How to use a Live Blog for real-time audience interaction

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A Live Blog is an instant attention-grabbing tool that empowers brands to generate real-time engagement. Here’s how some companies are using it to establish a deeper connection with their audience.

High-quality content is more important now than it has ever been.

Digitized and multi-connected, today’s audiences pay immense attention to content that can answer their questions and help them decide if a product or service is right for them. There is no denying that content is a vital part of the continuously-important customer experience.

Still, with so much competition and information running wild at all times, cutting through the noise might be challenging.

With the present moment changing so drastically in such a short period, you surely want to implement the most effective solutions to increase engagement and make your consumers loyal.

But how can you stand out from the crowd and generate immediate engagement with such an imperative audience?

I’m sure you have asked yourself this question a few times through the years.

Thankfully, this article is all about an extraordinary tool that customers are growing overly fond of and are already expecting your company to have: a Live Blog. 

Here, you will find how companies are using Live Blogs to generate relevant content and connect with a real-time audience—and why you shouldn’t wait to do the same.

#Subscribe and stay on top of the news on our blog

Why a real-time audience matters

Customers are always on. Given the newness of technology and innovation, they have all the tools to remain connected nonstop and wish to consume reliable information that leads them to make better decisions. The faster, the better.

Timing is essential in any marketing tactic these days. A message or campaign will only be compelling when it gets to customers exactly when they need it.

Many professionals work day and night to assess customer data and come up with exciting content alternatives that arrive sharply on-time. Those who are succeeding already know it: Live content is a gold mine and engages audiences as few things can.

Live content meets consumers’ expectations perfectly because it empowers them to be part of a real-time experience. It promotes instant debates people can get involved with, combining timing and appropriate messages to create a matchless customer experience.

In this scenario, marketers are growing aware of Live Blogs and how to use them to attract their audiences and enhance customer engagement.

How are companies using Live Blogs?

Dynamic and extremely interactive, a Live Blog allows brands to bring different post formats and sources together to deliver real-time content for an instant audience. 

Live Blogs support several types of content, such as videos, audios, texts, social media posts, and more, to shape a diverse and more interactional feed.

By liveblogging, you can post regular updates of an important event that’s taking place in your field and keep your readers updated on the latest news. 

More than that, you can live meaningful stream events that interest your followers, providing them with exclusive coverage. This is way more interesting than writing about an event only after it happened and makes users spend more time on your pages instead of digesting information on Twitter or Facebook.

Giving audiences a multimedia content and narrative experience is already paying off to companies that embraced Live Blog and made it a decisive piece of their marketing communication.

We have already written about how Arena customers are using a successful Live Blog engagement strategy and revolutionizing their content. This time though, you will find a few examples to inspire you to use a Live Blog and catch real-time audience’s attention.

Winter came, and everybody watched: Game of Thrones Live Blog

Game of Thrones’ fans has always been head-over-heels for the show. 

Considering that 87% of consumers use a second screen while watching TV, giving these passionate fans the chance to follow a Live Blog that was updated as new episodes took place could only be a fantastic idea.

That was what RadioTimes did back in 2019, mixing Twitter posts, memes, soundtrack videos, and written texts to both updates and entertain its audience.

All posts were made by Huw Fullerton, a pop-culture reference that has been covering the biggest TV shows and movies for a while.

Huw was already known by the Radio Times readers, which made it easier to create connections and a sense of identification with their audience, that could cry and tremble about the episodes with someone they trusted in.

These details made Radio Times’ Game of Thrones Live Blog a success case.

Technology most giant reference: Apple Event Live Blog

With a frequently-refreshing Live Blog, Apple has allowed its customer base to get all the freshest iPhone news on its website for years. 

Not only does this take the brand closer to its niche audience, but it creates a phenomenal hype and turns the Apple Live Blog as the right place to go when customers want brand-new information.

Apple also often live streams special events to announce new products and upgraded features that create market awareness and indulge Apple fans in details they’re curious about.

However, one of the most critical and historic Apple events was the Worldwide Developers Conference 2020, which took place during the Coronavirus outbreak. 

Vehicles like The Verge even made a Live Blog of their own to debate the conference’s content and Tim Cook’s considerations about the company’s future.

Free access to political information: Debate Live Blog

Democratic debates are powerful attention-callers. People are always alert to listen to what politicians have to say, especially when they doubt whom to vote for or want a specialist’s opinion.

FiveThirtyEight is one of those websites that use liveblogging to provide readers with constant updates, so they know what goes down in debates and primaries.

FiveThirtyEight editors feed pages with texts, videos, and Twitter posts to comment on political debates. Meanwhile, the editors let users interact with intuitive graphics, polls, forecasts, and other easy-to-visualize content.

Let’s take the South Carolina Democratic Debate as an example. Notice how editors mix different contents in a timeline to give readers a broader view of the event:

It looks cool, doesn’t it? That’s one of the Live Blog advantages: To mix content and use it intelligently.

The show went on: The Voice Live Blog

NBC’s The Voice kept relevant even during the pandemic. Coaches and contenders changed the already familiar The Voice studio for their homes. GoldDerby commented on Season 18’s finale to engage readers with a broad, real-time Live Blog feeding.

The Voice Live Blog used a more straightforward format approach, posting only short texts to update its visitors. 

Still, live blogging was a smart way to promote GoldDerby’s online prediction program. Winning users got a special place in the Live Blog leaderboard, along with a $100 Amazon Card—see how Live Blog is generating engagement here?

GoldDerby also provided users with a commentary section so they could voice their thoughts on The Voice finale. This was essential to grant readers an exclusive place to comment on their favorite show and create a unique sense of community people don’t usually find on social media

Live Original Blog

Interactive content is very much like the future’s face: it brings people together and gives a human, personal touch that keeps them interested in what you have to say.

Through the years, Live Blogs have evolved and become fantastic channels for folks who watch live sports games, real-time protests, technology conferences, etc.

Despite that, Live Blogs can still do so much more.

For example, in fashion retail companies, Live Blogs can be used to cover special events that matter in the field, such as fashion runaways and even music festivals.

Covering noteworthy events might not only make your brand stand out from the competition, but it will also give you the chance to transform your content to smartly address your audiences’ concerns and point them in the right direction.

If you’re interested in learning more about a Live Blog’s potential, we have numbered 30 Live Blog benefits and why you should pay more attention to your marketing strategy.

Since we know how much difference a Live Blog can make, it would be selfish not to share other Live Blog ideas you can adjust and use in your company.

More ideas for your Live Blog strategy

Arena has been helping companies from several sectors worldwide to build and execute robust Live Blog strategies that skyrocket customer engagement and provide exclusive content.

Want to figure out how? Come along!

1. Launch products — and let people know immediately 

Covering a real-time launch event is always interesting because people are more than ready to be the first to know.

The sooner you give your audience the news, the more educated and confident they will feel.

Let people see what your new products are about and educate them on why they need to buy from you instead of your competitors.

2. Add your own commentary to a conference 

There are certainly a few exciting events in your field that your audience is dying to see. Take the chance to live to blog them and add your own personal touch to the coverage.

3. Live blog during a crisis

Live Blogs become critically important in crisis times when real-time information can influence what readers plan to do next.

This became very clear with the Coronavirus outbreak. Try googling “Coronavirus Live Blog.” You should probably find websites like NBC Bay Area’s, which publishes all the real-time information available in a single place to keep readers updated and safe.

4. Drive traffic to your Live Blog

We know social media is the to-go place when news breaks, but a Live Blog can change that.

Although it is essential to use social media to connect with your audience, having a Live Blog will drive more traffic to your digital properties. Like that, you should depend less on external algorithms and take your audience ownership back to your website.

5. Widen your audience

When you decide to invest in a Live Blog, attracting attention to it is crucial. Start by spreading the news and creating the right buzz towards it.

This will widen your audience and make the most interested people stick around to keep you company.

6. Feel more human to your readers

When aligned with your branding voice, Live Blogs are the perfect place for you to talk about your brand, speak your point of view, and feel more human to your readers.

Remember the Game of Thrones Live Blog? It used a reference to shed light on the show and humanize the Live Blog feed with someone’s actual opinions. And people love that.

#Subscribe and stay on top of the news on our blog

7. Let users interact on your Live Blog

This is essential. People won’t feel like they belong and can be part of the experience if you don’t give them a special place to interact and be active.

Whether you implement a Live Chat Group or a commentary section on your Live Blog, allow readers to express themselves. You’ll see how this stimulates organic engagement and encourages users to come back for more.

Your content strategy is incomplete without a Live Blog

But it doesn’t have to be.

Now that you’ve seen such inspiring examples and ideas, it is time to take the next step and benefit from the many wonders of a Live Blog.

Without the perfect platform to embed on your website, you might miss out on some special features to leverage your website and guarantee your events will be successful.

You want a Live Blog platform that’s intuitive both to your crew and your readers and makes the most out of the investments you’re making.

Arena is ready to optimize and monetize your editorial work with a superb Live Blog tool that is easy to embed and plugged into your WordPress page. It is SEO friendly, scalable, and works on any website.

Ready to get started? Claim your free trial and try Arena’s Live Blog solution!

Real-time Audience Live Blog to Connect and Engage

Posted on by

A Live Blog is an instant attention-grabbing tool that empowers brands to generate real-time engagement. Here’s how some companies are using it to establish a deeper connection with their audience.

High-quality content is more important now than it has ever been.

Digitized and multi-connected, today’s audiences pay significant attention to content that can answer their questions and help them decide if a product or service is right. There is no denying that content is a vital part of the continuously-important customer experience.

With so much competition and information running wild at all times, cutting through the noise might be hard.

With the present moment changing so drastically in such a short period, you surely want to implement the most effective solutions to increase engagement and make your consumers loyal.

But how can you stand out from the crowd and generate immediate engagement with such an imperative audience?

I’m sure you have asked yourself this question a few times through the years.

Thankfully, this article is all about an extraordinary tool that customers are growing extremely fond of and are already expecting your company to have: a Live Blog. 

Here, you will find how companies are using Live Blogs to generate relevant content and connect with a real-time audience—and why you shouldn’t wait to do the same.

Why a real-time audience matters

Customers are always on. Given the newness of technology and innovation, they have all the tools to remain connected nonstop and wish to consume reliable information that leads them to make better decisions. The faster, the better.

Timing is essential in any marketing tactic these days. A message or campaign will only be valid when it gets to customers exactly when they need it.

Many professionals work day and night to assess customer data and develop exciting content alternatives that arrive sharply on-time. Those who are succeeding already know it: Live content is a gold mine and engages audiences as few things can.

Live content meets consumers’ expectations perfectly because it empowers them to be part of a real-time experience. It promotes instant debates people can get involved with, combining timing and appropriate messages to create a matchless customer experience.

In this scenario, marketers are growing aware of Live Blogs and how to attract their audiences and enhance customer engagement.

How are companies using Live Blogs?

Dynamic and extremely interactive, a Live Blog allows brands to bring different post formats and sources to deliver real-time content for an instant audience.

Live Blogs support several types of content, such as videos, audios, texts, social media posts, and more, to shape a different and more interactional feed.

By liveblogging, you can post regular updates of a relevant event that’s taking place in your field and keep your readers updated on the latest news.

More than that, you can live meaningful stream events that interest your followers, providing them with exclusive coverage. This is way more interesting than writing about an event only after it happened.

It makes users spend more time on your pages instead of digesting information on Twitter or Facebook.

Giving audiences a multimedia content and narrative experience already pays off to companies that embraced Live Blog and made it a crucial part of their marketing communication.

We have already written about how Arena customers are using a successful Live Blog engagement strategy and revolutionizing their content. This time, you will find a few examples to inspire you to use a Live Blog and catch real-time audience’s attention.

Winter came, and everybody watched: Game of Thrones Live Blog

Game of Thrones’ fans has always been head-over-heels for the show.

Considering that 87% of consumers use a second screen while watching TV, giving these passionate fans the chance to follow a Live Blog that was updated as new episodes could only be a fantastic idea.

That was what RadioTimes did back in 2019, mixing Twitter posts, memes, soundtrack videos, and written texts to both updates and entertain its audience.

All posts were made by Huw Fullerton, a pop-culture reference covering the biggest TV shows and movies for a while.

Huw was already known by the Radio Times readers, which made it easier to create connections and a sense of identification with their audience, that could cry and tremble about the episodes with someone they trusted in.

These details made Radio Times’ Game of Thrones Live Blog a success case.

Technology biggest reference: Apple Event Live Blog

With a frequently-refreshing Live Blog, Apple has allowed its customer base to get all the freshest iPhone news on its website for years. 

This takes the brand closer to its niche audience, but it creates a phenomenal hype and turns the Apple Live Blog as the right place to go when customers want brand-new information.

Apple also often live streams special events to announce new products and upgraded features that create market awareness and indulge Apple fans in details they’re curious about.

One of the most critical and historic Apple events was the Worldwide Developers Conference 2020, which took place during the Coronavirus outbreak. 

Vehicles like The Verge even made a Live Blog of their own to debate the conference’s content and Tim Cook’s considerations about the company’s future.

Free access to political information: Debate Live Blog

Democratic debates are powerful attention-callers. People are always alert to what politicians have to say, especially when they’re in doubt about whom to vote for or want a specialist’s opinion.

FiveThirtyEight is one of those websites that use liveblogging to provide readers with constant updates, so they know what goes down in debates and primaries.

FiveThirtyEight editors feed pages with texts, videos, and Twitter posts to comment on political debates. Meanwhile, the editors let users interact with intuitive graphics, polls, forecasts, and other easy-to-visualize content.

Let’s take the South Carolina Democratic Debate as an example. Notice how editors mix different contents in a timeline to give readers a broader view of the event:

It looks cool, doesn’t it? That’s one of the Live Blog advantages: To mix content and use it intelligently.

The show went on: The Voice Live Blog

NBC’s The Voice kept relevant even during the pandemic. Coaches and contenders changed the already familiar The Voice studio for their homes, and GoldDerby commented on Season 18’s finale to engage interested readers with a broad, real-time Live Blog feeding.

The Voice Live Blog used a more straightforward format approach, posting only short texts to update the page’s visitors.

Still, live blogging was a smart way to promote GoldDerby’s online prediction program. Winning users got a special place in the Live Blog leaderboard, along with a $100 Amazon Card—see how Live Blog is generating engagement here?

GoldDerby also provided users with a commentary section so they could voice their thoughts on The Voice finale. This was essential to grant readers an exclusive place to comment on their favorite show and create a unique sense of community people don’t usually find on social media.

Live Original Blog

Interactive content is like the face of the future: it brings people together and gives a human, personal touch that keeps them interested in what you have to say.

Through the years, Live Blogs have evolved and become excellent channels for folks that watch live sports games, real-time protests, technology conferences, and so on.

Despite that, Live Blogs can still do so much more.

For example, in fashion retail companies, Live Blogs can be used to cover special events that matter in the field, such as fashion runaways and even music festivals.

Covering noteworthy events might make your brand stand out from the competition, but it will also give you the chance to transform your content to smartly address your audiences’ concerns and point them in the right direction.

If you’re interested in learning more about a Live Blog’s potential, we have numbered 30 Live Blog benefits and why you should pay more attention to it for your marketing strategy.

Since we know how much difference a Live Blog can make, it would be selfish not to share other Live Blog ideas you can adjust and use in your company.

More ideas for your Live Blog strategy

Arena has been helping companies from several sectors worldwide build and execute robust Live Blog strategies that skyrocket customer engagement and provide exclusive content.

Want to figure out how? Come along!

  • Launch products — and let people know immediately 

Covering a real-time launch event is always exciting because people are more than ready to be the first to know.

The sooner you give your audience the news, the more educated and confident they will feel.

Let people see what your new products are about and educate them on why they need to buy from you instead of your competitors.

  • Add your commentary to a conference 

There are certainly a few exciting events in your field that your audience is dying to see. Take the chance to live to blog them and add your personal touch to the coverage.

  • Live blog during a crisis

Live Blogs become critically important in times of crisis when real-time information can influence what readers plan to do next.

This became very clear with the Coronavirus outbreak. Try googling “Coronavirus Live Blog,” and you should probably find websites like NBC Bay Area’s, that publishes all the real-time information available in a single place to keep readers updated and safe.

  • Drive traffic to your Live Blog

We know social media is the to-go place when news break—but a Live Blog can change that.

Although it is essential to use social media to connect with your audience, having a Live Blog will drive more traffic to your digital properties. Like that, you should depend less on external algorithms and take your audience ownership back to your website.

When you decide to invest in a Live Blog, attracting attention to it is crucial. Start by spreading the news and creating the right buzz towards it.

This will widen your audience and make the most interested people stick around to keep you company.

  • Feel more human to your readers

When aligned with your branding voice, Live Blogs are the perfect place for you to talk about your brand, speak your point of view, and feel more human.

Remember the Game of Thrones Live Blog? It used a reference to shed light on the show and humanize the Live Blog feed with someone’s actual opinions. And people love that.

  • Let users interact on your Live Blog

This is essential. People won’t feel like they belong and can be part of the experience if you don’t give them a special place to interact and be active.

Whether you implement a Live Chat Group or a commentary section on your Live Blog, allow readers to express themselves. You’ll see how this stimulates organic engagement and encourages users to come back for more.

Your content strategy is incomplete without a Live Blog

But it doesn’t have to be.

Now that you’ve seen inspiring examples and ideas, it is time to take the next step and benefit from the many wonders of a Live Blog.

Without the perfect platform to embed on your website, you might miss out on some unique features to leverage your website and guarantee your events will be successful.

You want a Live Blog platform that’s intuitive to your crew and your readers and makes the most out of the investments you’re making.

Arena is ready to optimize and monetize your editorial work with a superb Live Blog tool that is easy to embed and can be plugged into your WordPress page. It is SEO friendly, scalable, and works on any website.

Ready to get started? Claim your free trial and try Arena’s Live Blog solution!

Connecting Marketing Campaigns with Customer Data Platform

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Customer Data Platform has become the game-changer tool to reach business success. Find out how a CDP can integrate your marketing campaigns to increase revenue now!

Throughout the years, marketing and sales can gather large volumes of data from their actions. But the million-dollar question is how to manage that amount of information effectively and coherently apply them, connecting your marketing and sales campaigns.

But since we are experts on this issue, we made this content for walking you through and show how the Customer Data Platform can sew up your strategies to generate more profits, reduce customer acquisition costs, and increase the investment.

Keep up and find out!

What is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software capable of gathering and organizing customer information from multiple sources. 

It puts together data from social media, CRM, e-mails, purchase records, ads, browsers, devices, and more. It also allows real-time updates, reading customer behavior to provide fresh and relevant material.

This compiled information obtained by CDP allows communication with hyper-segmented audiences. More positive engagement is given since marketing and sales know precisely whom they are supposed to talk to and what they really want.

Customer Data Platform uses every single action taken from the audience and turns it into a data profile. So, even though a first-time visitor didn’t share their e-mail with your website, you can still use browsing behavior, pages, and items checked to build up a remarketing campaign on Google or Facebook Ads.

Build more assertive marketing with CDP

One of the essential aspects of CDP is the possibility of creating integration, not just about data but also about teams. Customer services, marketing, sales, customer experience, and support: from Customer Data Platform on, they will speak the same strategy language.

When there is communication harmony indoors, all pieces combined can show this bigger and coherent picture. As a result:

  • Customer services can give the appropriate approach, knowing exactly who they are talking to and what the audience truly wants. No more wasting time here.
  • Marketing can design unique plans of action, understanding by analyzing customer behavior, the best elements to improve conversion in that segment.
  • Sales can offer precisely what the audience needs to purchase, whether it be a discount, a trial, testimonials, or a personal approach to explaining some details.
  • Customer success can promote simple usability based on the interests listed on CDP, enhancing user experience, and improving the chances of making an upsell.
  • Support can grant a more humanized and empathic service, offering high-quality solutions to increase customer satisfaction, generating good referrals.

Those steps combined to ensure a buyer’s journey without bumps or unfortunate surprises along the way. Hence, the entire process gets smoother, causing the best impressions your brand could ever have.

Improve marketing metrics with Customer Data Platform

Through the Customer Data Platform, you can have a 360-degree view of your audience. Having that density of information turns easier to get tighter metrics, eligible to translate ad campaign performances, and provide relevant insights for the teams.

Data is gold, only when you use the right ones. The lack of planning and proper understanding over it may cause inaccurate results and misperceptions about the strategy. The same rule applies to metrics.

CDP does not over give you information. It hands you organized and coherent material to measure all the steps on the way. Therefore, marketing and sales can count on extra support to plan, execute, and manage their best actions.

Increase success of ad campaigns using real-time data

This is undoubtedly one of the most powerful tools currently available in the business. Real-time user data refers to new information from data sources being injected into your Customer Data Platform profiles. 

An applicable example of this feature is when a sales team gets to see an online buyers’ shopping cart to induce a cross-sell. This type of data can also be used to re-target campaigns after the visitor triggers an event.

The ability to walk around the customer to scan them from multiple POVs given by real-time data grants you access to analyze aspects of your strategy. Take a look at some more possibilities you can have with real-time data on CDP:

  • Recognize bottlenecks on your website
  • Improve marketing, and sales campaigns live
  • Create an exclusive and personalized customer experience
  • Offer individualized and relevant post-sale service

All those pieces of interactions –and those many more not mentioned –create a singular environment experience for your brand, leading to customer satisfaction, positive referrals, and more revenue.

Reduce customer acquisition costs and upgrade ROI

To talk about the return over the investment (ROI) made with the Customer Data Platform. First, it is fundamental to understand where CDP is going to fit in your strategy. To get that, there are some key questions that you can answer: 

  1. Does your company work with multiple communication channels? 
  2. Do your teams need to improve their strategies to be more assertive? 
  3. Does having updated data about your customer continuously bring you more insights?
  4. Would it help have more in-depth information about your audience to increase sales?

If you got at least three definite answers, you definitely should consider talking to a consultant to see in a more practical way how CDP can benefit your company.

With doing that, there are some aspects to measure how CDP will optimize ROI. Time, risk, and cost are the trio to show you how efficient marketing, sales, support, UX, and other teams can get with the Customer Data Platform. 

To each department, you should know how much more you can get using the same budget as before. Also, it is important to list some possible cost savings due to group efficiency.

What is the value-added to the process that will lead to risk reduction? You should be aware of the strategy value as well, understanding how much cleaner the entry points will get. 

Last but not least, knowing the total cost of the CDP initiative. Analyzing your new numbers, you may see the bigger picture with all stages connected and the newfound paths it leads to.

Once your teams have this level of customer knowledge, they can aim the efforts directly into actions more likely of conversions. Personalization and localization are two key features to leverage niche data and provide exclusive and relevant customer experience through CDP.

That behavior can lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), improve productivity, increase profits, and customer retention. Analyzing smart data through CDP facilitates a plan of action based on individual customer preferences instead of a massive standardized campaign.

Ease decision-making

Companies need to learn how to make profitable operational decisions fast. It is going to be an ever-increasing data-driven scenario, and we already know that more data is only relevant when it is useful data.

The only way to capitalize on significant amounts of information is by organizing them into relevant segments. By that, your team will be able to tailored offers and strategies to fill their real needs.

Enhance CRM with Customer Data Platform

Every business currently in the game is using customer relationship management (CRM) –– or, at least, they should be. CRM is a software to store customer data and help marketers and sales to develop better practices.

Their functions might sound similar, but they are not. The digital buying journey demands uniqueness to succeed. To understand what customers are doing is not enough anymore. Seeing beyond time and space to predict what customers may do is now crucial.

Also, the need is not only about capturing new customers but also keeping old ones satisfied, making more purchases, and putting great referrals out there. Each customer is now a cycle, not a straight line with a beginning and an ending point.

So, CDP has the power to add unique features to CRM information. It gives you access to a more robust and enriched database made by an organized combination of other data sources. Thus, the customer journey and experiences will become more polished and exclusive.

Customer Data Platform: the future of marketing and sales

We want to take you further and show you: 

  • How to enhance a CDP with first-party data
  • What it does to CRM data –– and other data sources 
  • A panorama about the quality of the information generated 
  • What are the other benefits it can add to your strategies 
  • Why getting a CDP solution can make you stand out amongst competitors

Check out Arena Personas, a great way to boost your CDP with first-party data generated by your own brand.

How Customer Data Platform is reinventing customer relations

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Using a Customer Data Platform is helping companies to focus obsessively on their customers and benefit from their engagement.

You need to know your customers—this isn’t any news. It doesn’t matter if you want to make them more engaged, optimize your budget for campaigns, or improve your ROI.

Customer accurate information is at the heart of every company and should be treated correctly to generate powerful outcomes from your marketing efforts.

If you don’t have a consistent understanding of your consumers, then all your strategies will likely go down the drain.

But how exactly do you get to act like you know your customers? The answer is simple: by managing their data.

To treat data thoroughly and reach your customer relationship goals, you might come across the need to use the right technologies. This is when the Customer Data Platform (CDP) walks in.

A customer data platform monitors and tracks multiple data sources to bring relevant information to a single hub that is easy to access and understand.

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Once implemented, CDPs collect, integrate, manage, and analyze customer data continuously. These automated processes help many teams to focus on solving complex problems that require a human brain. At the same time, a Customer Data Platform brings current, real-time data to be leveraged and turned into marketing master plans.

Why do companies use Customer Data Platforms?

Is there a reason why companies implement a Customer Data Platform in their business models? Yes, many.

According to Gartner, plenty of marketers look to customer data-driven strategies to deliver growth. For example, marketers invested two-thirds of their budget in supporting relationships with their customers in 2017 and 2018. 

Still, they have found the technology they were using to be frustrating—until CDP’s unique upshots came out as a solution to their problems.

A Customer Data Platform reaches out for several channels and concentrates real-time data in a single place your team can access whenever it is convenient.

This stimulates a collaborative work environment and speeds the pace of operational routines. Customer Data Platforms are also known for making marketers’ lives less complicated since automating workflows would take too many working hours to be accomplished.

The other reason companies use Customer Data Platforms is that they are much more than a simple database. According to the CDP Institute, the ideal Customer Data Platform should contain five essential capabilities:

  • Absorb data from any source
  • Give full details of ingested data
  • Store data without end and frequently
  • Create unified profiles (such as personas)
  • Share data with any system that needs it

All of the five skills above drive brands into having a vigorous understanding of their customer base by collecting and analyzing reliable data across their marketing channels.

What types of data does a Customer Data Platform assess?

The types of customer data assessed by a CDP can be quantitative and qualitative. 

In other words, by using a CDP, you will be able to figure out:

  • How to identify your customers, using personal data
  • How to interact with your customers, using interactional data
  • How customers expect to be impacted by experiences, using behavioral data
  • How your customers perceive your brand, using attitudinal data

The datasets above are being generated at all times in any digital environment and should be combined to create an unbeatable and absolute customer understanding.

But how do CDPs gather such different information?

They reach out to analytics reports, engagement measures, support occurrences, eCommerce metrics, and customer feedback (to quote a few), to maximize your knowledge and equip you with fast, accurate moves.

This is the main reason why CDPs are revolutionizing the way brands communicate with customers and vice-versa. They are an unlimited and underlying base for companies to create remarkable customer experiences and increase customer engagement in a way we have never seen before.

The effects of CDP in customer experience

A Customer Data Platform grants companies an invincible competitive advantage: passionate customers who keep being fed with reasons to remain brand loyal.

Historically, we can see customers have adopted technologies faster than the brands they interact with. This made companies try to embrace digital transformation technologies focused on customer experience to reach out to consumers where they are and how they want.

Expanding your brand’s online presence to talk to customers in multiple channels isn’t enough, in any case. Any company can create an Instagram account and interact with its audience then and there, right?

However, the ones that truly stand out are focused on delivering personalized, relevant, well-designed interactions that take place as soon as customers want.

Tailored customer interactions should happen anywhere, at any time. This is the main reason why organizations around the world are digitizing their business models. According to the Boston Consulting Group Research, personalization will drive an $800 billion revenue shift to the top 15% of companies that work best on it, in only three industries.

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I know what you’re thinking: that’s much profit for a small number of companies—and yes, it is. Even so, it sounds like a warning: companies that aren’t ready to turn personalization ordinary in their marketing campaigns, will be left stranded.

As you know, doing a great job on personalization is all about knowing everything there is to know about your customers and quickly activating your knowledge when needed.

Can you notice any coincidences between this goal and the usage of a CDP?

How CDPs are reinventing customer relations

Suppose you’re leading digital initiatives to deepen the relationship between your customers and your brand. In that case, you should pay attention to the changes CDPs are leading in customer management and how it differs from other popular marketing tools.

A Customer Data Platform is way more complete than a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

CRM will tell you how to personalize and improve existing customer relationships. Meanwhile, a CDP will do that and indicate how you can promote products and services and what you should do to attract new customers.

With the new untapped potential CDPs unleash, companies are increasingly confident in meeting market changes and customers’ preferences. Hesitating in our competitive world is no longer an option, and data-driven marketing plays a vital role in feeding companies with unequivocal customer interactions.

Ahead, we have numbered a few ways Customer Data Platforms reinvent customer relations to inspire you and your team.

1. CDP enables segmentation opportunities

While it simultaneously optimizes strategies, a CDP provides companies with a 360-degree view of customers to act on an essential customer experience requirement: segmentation.

Segmenting customers by specific traits, behaviors, attitudes, and others is a fantastic opportunity to create tailored marketing touchpoints throughout their journey and attract them with meaningful content.

When based on data, segmentation is an unmatched growth engine that encourages customer loyalty and enhances profitability.

2. A CDP gives your interactions a personal touch

Similarly, you can not spell personalization without customer data.

Owning a Customer Data Platform will help you quickly access reliable information to customize customer interactions, making your consumers feel special, and long-term relationships feasible.

Many companies are using CDP for Customer Data Management. See below how their tactics connect with top-level personalization:

3. A CDP enriches customer relationships

There isn’t enough emphasis on how knowing your customers is essential for customer relations.

People expect to be treated accordingly to their visions as much as they wish to connect emotionally with brands. A single miscommunication can harm brand-customer relationships irreparably.

As soon as you have a panoramic view of your customers’ habits, preferences, needs, and issues, you should feel more confident in building specific touchpoints that elevate the customer journey and make customers want to hang around you for longer.

Owning a Customer Data Platform will also measure your customer loyalty programs’ effectiveness and help you find what groups of customers deserve attention according to their life cycle.

4. A CDP is agile

Agile methodologies are the perfect response to a world that is changing every day, every hour. CDPs consider our ever-changing environment and let your team access specific data whenever it needs, contributing to an agility mindset.

Agility layers can be used to shape CDP frameworks that adjust to your company’s infrastructure, turning data sharing into a reality. CDPs also absorb data from other internal systems, like CRMs and Data Management Platforms (DMPs), you might already have.

Apart from that, CDPs update in real-time. This allows you to assess micro-moments data and instantly operationalize it.

5. A CDP ingests data from any source

Your customers are everywhere these days, right? You can find them on social media, navigate your website, read your emails, download your app, and take a look at your physical store. The interaction possibilities between your customer and your brand are countless.

If truth be told, it truly doesn’t matter where your customers are and what they’re doing. Whether they’re reading your blog or using your chatbot, data is being generated at all times, collected from simple interactions to complex operations.

A Customer Data Platform reaches out to any source of information, from Live Chats to SEO, from blogging to Twitter, from customer loyalty to affiliate marketing programs to provide your company with everything you know about your potential and current consumers.

6. A CDP elevates digital transformation

Simply, a digital transformation process should rely on—and a lot!—on a Customer Data Platform.

By watching digital-native organizations, it becomes clear that many technologies can be embedded to digitize businesses.

However, it is worthless to implement technologies that don’t accurately connect with customers’ needs. Digital transformation starts and ends with the customer, transcending traditional marketing, sales, and customer service roles.

That being said, without a reliable Customer Data Platform, companies who are digitizing their operations will mostly fail to unleash the real potential of a digital transformation.

Digital-native companies have already built their business model based on data collection and responding to customers’ needs with high-level experiences.

These companies combine traditional marketing strategies, such as loyalty programs, with groundbreaking digital initiatives that connect with customers in real-time and engross their engagement.

Remember: It is crucial to direct your digital transformation efforts into interactions that engage your audience, and a Customer Data Platform is intimately related to that.

It taps into your databases to unify relevant information and operationalize customer knowledge, delivering targeted experiences that will delight and retain your customers.

It should also be stated that CDPs assist companies in taking a step back and revisiting their processes to leverage technology cleverly.

For example, Netflix was quick to turn its service into a scalable streaming platform that replies to customers’ demands. The now-sector-leading company could only reinvent itself because it took a very attentive look at customer data and responded accordingly.

Align your digital initiatives with the power of a Customer Data Platform

While IT staff has been skeptical for a while, digital leaders worldwide have been engrossing CDP in their workflows and getting amazing results from data management automation.

Not only has perfect treating data been helping these leaders come up with customer-centric solutions, but it has optimized their budget and turned manual work more effective.

Forbes Insights highlighted that 44% of surveyed organizations stated a Customer Data Platform is helping drive customer loyalty and increase ROI.

Arena serves customers from 120 different countries and sees firsthand how the fast-paced digital environment influences global market changes day after day.

That is why we work to build awareness for digital leaders and marketers to embrace Customer Data Platforms in their full potential and boost customer engagement.

In case you need to further your research towards the CDP role for the upcoming years, download our Customer Data Platform 2020: the future of marketing and sales ebook and take a deeper dive.

The secret to real data collection: why is a CDP key to your business

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Using a CDP is extremely important these days, but just as important is the need to understand why you need it. It’s more than collecting real data, it’s about how you chose to use, such as to improve your business.

Knowing who a brand’s audience is the most significant purpose of a company. It’s the only way to recognize the best way to communicate, find your public, offer them your product or service, and so on. Because of that, from the early years of the internet ascension, customer data collection has been discussed.

Many software and platforms were developed to gather data to help companies better target their audience. However, data collection can be a delicate subject regarding privacy matters.

Indeed, a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to give the public more control of what happens to their online data.

While it was extremely common for companies to gather data and sell to third parties, this is now a bit more complicated — especially when it comes to data originated from cookies. Although collecting customer data is still common and required in the market, brands need to be more careful about how they do it and what kind of data they have in their hands.

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A business needs to have accurate data to provide a better customer experience. This means that working with purchased cookies won’t be the perfect solution since they’re mainly anonymous data. For that reason, solutions like the CDP are becoming more notorious. They’re a way to work with real data, hence accurate information, and find the most suitable marketing and sales strategies.

To better understand the search for real data and how a CDP will help achieve that, here, you will learn more about:

  • what happened to cookies
  • what is the importance of CDP
  • why use real-time data collection
  • how does CDP influence a company’s strategies
  • how does this affect relationships between customers and brands

What happened to cookies?

It has recently come to our knowledge that browsers like Firefox and Google are suspending their support to the usage of cookies. These are the text files that store a user’s activity online. They can be used to save some navigation information and make the process easier. For example, automatically filling a website when you’re reaccessing it, or collecting login information for a page.

However, the primary use is to save data about a user’s browsing history, such as pages visited and browsing time. As we all know, having this type of information is essential for excellent performance in digital marketing strategies.

Because of that, browsers used to support cookies and allow companies to access a user’s information for as long as the cookie was saved on the computer. This means that personal and browsing information would be shared with each company’s website for the same amount of time.

When talking about this subject, we can think of both first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party is the information that a company gathers directly from the audience, while third-party is data united from various sources. Other companies mostly buy third-party data.

Though when a company purchases data from another one, information is anonymous. You can’t really know who that person is, and data might not be so reliable. Other brands can also end up with the same information you have since the data provider can sell the same data “package” to anyone.

Because of privacy matters and the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), cookies’ popularity has been going down. People started using ad blockers so they wouldn’t be bothered with ads after clicking a product.

Even more, when Google decided to suspend third-party data sharing through its browser, the cookies’ future became quite unappealing. Now, brands that want to work with customer data need to find new ways to gather data — and work primarily with first-party data.

Hence, the CDP comes to the rescue. A Customer Data Platform is a software developed for marketing teams to create more useful content and campaigns. 

What is the importance of CDP?

Since it is essentially a marketing tool, the main reason to use a CDP is to know the consumer better. Analyzing and understanding customer data and behavior is crucial to create accurate content. In general, the Customer Data Platform gathers information from a wide variety of sources putting the pieces together to create the ideal consumer profile.

The entire process of data collection and organization is automatized. So the software does all work to give professional marketing information ready to use. However, several teams can have access to this data. All sectors in a company might need some context from the consumers before dealing with their tasks, especially sales and customer support. Still, the products and engineer teams can easily use the CDP information too.

Having data centralized into a single platform is a peculiarity of the CDP. That’s because there were other tools before it that worked with data collection, like the CRM, but none of them were as complete as the CDP.

Further to this, in the era of data-driven marketing, the process of decision making inside a company must be made based on real, accurate information. Since purchased cookies were anonymous, data could be compromised. On the other hand, with a Customer Data Platform, real data is at easy reach.

Accordingly, the service generates better results through the personalization of communication. Businesses that are continually looking for ways to improve ROI can find their needs fulfilled with the CDP. Being a data-driven company and working with real data makes you one step ahead of competitors.

 

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Why use real-time data collection?

It’s not only about data collection, but mostly about real-time data collection. What’s the difference, you ask? Well, working with anything in real-time is an advantage. In this case, it means that the data collection software, such as a CDP solution, will start gathering information from a person’s first visit to your page.

For the company, it is a strategy for improving the promptness of a response and communication system. Therefore, improving every customer-related service in the company. It’s no secret brands use CDP to have better customer relationships, audience engagement, and audience targeting.

Moreover, it is possible to classify visitors into customers and qualified leads as soon as they access your website. Equally, having a database with real-time data makes it easier to take actions that are on the spot, allowing you to see where the current strategy is failing and what needs to be improved.

Overall, working with a CDP makes the company look active and worry about treating customers the way they deserve.

How does CDP data influence a company’s strategies?

Whatever product or service you provide, there’s no doubt you have competition. Because of that, brands need to offer the best solution and customer service at every moment. Nowadays, it’s hard to catch someone’s attention, but extremely easy to lose it.

So, even though a company should work to create a good reputation in the market, no matter what, aiming to be ahead of the competitor is necessary. After all, having a customer turn into a brand advocate is not easy, but highly relevant to a company’s strategy.

Consequently, it’s required to offer the best customer experience out there. For that, you must know who your consumer is, ergo, the use of CDP.

A Customer Data Platform can gather data from multiple sources, from social media and in-apps to sales engagement and product use. This is what makes the software such a unique solution, since the more information you have, the more accurate the ideal customer profile will be. From then, not only marketing strategies will be perfected, but also sales and customer support.

As professional marketing, you know it’s no proper working with guesses in any business. Thus, making decisions founded on real data will lead to several benefits — including the increase in audience engagement.

How does this affect relationships between customers and brands?

When we talk about acquiring a CDP solution, the main reason is to connect with the customer. Thus, it’s logical that it’ll have an impact on the relationship between customer and brand. Since it’s possible to understand and know the consumer thoroughly, it thereby becomes possible to make them more satisfied by providing truly personalized service.

When customers are more satisfied, they are more likely to recommend your mark to other people. With the right after purchase strategy and content, they may even become brand advocates. And why is this so important? For a company, it means a better return on investment and lowers costs with customer acquisition.

After all, it’s less expensive to retain clients than to acquire new ones. That’s why many companies started working with a customer-centric strategy as well. If there are no customers, a business can’t survive in the market. 

Arena is a CDP platform that will revolutionize your company. With our real-time data collection system, all marketing and sales strategies will be refined and boosted.

To better understand how that’ll happen, download our ebook Customer Data Platform 2020: the future of marketing and sales. It has everything you need to know about acquiring and using a CDP to make your brand a reference.

30 reasons to use Customer Data Platform for eCommerce

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Information is king, and businesses are constantly on the lookout for tools that can provide a richer understanding of their customers and the journey they embark upon. Customer Data Platforms (CDP) have emerged as crucial tools, particularly for the burgeoning realm of eCommerce.

30 Reasons To Use A CDP

Here’s a deep dive into why CDPs should be at the heart of your digital strategy:

1. Seamless Automation

Trust in a CDP to transform complex data streams into easily digestible and actionable insights, automating processes that would otherwise drain resources.

2. Eliminating Operational Silos

Facilitate efficient information-sharing across departments with a CDP, creating a unified vision for your business.

3. Enriching the Customer Journey

Harness CDPs to unlock a comprehensive understanding of your customer’s interactions, ensuring you’re always delivering value.

4. Intelligent Marketing Segmentation

Harness the power of AI to sift through varied data, empowering you to create precisely targeted marketing campaigns.

5. Tailored Communication

Today’s consumer demands personalization. With a CDP, ensure every touchpoint resonates and builds loyalty.

6. Crafting Memorable Experiences

Use data-driven insights to craft seamless experiences, both online and offline, enhancing customer satisfaction.

7. Metrics that Matter

Deploy CDPs to get an eagle’s eye view on the efficacy of your eCommerce strategies, refining them as you grow.

8. Real-time Relevance

In an ever-changing market landscape, CDPs ensure you’re always a step ahead, thanks to real-time data updates.

9. 360-Degree Customer View

Break down the barriers between online and offline data to truly understand your customer’s journey.

10. Unified Customer Profiles

Leverage a CDP to get an in-depth understanding of your audience personas, refining your marketing strategies.

11. Stand Out from the Crowd

Responsive data-driven strategies ensure you’re always ahead of the curve, a must in today’s competitive marketplace.

12. Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value

Invest in understanding your current customers’ needs and behaviors, ensuring they remain loyal advocates.

13. Merging Digital and Physical

Achieve true omnichannel success by merging online and offline data streams.

14. Refining Offerings

Listen to your customers. Let their feedback guide improvements in your products and services.

15. Attracting Ready Buyers

Precision-target your messaging to capture those on the cusp of purchase.

16. Deep Customer Engagement

Leverage CDP insights to truly engage customers across every touchpoint, building loyalty and trust.

17. Enhancing Marketing Tools

Amplify the efficiency of your current marketing tools by integrating them with a powerful CDP.

18. Spotting and Addressing Anomalies

Ensure your strategy is always on track by identifying and rectifying any anomalies.

19. Anticipating Customer Behavior

Predict future customer actions and behaviors, refining your strategies for maximum impact.

20. Optimized Operational Efficiency

Drive efficiency by streamlining data processes, freeing up resources for strategic action.

21. Strategic Pricing

Ensure your pricing remains competitive and appealing by gauging customer sentiment and market trends.

22. Effective Supplier Negotiations

Utilize historical data to drive better deals and collaborations with suppliers.

23. Never Miss Feedback

Continuous monitoring ensures you’re always in the loop, adjusting strategies based on real-time feedback.

24. Minimize Cart Abandonment

Dive deep into the reasons behind cart abandonment, ensuring your checkout process is as smooth as possible.

25. Addressing Checkout Drop-offs

Investigate and rectify factors causing customers to abandon checkouts, maximizing conversions.

26. Tackling Churn Rates

Unearth the reasons behind dwindling customer loyalty and rectify them, building a lasting relationship.

27. Boosting Conversion Rates

Harness data insights to optimize your site’s usability and messaging, driving higher conversions.

28. Driving Organic Traffic

Strategically leverage live content and social media to naturally increase site visitors.

29. Elevating Social Media Engagement

Deepen customer relationships by engaging them on social platforms, turning followers into loyal customers.

30. Embrace the Future

Data is the future of marketing and sales. Integrate a CDP into your strategy and ensure your brand remains at the forefront.

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For a comprehensive understanding of the transformative power of CDPs, delve into Arena’s ebook Diving Into The Customer Journey In Live Ecommerce. The insights within can be the key to unlocking the full potential of your eCommerce strategy.

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Boost Your eCommerce Conversion with Live Chat

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Companies are now more interested in Live Chat solutions. Research shows it is helping increase conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Find out more!

Live Chat is not precisely a new solution in the market, but it has evolved into a must-have feature. It’s more than a way to have real-time customer support. It’s also a marketing and a sales strategy jackpot.

There’s no denying it: customers hate waiting to be attended, and they want quick answers. Everyone is so busy nowadays that they want and need means of dealing with their issues while multitasking. That’s why Live Chat is preferred over phone calls and emails.

In emails, a person might wait for hours or even days to get an answer. On the telephone, the customer usually has to go through automatic voice messages that will filter and redirect them to sales, support, or another sector — and it does involve some waiting around with jazz music playing in their ears.

Boost Your eCommerce Conversion Rates with Live Chat

Customers who can connect directly to the brand and have a personalized interaction gives value to the company. Something chatbots can’t do. That’s why they like it when a brand offers Live Chat on the website. Moreover, it’s all about the advantages of the company as well.

More than customer satisfaction, Live Chat provides a channel for marketing and sales strategies. Thus, increasing conversions and revenue. Let’s talk a bit more about what Live Chat is and how it impacts the way eCommerce works.

What is Live Chat?

Live Chat is a solution for companies that want to have a better connection with their audience. It allows real-time conversations between customers and companies. Usually, Live Chat is used for customer support, but it can do a lot more. For example, it can be a tool for customers to talk to each other when you’re live streaming.

There’s no doubt keeping reasonable customer satisfaction rates is of high priority, and this solution can assist for that purpose. However, Live Chat has also become a strategy for the marketing and sales departments to increase their results.

Have you heard about conversational marketing? Since customer behavior is constantly evolving, marketing needs to tag along and find better means to communicate with customers. Because of that, this new branch of marketing is about having a tailor-made experience for each customer.

In general, there are three steps for conversation marketing: engage, understand, and recommend. It’s mainly about moving customers through the sales pipeline in real-time, either increasing conversions or sales.

Most companies use chatbots together with Live Chat so they can create this connection between customers and brands. This way, the bot can filter the person’s problem and redirect them to the right sector for better service — while sending messages like “someone will be with you in about 2 minutes”.

How does Live Chat influence eCommerce?

In recent years, companies have found that Live Chat can affect visitors and customers. They discovered that by having access to Live Chat, people are more likely to complete a purchase. That’s because a customer can easily have their questions answered within a few minutes.

Sometimes, if a visitor can’t have a quick answer to what the store’s return policy is, for example, they will probably give up purchasing. On the other hand, if they do have a response and it’s one that pleases them, the sale is made! 63% of customers who used a Live Chat said they would return to that site for future business.

Additionally, depending on the Live Chat platform you acquire, attendants will be able to respond to up to 6 customers at once. This means a shorter waiting time for websites with high traffic and chat initiative. And you know what quick responses do? They make a customer happy — that’s pretty much halfway to make a client close the deal.

There’s still one more thing a Live Chat will influence on eCommerce: the upselling and cross-selling strategies. 

Yes, they can be performed via Live Chat as well. Surely you remember the experience of buying something online when suggestions start showing up after you click a product. Usually, there’s a session on the bottom of the page saying, “here are some similar products you might be interested in…”

Seeing that real-time data collection is possible through a Live Chat solution too, and the marketing and sales teams can use that to their benefit. When they see someone adding an item to the cart, they can appear in the corner of the screen with a message showing something similar or complementary to the product in the cart.

The same can be done if the customer completes the purchase and comes back on another day. They can send a ‘welcome back’ message, followed by suggestions and product recommendations.

Even if the consumer doesn’t use the Live Chat right away – or at all – when they see it is available, they are already more inclined to buy from that brand. That’s one more reason it can have an impact on eCommerce. If you work with Live Chat, it means they have easy access to ask questions, make complaints, and just keep in touch for whatever reason they need after acquiring a product.

Does Live Chat increase conversions?

The most straightforward answer is: yes, it does.

This research has found that one simple message can make a visitor 50% more inclined to become a customer, while a 6 message-chat makes them 250% more likely to become a customer. 

For conversions to happen, it’s required to pay attention to the opportunities that come up. If a customer contacts you through Live Chat asking about payment plans, it means they are interested in your product or service. You can take this opening to ask for their email, for example. More than that, keep an eye for people who ask about:

  • personalized solutions;
  • detailed information about products;
  • return and exchange policies.

Not only that, but Live Chat also impacts on a company’s revenue and retention rate. Since it makes customer satisfaction rates higher, that means they are happy with your brand. Therefore, they don’t have many reasons not to buy from you in the future.

Of course, for the conversion to happen, you need to follow some good practices. Otherwise, things might fall apart for you.

How to boost eCommerce sales with a Live Chat solution

So, we’ve been talking about how Live Chat can increase conversions and sales. But how does it happen?

To use this tool in marketing and sales, it should be set in a way that, when people enter your website, instantly reads an ad message. For instance, “Hi there, need a deal?” or “Hello, nice to see you again. How about getting a discount on that product you’ve been looking at?”.

It doesn’t need to be a pop-up window that will take up the entire page and cause a distraction, a simple picture on the right corner of the page will do the trick.

Besides, messages should always be personalized according to whether it’s the first visit or a returning customer. And here’s a note to remind how important data collection is, only from there will it be possible to create these messages.

As people interact with the chat, more data will be collected, and all interactions must be analyzed. They see what works and what doesn’t is essential for strategy improvement. Also, analyzing from which pages chats were initiated, what conversations converted more, and what topics are always coming up should be on the marketing team’s to-do list.

Besides, keeping Live Chats available 24/7 can be a good idea. As long as you either have human assistants also available during that time or if you have a chatbot that can answer general questions and forward the person to a human agent as needed — saying how long it will take for them to be attended.

What do customers think about Live Chat?

The bottom line is that customers adore Live Chat. Whether it is the immediate response factor or the fact that customers can multitask while being attended, people are generally happier with this tool. Indeed, more than half of all customers prefer Live Chat over other communication solutions — the satisfaction level for Live Chat is 73%.

A real-time online conversation is way more efficient in problem-solving than, let’s say, a tech support call. While a call is a real-time conversation, it does involve quite a lot of waiting time being transferred from one attendant to another. In the meantime, a Live Chat shouldn’t take longer than 2 minutes to connect with an assistant.

Social media and emails are also online communication tools, but the average wait time to get answers from these platforms can be as high as 10 to 17 hours. Hence, the high satisfaction rate with Live Chat solutions.

Even though chatbots can be quite useful in real-time answering questions, having a human attendant for eCommerce is the best solution. Even more so, when the store’s catalog has a high number of products, a human is more informed and can give better, personalized answers to increasing conversions and sales.

How to offer better customer service through live chat?

Despite having so many benefits, live chat can still cause a decrease in conversions if not used properly. These are some tips and practices you should follow to have the best results when acquiring your live chat solution.

Train support team

Since live chat is mostly used for customer support, it’s consequential to have a trained support team. Some of the things they need to know are:

  • not to rush into answers;
  • adding personality to the answers;
  • checking grammatical errors;
  • matching the customer’s tone.

Yes, the idea is to answer as quickly as possible; however, never rush into answers. Don’t reply to something because make sure all solutions have a foundation and give the correct information. If there’s the need to look up some information, ask the client to hold on a minute to provide them with the right info.

Also, it’s essential that you don’t sound like a robot. The support team should have a protocol and a script to follow, but they shouldn’t copy and paste their answers. Each attendant can personalize and adjust the text as needed. They should even be encouraged to add their personalities to the responses.

Moreover, matching the customer’s tone is the skill they need to have. Each customer will either be more formal or more casual. It’s crucial that you speak accordingly to keep them comfortable. Lastly, grammar is essential. Even in a casual conversation, it’s good to keep sentence structure and language rules intact.

Keep average response time to a minimum

This is something you can’t get away with using live chat. The answers need to be quick. An excellent average time can be around 46 seconds. That being said, responses can be as fast as 7 seconds.

However, there is the possibility of sending an automatic reply saying that “we usually reply within 2 minutes, stay with us”. If that is the case, customers will be happy to wait to talk to someone — as long as responses come quickly after that, they probably don’t want to wait 2 minutes for each question they send.

Keep chat visible, but not distracting

As much as we’re talking about live chat and its benefits, people sometimes enter your website to see something that is not remotely related to using the chat. Because of that, it must be strategically placed on your page. It needs to be easy to find and access, but not in a distracting way.

The most common way to use it is with a small chat window on the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Sometimes it’s just a chat icon that you can click to start a conversation. Other times it’s a proactive chat. That is a chat that talks to you before you speak to them. We’ve mentioned it before, the chat that already sends a message when you enter the page asking how they can help.

Additionally, all of your pages, the home page, landing page, and sales page should have an active chat head. That way, you can investigate to find the pages people are most likely to open a chat on.

Provide transcripts

One other way to increase customer satisfaction is by providing them with transcripts of the conversation after they’re done with the service. Also, a way to capture their email is to ask them to contact information to send over the document.

It’s an advantage for both sides. For the customer, because they’ll always have access to that conversation and won’t need to come back and ask the same thing again. While for the company, it’s because the next time that customer comes back, the assistant will know exactly what happened in the last conversation and have enough information to talk to them more efficiently.

Perform surveys

At the end of each conversation, you can set a survey to ask the customer how the service as if it was helpful, how helpful was it, what would they like to change, and how would they rate the service?

How to obtain a live chat solution?

Overall, all you need to do is find a platform that fits your needs as a business. Once you’ve found that, all it takes is to configure the tool and implement it to your website. While it may take a bit of work to deploy and configure a live chat solution, the results make it worthwhile. See it yourself how Shoply leverages Arena’s API to offer great Customer Experience to their customers.

One tip we can give you is to use a platform that integrates with an analytics tool or has it built-in in the system itself. Understanding the results and ROI of the live chat is how you’ll be able to adapt your strategies for the better.

This is an opportunity to bring innovation to your brand’s communication and gain a competitive advantage. If you can’t supply a customer’s needs and keep them satisfied, they will have no problems moving on to another company. In 2021, it’s expected that most companies will have a live chat available.

If you don’t want to be left behind, you should start using live chat right away. Here at Arena, we’ve already helped thousands of brands worldwide with our Live Group Chat solution, and guess what? You can try it yourself too – for free.

Customer Data Platforms vs. Data Management Platforms: Definitive Guide

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Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and Data Management Platforms (DMPs) might look similar, but each plays a different role in marketing. In this post, you will learn their main differences and applications. 

Connecting the dots between your customers and the dozens of touchpoints with your brand is not an easy assignment. There are multiple roads that lead customers to your channels, and, in the best scenario, to buying your products.

If you were to map the physical and digital interactions that guide your customer through the conversion funnel, you would probably find ad pieces, search queries, social media and proprietary content channels, interactions with customer support, and so on.

With so many channels in mind, your team has to make sure your brand’s message is unified across all of them.  You want the path to your content and your products to be as seamless as it can be, right? In order to do that, you need good tools for customer data management.

A report from research company Forrester found that data-driven businesses grow on average 30% more yearly than those ones that don’t systematically harness data within the organization. Data-driven companies are also expected to drive $1.8 trillion by 2021.

Historically, companies have relied on Data Management Platforms (DMPs) and Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) to gather insights, and shape marketing campaigns, and content strategies.

But what if you could complement these tools and engage your customers with even more compelling and personalized messages? That is possible with the emergence of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), a prominent type of data management system.

In this guide, we will explain exactly how Data Management Platforms and Customer Data Platforms work, their differences, and similarities, and how you can use each of them to leverage data-driven marketing in your organization.

Integrating Customer Data Platforms and Data Management Platforms is crucial for your marketing strategy

Customer Data Platforms (CDP): Definition and Examples

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is software capable of unifying customer data from different data systems and customer-facing platforms. It gathers quantitative and qualitative information from several touchpoints with customers, regardless of whether they are recurring customers, new customers, or prospects.

Customer Data Platforms collect all sorts of data in a granular way, combining customer’s demographic data, buying history, social media preferences, call centers, and navigation data.

Basically, CDPs cross data from CRM systems, DMPs, customer support channels, payment methods, social media interactions, and different devices, allowing marketers to build a holistic view of customers and their pain points.

They also gather behavioral information, such as customer’s lifestyles and hobbies, transactional data from the company’s web site, mobile apps, advertising channels, social listening, and email marketing tools.

Here are specific examples of data collected by customer data platforms:

  • Transactional and order data: Exact purchases, renewal dates, customer and product value, abandoned baskets, and stage in the conversion funnel.
  • Behavioral data from web and mobile: Products and categories browsed, clicks, store visits, interaction data, and number of pages visited.
  • Profile data: Contacts and opt-in data and psychographic data points, like details about lifestyle, context, content, and channel preferences.

As marketing executives are expected to keep track of all customer interactions, another great news is those customer data platforms makes its unified customer database accessible to other systems – and even other departments. Wouldn’t it be great to connect marketing, sales, and customer success data, for example?

Unified customer profiles

You might still be wondering how exactly CDPs can capture so much data. That happens because the software facilitates customer data integration, filtering the data through algorithms to determine unified customer profiles.

These profiles are based on navigation patterns from your real customers and prospects, because they are mostly based on first-party data – Personal Identified Information (PII) that comes from customers navigating your own channels.

Such accurate profiles make it a lot easier for marketers to build personas and segment campaigns. Since the data match is consistent across different platforms, CDP is known for offering deterministic matching.

As the processing of data happens in real-time, CDPs also make it possible for you to quickly spot changes in customer behavior.

Data Management Platforms (DMP): Definitions and Use Cases

While leading marketing at a large organization, the least you should have is a data management platform to orchestrate your digital marketing efforts. The Data Management Platform (DMP) market size is expected to drive $3 billion a year by 2023, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15% between 2017 and 2023.

If you are still not familiar with Data Management Platforms, it’s time to get acquainted with them. DMPs are intelligent data warehouses that are majorly used to drive customer segmentation and retargeting campaigns. 

Their main objective is to increase audience engagement and make your ad targeting more effective. A DMP will monitor campaign strategies, identify conversion points and personalize campaigns according to them.

Segmentation on the Data Management Platform (DMP) can be done according to different data types, sources, end-users, and geolocalization.

These platforms focus on third-party, anonymized data collected through navigation cookies; device IDs, and IP addresses. Since the information captured is anonymous, DMPs automatically select data for marketing campaigns based on a process called probabilistic matching or lookalike modeling  – when the system finds customers that are more likely to match your target audience by having similar qualities and behavior.

Here are a few specific examples of data collected by Data Management Platforms:

  • Web and app data: General information about customers who visit your website and app, like age, gender, location, browsing, and purchasing history.
  • Data from second and third-party sources: Anonymous data from partner sites and apps and databases bought from other providers.
  • Data from first-party systems: Sometimes, DMPs can include valuable, but highly sensitive information like customer’s name, address, email address.
  • Data from advertising campaigns: Visualization and navigation data related to search-engine-optimization (SEO) marketing and display advertising campaigns.

The methods for data collection through DMPs also may vary by vendor and industry, but generally, the system gathers information via JavaScript tags, server-to-server integration, and an application programming interface (API).

If a major publisher wants to send its website data to its DMP, for instance, it can use tags. An e-commerce platform, on the other hand, might choose to send data from marketing automation tools.

CDPs vs. DMPs: Key Differences Explained

If you are just starting to dive into marketing data solutions, it is almost inevitable to mistake DMPs for CDPs. Although they share some similarities, they show far more differences when it comes to managing data. The CDP Institute, a platform-agnostic organization in the realm of data platforms, uses a simple quote to explain the distinction between CDPs vs. DMPs. They describe:

“CDPs work with both anonymous and known individuals, storing personally identifiable information’ (PII) such as names, postal addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers, while DMPs work almost exclusively with anonymous entities such as cookies, devices, and IP addresses”.

Yes, the main distinction between DMPs and CDPs is about the type of data they rely on. However, other important data platform differences impact how they are used. Let’s explore them in detail.

Types of Data

As the CDP Institute describes, the greatest difference between CDPs and DMPs lies in their use of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) – or data related to customers’ identity. In marketing terms, a PII is a combination of data used to identify a specific customer.

The logic behind CDPs is that you’ll be targeting individuals: the more data you collect about a single customer, the better will be the experience your brand will provide to him, specifically.  It can help you analyze if the user can be converted to a customer or understand content affinity based on the customer’s inclination to visit articles, for instance.

DMPs, on the other hand, rely on anonymous data – from cookies, devices, and IP addresses –  in hopes to reach customers who match their target profiles. DMPs are useful in capturing generic data, such as noting when a particular user visited a website and how long they spent on the page.

Data Retention

Another major difference between customer data platforms and data management platforms has to do with how long they store data.  CDPs are based on historical records, which means you can store customer data for how long you think it will be useful. You could choose to maintain customers’ records for a long period to build in-depth, accurate customer profiles and nurture relationships. Or, you could set a time limit for it, but having a long record about customers make it easier for you to analyze their lifetime value, for instance.

DMPs, however, store data for shorter periods of time, usually up to 90 days (a cookie’s lifespan)  to target ads and build lookalike audiences.  That’s not always good because it prevents marketers from having the bigger picture of the customer data over time.

Use Cases

Customer Data Platforms are used to gather customer data in their organic form and deploy insights to other marketing platforms. Marketers can use CDPs to coordinate different marketing strategies across different devices and channels. Beyond advertising, CDPs can be used to leverage the integration of marketing teams with other areas, from sales to customer experience (CX). In this post, you can check 20 ways CDPs can be used in marketing.

DMPs, on the other hand, are often constrained to digital advertising activities. They help marketers coordinate campaign optimization, audience modeling, cross-channel segmentation, and retargeting.

Data updates

In CDPs, database updates happen in real-time, while DPMs only allow scheduled database updates. It doesn’t mean that one model is better than the other, once the way you access and activate data will depend on your strategy.

Marketers can lean on CDPs for ongoing marketing efforts with single customers while relying on DMPs to potentialize specific campaigns and track their performance periodically.

What DMPs and CDPs Have in Common?

CDPs and DMPs do not necessarily replace one another. CDPs, specifically, can act as a complementary asset for DMPs. That means that the data gathered by CDPs can be enriched for better segmentation in DMPs, creating better lookalike audience segments. Therefore, you could choose either one or both of these platforms according to your marketing needs.

Generally, DMPs and CDPs will work side by side with customer relationship management systems (CRMs), which store data based on historical and general information such as contact, demographics, and notes about customers made by CRM teams.

Now, to set a common ground between DMPs and CDPs, we made a list of the assets they have in common.

  • Both CDPs and DMPs aim to establish a Single Customer View (SCV) or a 360-degree view to help businesses understand their customers.
  • Both platforms use data for audience activation and for delivering personalized user experiences.
  • Both platforms offer reporting, analysis, and optimization tools

3 Reasons Why a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the Best Choice for Marketers

While different management platforms are always welcome, many marketers are turning their attention to Customer Data Platforms. Despite the growth of data and spend on marketing technology, many CMOs still struggle to demonstrate the revenue impact of their marketing activities on the business.

In this scenario, CPD emerges as a promising tool to centralize valuable insights, automate marketing integrations, and track performance precisely. A study by Forbes shows that 53% of marketing executives are using CDPs to engage with customer’s needs.

To finish this guide, we made a list of 3 ways your marketing team could benefit from a CDP:

1. Accurate personalization

In this day and age, not having a CDP can actually result in a poor experience for your customers. You can’t take the risk of making wrongful recommendations or serve ads that are not relevant within the user’s journey. Because it breaks data silos in organizations, CDPs are generally more effective than DMPs in attracting qualified leads, optimizing marketing budget, and reducing customers’ acquisition costs (CAC).

A CDP allows you to acknowledge what products customers show interest in lately,  as well as their purchase intent and how likely they are to churn.  You can also find out their favorite interaction channels and stages in the customer journey. From there, you can come up with predictive models and improve content strategies for every channel.

2. Better data quality

The focus of marketing leaders is also shifting from third-party data and anonymous data to first-party, single-customer data, which also addresses CDPs’ importance. As data privacy and compliance regulations become more consolidated, organizations increasingly seek to work with their own, integrated data.

3. Integration to other software

CDPs can be integrated into different touchpoints called “delivery platforms” or “engagement platforms”. These can be, for instance, your company’s email marketing or marketing automation software, website, or social media management platform.

Delivery systems interact with the platform to send out messages and collect engagement data that will feedback into the system. These integrations enable the planning of campaigns and the set of messages.

Next Steps

We know that there are many data management solutions in the market. But now that you have learned a bit more about DMPs and CDPs applications, maybe it’s worth strengthening your marketing data solutions.

We recommend you check out Arena’s customer data platform blog section to learn more about the potential of CDPs. You can also click here to get in touch with one of Arena’s consultants and learn the specifics of our CDP.

Customer Centric: what is it, benefits, and how to apply this strategy

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A customer-centric approach is nothing new in businesses, but it is transforming the way companies work nowadays. It’s time to understand more about it.

Being customer-centric is not a new conception in the market. However, with the changes in customer behavior these days, it’s a strategy that is becoming more popular. It’s not only about focusing on the customers, but it’s also about making them the core of your business.

Some time ago, industries used to lead product-centered strategies, meaning that if a product wasn’t selling well, it needed to be renewed and improved. However, as time went by, marketing professionals started to notice the problem was not in the product, but in who was buying it. If you don’t have the right consumer, there’s no point in having the highest quality solution in the market.

Because of that, customer-centric is becoming more and more popular. As a matter of fact, this is far from being a brand-new concept. Companies have known it for ages, but it seems like the notion of it really started to gain attention in recent years.

Since customers now are more educated and informed, their expectations are getting higher by the day. If the company doesn’t find a way to live up to that, it will most likely not survive in the market. To genuinely build the right product and invest in the right marketing campaigns, following a customer-centric strategy is ideal.

What is customer-centric?

Also knowns as client-centric or customer-centricity, this is an approach that aims to put the customer in the center of everything. All strategies and actions the company makes are addressed to the customer. So, if an idea doesn’t fulfill the “will our customer want and like this?” aspect, it probably will be left aside.

Clients are the purpose of a company even starting to work and for that reason, they need to be satisfied with their acquisitions. That means paying attention to the consumer before, during, and after a sale happens — therefore, being directed related to customer experience. The goal is to provide the most positive experience possible.

For a business to have good results, being customer-centric shouldn’t be just a strategy. It should be the core of everything it’s done, creating a customer-centric culture inside the company. That way, every product, service, and publicity will happen around the consumer’s needs and pain points. Because of that, one of the most important things here is to know your consumer.

It’s more than creating a good product, it’s about developing something that’s so good and fit to the client that they don’t want to buy from anywhere else. This approach is to increase customer loyalty and retention rates.

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What are the benefits of customer-centric?

Aside from knowing the consumer and creating all the picture-perfect products and ads for them, there is much more we can talk about a customer-centric approach. All the benefits it brings to a business are surely in your interest, so this is what we’ll address next. 

Increase the customer lifetime value

In recent days, new customers are more expensive than retaining the ones you already have. For that reason, when you work with a customer-centric method, you will eventually increase the customer lifetime value.

In other words, a strategy such as putting the customer at the core of the business will, consequently, give the clients more reasons to be loyal to the brand. That’s what the company needs to focus on: strategies to make current customers buy more and frequently.

Moreover, this will lead to an increase in retention rates and also in overall profits. In fact, a mere 5% increase in customer retention leads to at least a 25% increase in profits — but it can be up to 95%.

Anticipate customers needs

Every area in the market has its competition and it’s important to be known as the innovator. When a customer is at the center of strategies, the problems they have will be explored so the company knows what to look at when building their solutions. With a thorough data collection in real-time, it’s possible to anticipate customer behavior and offer accurate, original products.

Gain a competitive edge

With loyal customers and a real-time data collection strategy, your company will become a strong competitor. Every business will be looking at you as an example of what to do and how to achieve success.

With so much alike solutions and prices, positive customer experience will be the differential of the brand. It’s actually common to see people pay more on services because they offer a unique experience — rather than because of quality.

How to become customer-centric

Well, surely, put the customer at the center of the strategy is the first thing that comes to mind. But it’s about much more than that. To truly enjoy all the advantages of this strategy, there is a need to work with empathy. This means, basically, what we’ve been saying so far: 

First look at the customer, then work on the product.

Since the rise of the internet, customer behavior has been in constant innovation. Every year companies need to renew their strategies so they can keep up with the changes. The good thing is technology has found its way to be one step ahead by creating data-collection platforms that help understand who is the consumer and how they act online.

Overall, some characteristics of a customer-centric business are:

  • use customer data to understand the customer base;
  • analyze who are the best customers and focus on products for them;
  • give special attention to customer success and experience;
  • practice audience engagement;
  • identity opportunities and make data-driven actions.

By using a Customer Data Platform, all information available about a brand’s consumers will be at easy access. From names, ages, and demographic to time spent online, and pages visited. The CDP can collect data from all channels and sources the company is connected with, such as website, online store, social media, payment systems, app, and so on. That’s why a customer-centric approach should be accompanied by a CDP solution.

The more you know about a customer, the better the chances are of having a successful customer-centric strategy. As a matter of fact, to implement this method in your company, it needs to go beyond marketing and sales teams. The entire firm should follow a customer-centric culture. This means customer support, product team, engineers, and whatever other sectors the company has will all be focused on learning and working around the customer.

In addition, it’s important to remember results don’t come overnight. This plan is a long-term project of building durable relationships and providing positive experiences over and over again. After all, customer acquisition costs are way higher than maintaining a devoted customer base. In order for that to happen, the brand needs to be in regular communication with the customer, whether over chats, email, or social media.

Customer-centric marketing

It’s was pretty much implicit that this approach could be used to marketing-related actions. For one, you can’t build a customer relationship without the help of the marketing sector. Indeed, performing an Inbound Marketing plan and delivering content is essential to establish bonds with an audience.

With the assistance of a Customer Data Platform, while being a customer-centric company, every moment of the customer experience can be thought of with minimum effort. Surely, it’s still something that requires the full attention of marketing professionals. However, they can focus more on planning strategies and content than on analyzing data and metrics.

The entire customer journey has to be worked in a marketing strategy. This means personalized content and ads will be sent at every stage of the journey. Even after a purchase is finished, marketing needs to be creating the right materials to send the customer. It’s the only way they’ll become loyal to the brand, maybe even turning into brand advocates and promoters. 

Moreover, based on purchase history and engagement with the brand, personalized recommendations will have a great effect in strengthening the relationship. The essential is focusing on what the customer wants — something you’ll be able to do through data analysis.

How a customer-centric approach impacts sales

In the old days, a sales process was demanding for the salesperson. They had to know every little detail about the product or service and have the ability to negotiate to close as many deals as possible. Nowadays, with the customer-centric strategy, things have taken a turn.

Since the customer is the focal point, a sales rep is no longer the person who showcases the product and tries to sell it at any cost. In fact, they understand the customer pain points, wishes, and demands so they can perform as a consultant — demonstrating how certain products will help solve their issues.

Because of this, it’s just as important for a sales team to have access to CDP data as a marketing team. Customer data is crucial to understand their journey and what is the best way to act in each particular moment. Even though a customer-centric strategy doesn’t attract many new consumers, it does keep the existing client base more loyal. For this reason, identifying the most valuable customers, the ones that generate profits, is a way to assist sales professionals chose their target better.

Customer-centric and customer experience

You must have noticed that customer experience has been mentioned a few times throughout your reading. That’s because there is a relationship between customer-centric and customer experience. But what is it?

In general, customer experience is the relationship a client has with the brand. From their perception at the first contact to their satisfaction after buying a product, every step of the way is a potential influence on their experience. Therefore, a customer-centric company needs to bring a positive customer experience at every moment of the customer journey

Brands that apply Customer-Centric 

For a better comprehension of how a customer-centric company performs (and their results), a few examples can be brought here. These three companies are stand-outs in working with their customers at the center of everything. However, there are many more to keep an eye on for inspiration, such as Nike — their empathy really shows in every marketing campaign they launch.

Amazon

If you have the habit of doing online shopping, you probably already got something from Amazon. Do you remember how was the experience? This is a brand that nobody can question the customer is at the center of their attention. Everything they do is to improve the customer experience.

Details like the 1-click purchase using data previously saved make a difference in obtaining customer loyalty. Besides, people are always talking about their delivery service — they are fast and accurate with their deadlines. Thus, customer satisfaction is never a problem in their hands.

Disney

Disney is a brand that embraces lots of different products and services, such as animated movies, TV channels, and amusement parks. Nonetheless, it’s noticeable how all of their actions are directed to their clients. They work hard to keep their customer-centric culture remarkable. This means customer-centric works beyond digital strategies.

The thing is, people can see the value in the brand. They happily pay more to go to Disney’s park then they would to go to any other park. 

Slack 

Even though this isn’t such a recognized brand as the other two, it’s still worth mentioning their method of work. Slack is a cloud-based communication company that is rapidly growing. Their approach is totally concentrated on the customer experience. 

Instead of having a group of professionals that knows every single detail of the product, they focus on certain areas of expertise. That way, when a customer contacts the team with a question, they are redirected to an expert in the area.

Plus, customer service and product development work in union to always update the service as they notice customers’ needs. Slack is a brand known to be open to feedback from their clients, so more than gathering data, they are regularly monitoring brand mentions so they can meet customers’ expectations.

How to measure the success of a Customer-Centric strategy 

So, you’ve established a customer-centric approach in your company and got everyone working towards it. How do you know if you’re having the desired results? There are three metrics that will give you the answer: churn rate, net promoter score, and customer lifetime value.

Churn rate

First of all, the churn rate. This metric is related to the number of customers who no longer interact and buy your products. To measure it, it’s necessary to divide the number of customers who left in a certain time period (1 month, 6 months, 12 months, and so on) by the average number of costumers in the same time period. If you lost 10 customers out of 100, for example, your churn rate will be 10%.

Since you want your customers to keep engaged and buying from you, in order to have a successful customer-centric approach, your churn rate needs to be the lowest possible.

Net promoter score (NPS)

The NPS, or net promoter score, is about measuring customer loyalty. There is one simple question that revolves around this metric: “how likely are you to recommend us to friends?”. And, in a 0 to 10 scale, people can be classified as detractors, passives, or promoters. 

  • Detractors: From 0 up to 6, they are the first kind, the detractors. It means they are not happy with the product or service and are likely to share negative experiences. 
  • Passives: Between 7 and 8, customers are happy, but not loyal. 
  • Promoters: Lastly, when the classification is 9 and 10, people are most likely brand promoters. This means they are not only satisfied with the brand, but also share positive experiences about it.

Once these data become available, the calculus should be the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. The results need to be higher than 70%, but ideally, for a customer-centric company, they need to be around 80% to 100%.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

The customer-centric strategy is based on creating a long-term healthy relationship with the customers. So, measuring the customer lifetime value, or CLV, is a way to see if your plans are having positive outcomes.

The calculus is multiplying total revenue by the time of the relationship with the customer (total revenue X average customer lifetime). 

CLV measures the revenue a customer generates to the company for as long as they are paying customers. This is the best metric to understand before and after results when applying the customer-centric approach to your business.

Here at Arena, we have the best CDP solution for your business. With our real-time data collection, you’ll be able to know exactly who is your consumer and how to work thinking about them. Learn more about our solutions by talking to a consultant.

Understanding the Difference Between Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Customer Relationship Management

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Customer Data Platforms are still new in the market and they can be mistaken by other solutions that came before them. Here’s the difference between CDP and CRM.

The difference between CDP and CRM needs to be explained. Even though they both gather customer data, they work in distinct ways. While the CDP is a much more complete software, the CRM can still perform very well in many strategies.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the Customer Data Platform (CDP) are both customer data-collection-related software. However, there are many differences between these two systems — from the type of data gathered to why they are used. For example, CRM was developed to assist sales representatives while CDP is much more focused on marketing teams.

Because CRM can be integrated into the CDP, that’s even one more reason they can be mistaken for one another. Nonetheless, the difference between CDP and CRM is there and it needs to be understood. Mainly for the reason of knowing what is the best solution for your company.

So, if you already know what your pain points are, you only need to understand what is a CDP, what is a CRM, and the difference between CDP and CRM — which is everything we’ll explain ahead.

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What is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)?

A Customer Data Platform, commonly known as CDP, it’s a software that gathers, processes, and stores data. It’s a system that was created with the goal of helping marketing teams to be more successful in their strategies. Through a database created by the CDP, marketing professionals can have access to all information about a company’s clients and prospects.

These data can include characteristics such as:

  • name and age;
  • contact;
  • demographic;
  • time online;
  • pages visited;
  • products of interest;
  • which social media they use;
  • how many interactions they made with the company;
  • purchase history.

This is just a general overview of what a CDP can do since there is still a lot more information it can collect. Even more, it’s a thorough platform as it unifies data from several sources, both online and offline. This way, if someone follows the company’s Instagram and then buys a product in a physical store, the software has the ability to recognize it’s the same person, organizing all data about him or her and avoiding data duplication.

Basically, the CDP consumes data from any available source to create its database. Some examples we can name consist of the company’s website, online store, social media, payment systems, and app.

Moreover, a CDP system will always be up-to-date since it works with real-time data collection. This means information begins to be processed and stored from the first contact with the brand. Even if the person doesn’t share personal information on the first visit, their online behavior is being analyzed.

That way, when they do decide to share personal and/or contact data, the system will be updated and unify all that information into a singular customer profile.

Something that’s worth mentioning too is that the data available on a CDP software has no lifetime limit like cookies do. A system like DMP, for instance, has up to 90 days of data storage because it only works with purchased cookies — you’ll understand more about this later on.

Also, a CDP will create unified customer profiles for clients with similar preferences and habits. These can be analyzed and used to create segmentation groups for highly personalized customer journeys. Of course, individual profiles can be used for the same reason.

Working with real and reliable data makes a huge difference in marketing strategy success. Still, other teams inside the company can also benefit from using a Customer Data Platform. For example, sales and product teams can have access to all the data without the need to have reunions and updates from the marketing sector.

Just like that, the whole company is able to work with efficiency to give the customer the best UX possible.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Definition and Advantages

Customer Relationship Management is a system developed to assist mainly sales teams. Yet, nowadays, it’s used by other sectors in a firm, like Human Resources and the supply chain.

Overall, what CRM does is gather customer data through online transactions. So, what makes it different from the CDP? Well, that is the fact it only analyzes personal data from known customers. That means it’s possible to check information like name, age, and contact, but not the number of visits made to the website or which pages were visited by each client.

The main role of Customer Relationship Management software includes:

Even more, it’s a platform that’s used in the B2B (business to business) field, where data allows us to analyze the sales pipeline and see where there are more chances to close a deal.

It’s a guaranteed way to understand more about the consumer and the context where they are before contacting them — which will help increase conversion rates. After all, when you know who you are talking to, customer service is more accurate and the client will have a more pleasant experience.

In spite of the difference between CDP and CRM, both systems perform their job in a way that is noticeable. Customer Relationship Management helps increase profitability and simplify sales processes. Likewise, since CRM is a source to feed the CDP as well, it makes marketing processes easier — this technology allows to make accurate decisions based on real data.

What is a Data Management Platform (DMP)?

It’s important to mention the Data Management Platform (DMP) because it is also a system commonly mistaken for CDP and CRM. In fact, there are similarities, but they are all different software and perform different functions.

In this case, DMP is a program that works with data collection and organization, but there is a big difference from the others: its database is formed by anonymous cookies.

These cookies are purchased data from external providers. That’s why they are anonymous — brands can’t collect and sell personal data. Because the customer decided to share their personal information with a brand, that doesn’t mean the brand can share it with any other company.

Even if they’re anonymous, these data are still a valuable resource to create target audiences and make promotions at large scale. Therefore, marketing teams are the ones who mainly use this platform. Besides, it provides professionals of the area enough support so they can create new segmentation groups to use in ads and overall campaigns. This way, boosts brand awareness and grows the company’s audience.

Also, one last detail to keep in mind about a DMP system: all data gathered can be processed and added to the Customer Data Platform.

What’s the Difference Between a Database and a CRM?

Based on everything that’s been said so far, it’s noticeable some differences between CDP and CRM. Then again, it’s important to show clearly what they are and clarify them a little better.

Application

First of all, Customer Relationship Management seeks to personalize and improve customer relationships. While CDP also has that at its core, it also focuses on how to ameliorate products and services. Thus, bringing a better overall customer experience.

Another factor to take into account is that CRM mainly analyzes sales pipelines looking to transform leads into customers. Though a Customer Data Platform does that as well, its priority is more about getting to know the consumer. Only then, the system do a public segmentation and help in creating personalized campaigns and publicity.

How Data is Collected

While CRM only gathers data of active consumers, CDP includes unknown prospect data too — so that when they decide to share their personal information with the company, the system will recognize who they are and put together all the information. Even more, a difference between CDP and CRM is the amount and type of data that can be collected by each platform.

At the rate Customer Relationship Management stores personal data, such as names, age, address, etc., the CDP knows a lot more — like the time each consumer spent on each page they accessed. Additionally, everything that is related to the brand is a source to increase the CDP’s database, from the company’s website to the payment systems used by the firm.

Customer Journey Tracking

If a client clicks an ad but decides to purchase in another moment, through another source, CRM doesn’t have the capability to connect that it was the same person who took those actions. However, that tracking becomes possible with the CDP.

As previously mentioned, Customer Relationship Management doesn’t gather offline data. So, if a customer interacts with the brand online, but buys on-site, the system can’t connect the dots. CDP, however, has the knowledge to understand and put together that information, following the entire journey someone makes to conclude a purchase.

Data Duplication

For the same reason CRM doesn’t track customer journeys, it ends up with data duplication. Since the system doesn’t have the intelligence to understand the person who clicked an ad and bought on-site as the same one, data ends up being repeated as if it were two separate persons. The same way, this happens if the customer interacts with an email and then on the website, among other cases.

Nonetheless, the CDP configuration enables data processing to avoid duplication. So, even if a customer identifies as Mary Jane Brown in one source and MJ Brown in another, that data will go into a singular customer profile.

IT Support

Even though CDP is a much more complex system than the CRM, it’s this second software that needs more IT support. From configuration to management, the Customer Relationship Management system needs the tech team through the entire process. Meanwhile, the CDP will probably need some support at the first configuration, but, after that, anyone with authorization can easily access the database.

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CDP Benefits for Marketing Professionals

Many benefits can be implied along with the explanation about what is CDP. For instance, how easy it becomes to know your consumer and create the finest content possible. As a matter of fact, that is the main goal of acquiring a CDP solution.

As a part of the advantages, we can name:

  • understanding who is the customer;
  • knowing the pain points of the consumer;
  • getting a complete database;
  • increasing conversion rates;
  • improving ROI;
  • automation of data analysis;
  • lower operational costs.

Currently, the purpose of a company lies much more in understanding who is their consumer than on working on products. Getting the ideal customer is even more important since that will reduce the need to constantly work on the product. Still, developing and perfecting a product or service occupies a high position on the priority list.

When we talk about pains and gains in marketing, the idea is that all clients have different pains that the company will have a solution for. This way, a CDP gives all the necessary data for marketing professionals to find out what is impacting the audience and in what way their product can be used to put an end to the problem.

From the information about the consumer, the team will be able to create exclusive content and advertising that are extremely directed to increase the chances of landing a conversion. To clarify, data about what a person likes and dislikes, where he or she lives, who they live with, where they seek information, what kind of content they pay attention to, amongst many other possibilities. The more you are able to discover, the better the result will be.

Overall, marketing by itself is already a way to increase conversion rates and return on investment. Still, a Customer Data Platform will intensify that factor by giving the most accurate and real data as you can get.

In addition, it won’t be necessary to have a specific professional or group to analyze data into what’s useful or not. By using a CDP solution, that will already be covered — therefore, reducing operational costs and making the process automatized and faster.

How to Strategically Use CDP and CRM

Even when we consider the difference between CDP and CRM, a company can still take advantage of the benefits of both software. Everything that’s processed and stored in the CRM and in the CDP has an important role in two moments.

First, to help small businesses grow. Then, to help companies that already have an established audience and are looking for a large-scale solution to work on digital marketing strategies.

Through marketing strategies, it becomes possible to recognize an issue and present a solution. And with a CRM and CDP database, marketing professionals can identify exactly who the target audience is.

With all the data available, from purchase history to offline habits, the company controls target audience segmentation, creates an automation flow for emails and ads, and analyzes performance metrics. Thus, directing content with precision.

After analyzing the difference between CDP and CRM, have you decided on acquiring a solution like this to your company? Arena will give you the best product to work with data collection, customer experience, and audience engagement.

Plus, our team is always available to answer all of your questions. So, stop delaying the success of your business and talk to one of our consultants right away!