What Is a Customer Data Platform?
The concept of a consumer data platform first emerged in 2013 in a blog post by marketing technology expert David Rabb. He describes the software as bringing marketing automation to a single central point, rather than aggregating data from a variety of data sources.
“These systems gather customer data from multiple sources, combine information related to the same individuals, perform predictive analytics on the resulting database, and use the results to guide marketing treatments across multiple channels,” Rabb writes. “This differs quite radically from standard marketing automation systems, which use databases built elsewhere and move customers elsewhere.”
Rabb adds that these “customer data platforms offer integrated predictive modeling and complement rather than compete” with existing approaches such as marketing automation.
The concept — exemplified by tools such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Adobe’s Real-Time CDP — has evolved in the marketplace and has gained currency as concerns about data security and compliance arise from data breaches, events such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and compliance with laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These factors have made centralized approaches to data management more attractive to marketers, according to Katie Linford, a principal analyst for Forrester.
“Marketing has never had a tool like a CDP before,” Linford says. “One of its core capabilities is to modify customer data and edit the customer record, not just for the data that marketing uses but also for the core source of truth regarding customer data. And this tool has been built for marketing.”
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