on to user-generated content and larger campaign stories. “We often say data is our creative director and this really holds true,” says Robbie, noting the role that insights can play in refining creative ideas.

While Hatch’s internal creative team primarily works on brand marketing, Media.Monks focuses on the performance part. “The speed at which we work with Media.Monks is so essential,” says Holly. “We’re able to test content on new platforms very quickly, which we couldn’t have done on our own.” On top of that, media learnings make the process seamless. This is crucial, as the health and wellness brand plans to focus on media diversification even more in the future. “It’s all about making sure you find new places to reach people,” says Holly, to which Robbie adds: “And that it’s based on the learnings, because you can’t argue with data.” Curious to hear what else the future of Hatch will hold, and how the brand readies itself for the upcoming holiday season? Take a look at the video above to find out more.

The discussion featured leadership from both regional and world-leading brands, who each discussed their unique relationships with data. From building a more holistic understanding of the customer journey to enabling more impactful personalization and experiences and more, each speaker across four segments revealed their success stories in activating data. You can watch the full event here, or find key insights from speakers below.

Data-Driven Marketing Should Enhance the Customer Experience

It’s easy to feel lost with acclimating to recent (or upcoming) changes in privacy and data collection. As marketers navigate a privacy landscape transformed by new features in iOS 14, the cookie apocalypse and more, a good rule of thumb is to focus your data-driven marketing strategy on enhancing the customer experience.

“The goal is to take as much data as you can that makes your experience better and helps you truly understand the customer,” says Erin Levzow, Vice President of Marketing Technology at Del Taco Restaurants. She opened her fireside chat by drawing a distinction between what kinds of experiences make personalization more meaningful in the minds of consumers versus strategies like relentless retargeting that simply creep people out. “When it’s done well, that’s great—but when a brand knows I just bought an end table and offers me another end table, it doesn’t feel very personalized.”

By zeroing in on value for the customer instead, brands set themselves up to capture the first-party data that is so crucial to building relationships with consumers today. “One thing we've benefitted from around the strength of our loyalty program is that so many of our customers are willing to uniquely identify themselves across channels to take advantage of our benefits,” says Holly Waisanen-Hatipoglu, Vice President of Loyalty Performance Management at Marriott International. “That's made it easier for us to at a minimum have some kind of customer ID that goes across multiple platforms.”

A customer-centric focus can also help unpack which metrics hold value to your brand and how to interpret them. Levzow detailed how for a quick-service restaurant like Del Taco, a lot of time spent on the website isn’t the good signal it may mean for other businesses. “Customers are looking for information fast—what on my website do I want them to spend time doing?” she says. “They’re looking for things like nearby locations, so if they’re spending a lot of time on the website, then I should be concerned. We absolutely look at numbers differently.”

Take a Holistic Approach to Measuring Across the Customer Journey

A recurring topic of conversation throughout the day was the role that data plays in reaching audiences where they’re at, then using those insights to accurately pinpoint where you should invest your spend. Chris Marino, Global Head of Performance Marketing & Media at Bloomberg Media, drew on his experience of driving consumer subscriptions—a process that entails reaching audiences offsite, whether through social, search, OTT media and more.

“I’m very passionate about making the right levels of investment in upper and mid-funnel marketing initiatives, knowing that that’s where the opportunity and scale really exists to drive consideration—then ultimately using that scale, content and insights to bring someone down the funnel and drive a really efficient conversion,” says Marino. Subscriptions to Bloomberg Media grew by 34% in the first half of the year, reaching more than 325,000.

Advocating for building a more holistic understanding of the customer journey, Marino cautioned against taking a last-touchpoint approach to measurement. When it comes to assessing media spend, for example, your Google Analytics reporting may give a lot of credit to the role your website plays in driving conversions. But basing decisions on that information alone loses sight of the influences that consumers have engaged with on the path to get there.

“If it takes them five or more touchpoints to become a paid subscriber, if we were to only think about things on a last-touch basis, we might limit investments that bring customers through the funnel,” Marino says. So, how do you get out of that last-touch mindset? “Stop thinking about channel attribution and what we as an individual have contributed and start thinking about how we as marketers all come together to create the most optimal customer experience,” he says.

Align Data and Content Creation for Marketing at Scale

Of course, data plays an important role in identifying and understanding new user behaviors. Canva, a platform that makes it easy to design graphics, presentations, documents and more, saw a large uptick in adoption from educators last year as learning migrated online. Noticing this trend, the Canva team designed templates to help teachers quickly and easily design their own worksheets.

While it’s clear data can signal the need for new product features, that same user data generated in the platform can also inform marketing content to further fuel growth. "Marketing is on the front lines of testing and learning about customers,” says Sunil Subhedar, Global Head of Growth at Canva.

He spoke on the importance of having an AI-based recommendation engine built into digital products, noting that the very same technology can power marketing performance. When users begin a new project on Canva, for example, they’re met with popular templates to get started. Canva depicts these same popular templates in marketing materials, which show prospective users what others are building through the platform’s ease of use.

While this approach is effective, many brands will rely on a skilled partner to execute at scale. “To scale the amount of content would require an army of people,” says Subhedar. “So there is an opportunity to partner with an agency to build this complementary service and fuel global creative using a template brand toolkit and a way of disseminating that across different languages and markets.” It’s a challenge that we enjoy, weaving data insights and production together to power marketing at speed and scale for audiences all over the world.

There’s lots of ways you can use data to power marketing and performance. Whether it’s better understanding segments of your audiences and their needs, gaining a 360-degree view of the customer decision journey or integrating artificial intelligence into the creative process, data-driven marketing at scale doesn’t have to be the scary prospect that it may seem. In fact, heeding the advice shared during the Brand Innovators event is an excellent way of preparing yourself ahead of time for new policies and shifting consumer attitudes toward privacy—and that’s an insight you can count on.