To CDP or Not to CDP?
Five ways to unify disconnected data
across the business into a Single Customer View
Connecting Marketers with Customers
Introduction Page 3
The Rise of the ‘Customer Data Platform’ (CDP) – the new way? Page 4
To CDP or Not to CDP? Page 6
1. Building a Marketing Database Internally Page 7
2. Employ a 3rd Party Marketing Solutions Provider (MSP) or Data Bureau Page 8
3. A Data Warehouse Page 9
4. Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) Application Page 10
5. A Customer Data Platform Page 11
Choosing the Data Unification Solution that Works For You Page 12
About BlueVenn Page 13
Introduction
To achieve accurate and effective personalization across multiple channels, about, built and rebuilt in search of the elusive Single Customer View – a
devices and customer touchpoints, Marketers need access to all the available clean and de-duplicated database that pulls data from all these systems and
data that is generated from fragmented sources across the business. departments to create one ‘Golden Record’ for every customer.
Execution platforms, CRM technologies and operational databases all collect
valuable data but it is not always usable without complex queries, a reliance
on IT or third parties, or manual data wrangling that takes too much time to
scale personalization tactics.
Over time databases, data marts, and customer databases have been talked
Benefits of a Single Customer View In this eBook
we will look at various ways
• Full access to optimized data and no reliance on IT or third parties Marketers can unify data to
• Better insights using trustworthy, holistic data achieve a Single Customer
View, from working with
• Improved segmentation and targeting of campaign audiences marketing solution providers
• Enhanced personalization tactics using all data touchpoints or data bureaus to an
investment in a “marketer-
• Better attribution and intelligence of online & offline marketing controlled” Customer Data
• Lawful data processing and governance of customer permissions Platform.
• Clear view of campaigns and channels that work or don’t work
Page 3
The Rise of the ‘Customer Data Platform’ (CDP) – the new way?
In 2016, the Customer Data Platform Institute was created by founder David Raab, which brings together a
collection of Customer Data Platform vendors who offer ways for marketing (and indeed other departments
where customer data is paramount), to achieve a Single Customer View. The Institute’s definition of a
Customer Data Platform is “packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is
accessible to other systems."
“
Raab states that the definition has three critical elements to be considered a true CDP:
"Packaged Software": The CDP is a prebuilt system that is configured to meet the needs of each client. A CDP is
Some technical resources will be required to set up and maintain the CDP, but it does not require the packaged
level of technical skill of a typical data warehouse project. This reduces the time, cost, and risk and gives software that
business users more control over the system, even though they may still need some technical assistance.
creates a
“
persistent,
"Creates a Persistent, Unified Customer Database": The CDP creates a comprehensive view of each unified customer
customer by capturing data from multiple systems, linking information related to the same customer, database that is
and storing the information to track behavior over time. The CDP contains personal identifiers used to
accessible to
target marketing messages and track individual-level marketing results.
other systems.
"Accessible to Other Systems": Data stored in the CDP can be used by other systems for analysis, and to
manage customer interactions consistently and accurately across all systems.
Page 4
Essentially, these CDP Institute definitions mean that a Customer Data For a technology offering that has only been in existence, apparently, since
Platform has the potential to provide a business with unified data and a 2013, the 52% that have deployed or actively using a CDP is a huge number.
Single Customer View that:
However, the article also pointed out that “among the organizations that have
A. Is a marketing-led initiative rather than IT-led. already deployed a CDP, 51% say that their CDP is their CRM system.”
B. Is ‘software’ that marketers can use and access rather than a black box of The reality of CDP adoption in the marketplace is probably somewhat lower
clever scripts and routines that marketing cannot access. therefore.
C. Is ‘persistent’ which means the data, and any historical changes, are fully It also points towards confusion around what a CDP actually does, and
accessible and never archived or summarized. doesn’t do.
D. Is ‘accessible to other systems’, which means that you can plug into your For further information, and clarification, of what a CDP does or doesn’t do,
marketing automation, email, BI, CRM, or any other tool, to use the you should download the Marketer’s Guide to Customer Data Platforms at
‘Golden Record’ for more personalized and targeted marketing. www.bluevenn.com/cdp-guide
Do you have a CDP already? Ecommerce
POS
Customer Data Platforms are relatively new to the marketing technology
ecosystem and therefore, as with any new technology bucket, there is Website Behavior and Analytics
widespread confusion over what a CDP actually does.
Customer Complaints and Feedback
A recent Gartner survey to 504 marketing leaders called “Distilling Marketer
Adoption, Views and Misperceptions of Customer Data Platforms”, showed that Mobile App
52% reported a full deployment and active use of a CDP already, and 26%
were in the process of deploying a CDP.
Page 5
To CDP or Not to CDP?
Despite the widespread popularity of Customer Data Platforms right now, multi-
channel organizations have, in reality, been attempting to create a Single
Customer View ever since the dawn of database marketing.
The term “Customer Data Platform” was actually only coined in 2013 by David
Raab, and therefore is not the only way to get to the elusive “Single Customer
View”.
For the rest of this eBook we’ll look at five different methods that organizations
invest in to unify their data. These all have their merits and deficiencies on the
path to a Single Customer View, but to make the best choice for your business
it’s worth taking the time to evaluate the best method that fits the culture,
vision and capabilities of your organization.
The ultimate decision about where to invest your marketing dollar,
needs to be focused on three important factors:
1. What is the available budget and talent in the business?
2. What are the time constraints for needing to unify our data?
3. What is the implication of not undertaking this project?
Page 6
1. Building a Marketing Database Internally
Ask anyone that has undertaken a Single Customer View project themselves So to make an informed choice about whether to build in-house, you should
and they would generally advise that you don’t attempt to build one yourself! assess your business strategy, available resources, marketing capabilities
It is not uncommon for companies to start down this route and ten years and time-to-market requirements.
later still not have a finished solution.
Pros Cons
Internal projects put a strain on resources and often can fall by the wayside
unless managed effectively, and implemented by a dedicated, full-time team. Your marketing database, matching × You’re not accessing best practise or
and blending rules will be 100% benefitting from continual updates
Particularly when it comes to data unification and the building of a built and tailored for your business. or improvements that expert
marketing database, it requires expensive, skilled coders, and should not be vendors offer.
attempted unless you have skilled people that have been through the You’ll have full control over all costs × You need to factor in costs of
and a guarantee of no inflexible maintenance, hardware, hosting
process before, and understand the potential pitfalls.
hidden costs. and improvements which can
sometimes be an unknown. Building
That being said, to own your own Single Customer View, which is unique to one and not maintaining it is an
the business and could therefore give you a competitive advantage over exercise fraught with danger.
others that cannot buy the same capabilities quickly or easily, could be You’ll have full ownership of the × Huge drain on internal resources
profound! source code and intellectual and many companies never finish.
property of your SCV.
You’ll also have full control over the expenditure, and be able to make fast You can create your own product × Big risk of technology becoming
modifications that a packaged or pre-built solution might not give. You have roadmap, timeframes and vision. obsolete. And what happens if the
You’re in control! people that built it leave? Don’t let it
full control over the speed and delivery of your own product roadmap as
become another data silo in ten
well. years!
Page 7
2. Employ a 3rd Party Marketing Solutions Provider (MSP) or Data Bureau
MSP’s, Data Bureaus, database providers etc., are organizations
that have many years of experience cleaning, de-duplicating and
Pros Cons unifying data. This is the traditional way to join data from many
fragmented systems, using teams of SQL experts. These
Database companies will have × An expensive and costly way of businesses will lease you access to a marketing database, and will
tried and tested methods, means unifying your data due to the
do the dirty work of connecting data feeds to it to create your
and templates to ensure your data complexity and business model of
is unified effectively in a relatively the MSP or data bureau. Single Customer View.
short amount of time.
They are highly experienced and therefore bring a lot of skills with
Much less time-consuming than × You do not always have direct
unifying data yourself. access to your data, and will often them and the assurance that they’ve done it many times before.
need 3rd party software to make You will almost certainly achieve the desired outcome, and there is
the data usable in your marketing
execution or analysis systems.
plenty of choice of MSPs or data bureaus to choose from (some
more accomplished than others).
× You are unable to make changes
down the road yourself, and any
Some of the drawbacks are usually around the time to build the
customisations will incur
considerable services charges. database, which adds cost, and you will normally find that your
business never takes ownership of the Intellectual Property of the
investment. Typically, an investment here can be way in excess of
$100,000 so ownership can be a thorny issue that needs checking
with any 3rd party database developer.
Page 8
3. A Data Warehouse
A data warehouse will take and store high volumes of
Pros Cons
structured and unstructured data from every department
Your data is stored in one centralized × Data warehouses aren’t built with
of your business and put it into one centralized location. location. marketers in mind. They are an IT led
initiative, and do not accommodate needs
However, the data will not go through the Single such as deduplication, real-time triggers or
Customer View process of cleansing and de-duplication. unified customer profiles.
Data retrieval time is fast and good for × Marketers may need to prepare their data
The data will also be refreshed at intervals that do not analyzing data. before it is loaded into a data warehouse,
necessarily work for marketers that are continually often resulting in latency and efficiency
issues.
moving more real-time. Your needs as a marketer will be
balanced with the needs of other departments, and the They often work in conjunction with CRM × Marketers still need to rely heavily on the
systems and various other technologies IT department. This often results in
need to trigger real-time campaigns may not be part of within your stack. frustration and missed marketing
the requirements for a data warehouse, which will usually opportunities due to the lack of access to
be an IT-led initiative. clean customer data. Remember that an
SCV investment is usually to move away
from a reliance on IT!
Although a data warehouse has profound benefits to any
business that wants to start making decisions based upon × Over their lifetime data warehouses are
likely to incur high costs due to the fact
data and insights, the data warehouse is not, in the truest that they are really designed to consume
sense of the words, a Single Customer View…and never lots of data. More data = more cost and
will be. other departments creating masses of
data could create limitations on marketing
data sources and the size or persistence of
the data.
Page 9
4. Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)
Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) is perhaps more of a process than
a solution to data unification and we considered how well it fitted into
this eBook, but we feel it has a place. An automated ETL tool extracts
the data found within a system, transforms the data based on rules,
and then loads it back in to the system in its new state, or pushes it to
Pros Cons another system.
An effective, real-time way of × ETL tools do not usually provide This is essentially automating a manual process that almost every
organizing the customer data insight to your unified data. database marketer will have faced before. Exporting data from one
within your silos. system, working with the data in another tool to clean or enhance the
Automates manual processes of × Your customer data will still reside data, and then importing it back into the system, or another is the
exporting, importing and data over various disparate systems
wrangling across multiple and you won’t have a single source
manual process of ETL. Most marketers reading this eBook will be
platforms and systems. of truth. familiar with the need to export and import data between systems.
An ETL tool, as well as automating this process, can create a flow of
data in the business that is highly beneficial.
What it does not do however is create a single persistent database
where the data resides – often referred to as a ‘single source of truth’,
but often works in cooperation with a Data Warehouse or data mart.
In essence therefore, it does not create a Single Customer View, but
still has profound efficiency benefits for companies that are manually
managing data between systems.
Page 10
5. A Customer Data Platform
The CDP offers a hybrid of self-unifying your data as well as using Pros Cons
a database company. Marketers have control to load data feeds,
manage the systems and manipulate the CDP software, but also CDPs are marketer-controlled which × Due to its infancy there are many
benefit from having a vendor, and their support, when its needed. means they no longer rely on 3rd pretenders within the CDP market
parties or the IT department. It and some platforms falsely purport
The Customer Data Platform is therefore a popular option provides empowerment to work to be CDPs. Therefore it’s important
amongst D.I.Y. marketers in the modern age. with data knowing that it’s to do your due diligence.
trustworthy and complete.
With a CDP you take full control of your unified data and can plug
and play with modern systems. It can take the role of an ETL tool Alongside unifying customer data × A CDP sounds great but sometimes
whilst also providing the single source of truth and a persistent from disparate, fragmented data is not enough on its own. Find out
sources, CDPs help to analyze what ‘out-of-the-box’ integrations
database that the business can rely on. customer interactions, build exist already, and how ‘marketer-
segments and futureproof the friendly’ it really is!
As a packaged software solution, many CDPs give marketers the business for when new emerging
ability to unify their data into a Single Customer View, providing channels are found.
them with a 360, holistic understanding of each customer. Less expensive than other forms of × Construction and maintenance can
data unification and creates a true be costly if not planned correctly.
As shown at the start of this eBook however, the CDP market is yet Single Customer View. Don’t rush into a CDP project
to hit full maturity and the current group of CDP vendors are a expecting results instantly. This is
plumbing rather than your lovely
motley group of technology companies that, when you look under shiny, new shower. (But remember
the hood, come from very different backgrounds. Due diligence it will make you have an awesome
power shower when done right!)
against a clear set of requirements is therefore advised.
Page 11
Choosing the Data Unification Solution that Works For You
Matching, merging and joining disparate datasets is a process that is complex and fraught with
danger, but has profound impacts for marketing. As one BlueVenn customer so eloquently says,
“the Single Customer View is fundamental and I don’t know how you can run a business without one.”
However, as data proliferates with the advancement of digital channels, more organizations are
now opting to unify their many data sources in search of their own Single Customer View. CDP’s
are popular due to being marketer-controlled, and more accessible than traditional methods, but
as you’ve read, is not necessarily the only way to go!
Whichever method of data unification you choose, it’s worth balancing the Pros and Cons to
decide which solution is right for the business, and to do careful due diligence across five key
areas of your business that should impact your decision:
1. Data – Evaluate the data that resides in the business, where it sits and how to access it.
2. People – Evaluate the skills, capabilities and potential knowledge gaps in your business.
3. Culture – Ensure that the culture of the business won’t be a blocker to a major project like this.
4. Technology – Do a full analysis of technology already used (including technologies used by
teams outside of marketing.)
5. Process – Consider the full end-to-end processes that will be fixed by your chosen data
unification solution.
Page 12
About BlueVenn
BlueVenn is the award-winning Customer Data Platform and Omnichannel
Marketing Hub for enterprise marketers to unify their customer data into a Connecting Marketers with Customers
Single Customer View, and coordinate consistent, integrated and personalized
campaigns through every marketing channel.
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