The top 10 CDP use cases to drive business growth
Many businesses are sitting on a gold mine of rich, valuable customer data. They know how much their customers are willing to spend, when and where they tend to engage, category/item preferences, and so on. If you want to know more about your customer, that data is likely there. Well, it’s likely somewhere.
A common theme we see is that this gold mine is scattered across various sources. This translates to messy and disorganized pools of data, making it a challenge for marketing teams to harness its full potential.
In the worst-case scenario, it could render the data virtually useless. You can have a world-class marketing team, but if they’re not optimally making use of customer data, their innovative marketing strategies can only go so far (and its results will reflect that, too).
Enter Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). According to CDP.com, a customer data platform (CDP) is “a customer data management solution that consists of a centralized database that can ingest, integrate, manage, and deliver customer data to other technology solutions to personalize the customer experience (CX).”
A CDP can function as a full-service tool for your marketing and data needs. You can create personalized experiences, streamline your marketing processes, and drive more customer engagement, ultimately resulting in business growth. Because of that, having a CDP in your marketing tech stack is becoming increasingly important — or, arguably, necessary.
The business benefits of using Snowflake and a CDP
Marketing and data teams alike rely on cloud data platforms like Snowflake to help unify and access their real-time, first-party customer data. “There’s been a significant shift in the industry over the past few years when it comes to collecting, storing, and activating data,” says Jim Warner, FCTO for Marketing at Snowflake.
“It only continues to evolve as budgets shrink, privacy and data laws tighten, and more and more enterprise data and marketing teams realize that using a cloud data platform can break down data silos, keeping their data clean, accessible, and ready to use.”
Customers using a cloud data platform have seen many benefits and increased ROI within their data-driven business and marketing strategies over those who don’t.
Vimeo, for example, analyzes billions of streaming CDN events per day with Snowflake, enabling millions of dollars in revenue by identifying enterprise customers who require additional bandwidth.
CDPs like Simon that are built on top of Snowflake extend this benefit even further by empowering marketers to use and activate this data within their marketing campaigns and overarching strategies.
In Vimeo’s case, the company has been able to leverage enriched marketing data to minimize customer acquisition costs, and they saw a 300% increase in trial conversions once they implemented the Simon CDP on top of Snowflake.
Here are some of the primary benefits of using a cloud data platform and CDP within your business.
1. Unified customer view (Customer 360)
CDPs provide marketers with a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their customers sourced from different touchpoints and channels. With a unified customer view, marketers will have holistic visibility into their customers’ preferences, behaviors, and interactions across channels.
This single customer view not only enables marketers to make informed decisions and targeted marketing strategies but also supports the remaining use cases in this article.
2. Improved segmentation
With a centralized point for all customer data, marketers can take audience segmentation to the next level. A CDP will allow you to create audiences (as granular as you want them to be) that stay up-to-date while the tool continues to ingest from the scattered data sources.
You can identify high-value, at-risk, engaged, or unengaged customers — the possibilities are endless if the data is available. The cherry on top: marketers can do it directly in the platform without involving a data engineer.
3. Advanced personalization for the customer experience
Similar to how CDPs can improve the way you segment, this essential MarTech tool can also enhance personalization across multiple channels. You’ll have access to accurate and fresh customer data for marketing purposes.
Knowing that a user recently browsed your website and clicked on certain products is valuable, real-time information. Use that to trigger an abandon browse campaign displaying the product they were browsing for.
With a CDP, you can personalize content to deliver the most relevant message on the right channel at the right time.
4. Understanding and optimizing the full customer journey
The unification of all customer data in one platform means getting visibility into the full customer journey. You can see when a user browsed your website, downloaded the app, favorited items, opened the chat, and more.
By identifying each customer touchpoint, you’ll understand how, when, and where your customers interact with your business every step of the way. Leverage these insights to message your customer at the right time and place, ultimately resulting in increased conversion rates and lower acquisition costs.
5. Automate cross-channel marketing
It’s the digital age, and noise is everywhere. Reaching your customer at just one touchpoint or channel won’t drive results. CDPs that are built on cloud data platforms go beyond data unification and provide features that enable marketers to do cross-channel marketing.
With Simon Data, for example, you can orchestrate customer journeys that are as complex or as simple as you want. In these journeys, you can send communications or sync custom audiences to the desired end channels through robust integrations.
A welcome journey can be sent through email and SMS, while your win-back campaigns can be sent through email, SMS, Facebook, and TikTok. Once the campaigns are live, you can sit back and watch the numbers to see where experimenting and optimizing can be done.
6. Data governance and compliance
By now, you should be aware of what the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is.The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) followed shortly in the United States, with more regulations to come globally.
These new laws have set a precedent as to how businesses should handle customer data – correctly, respectfully, and with care. Beyond marketing benefits, unifying data allows your team to manage data more easily from a legal perspective.
Consent regulations vary, but you’ll be able to ensure the right rules are applied to the right segment with a CDP (e.g., European customers are tagged for GDPR).
7. Optimize operational efficiencies
We’ve seen customers with marketing teams that previously relied on their data team to pull customer information and segments before using Simon Data.
We’ve also seen the customer experience team pull customer data from various sources through manual, time-consuming work. With centralized data in a CDP, you can automate data processes for cross-functional teams.
The tool becomes a one-stop shop for marketing, data, and CX teams alike, which can streamline their workflows and improve the customer experience. In turn, your team’s time is freed up, enabling them to do more things that can drive revenue for your business.
8. Predict customer behavior
Marketers and data teams can spend a lot of time — perhaps too much, at times — analyzing data for segmentation purposes. This is where a CDP helps these teams shine. CDPs use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to leverage historical and present data for predictions.
Examples include predicting churn or making product recommendations. Not only does this streamline internal workflows, but these predictive insights drive business growth and customer engagement.
9. Identity resolution
Customers interact with businesses across multiple channels and devices leading to fragmented data points. A CDP can offer identity resolution, allowing businesses to reconcile disparate customer profiles to create that customer 360.
By accurately linking customer identities across touchpoints, you’re improving personalized campaigns which will drive better results and increase campaign conversions.
10. Increase ROI
Each use case, such as improved segmentation and enhanced personalization, all funnels up to one overarching goal: Return On Investment (ROI). The overarching goal of implementing a CDP is to drive tangible business outcomes and maximize the return on marketing investments.
By harnessing the power of unified customer data, you can optimize marketing and data efforts, improve customer experiences, and drive revenue growth.
Conclusion
A CDP built on Snowflake is a tool that will help your business drive revenue by using your most treasured asset: customer data. The heart of a successful marketing strategy stems from a deep understanding of your customers based on the data you’ve collected.
Without a central repository for this data, truly comprehending your customers' behavior and effectively leveraging their data can be challenging for marketing and data teams.
Whether or not you currently have a CDP, we encourage you to explore the potential of this tool. There are different types of CDPs, but each one has the same goal: unifying customer data. This has a positive downstream impact for many teams involved and can only be a beneficial addition to your tech stack.
If you’re in the market for a CDP, use our 2024 CDP Buyer’s Guide to assist you with the evaluation and our Improve Your CDP RFP Process to ensure you’re optimizing the search process.
