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What is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)? 2024 Guide

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How Can Marketers Use a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to Improve Metrics?

Marketers can use a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to collect and analyze customer data, enhance customer journeys, and streamline marketing efforts. By focusing on key features, understanding customer behavior, and improving specific metrics, marketers can see tangible benefits from using a CDP.

What Are the Key Features of a CDP for Marketers?

A CDP collects and unifies customer data from various touchpoints. It can store first-party data like email interactions and purchase history. This data consolidation enables more accurate audience segmentation and personalized marketing campaigns.

CDPs provide real-time data to enhance customer experience. For example, marketers can send timely recommendations or offers to customers based on their online behavior. The data is available for the long term, allowing continuous refinement of marketing strategies.

Integrations with tools like BigCommerce and Shopify help in synchronizing data across platforms. This ensures that marketing campaigns are consistent across all channels, from newsletters to social media ads.

How Does a CDP Help in Understanding Customer Behavior?

Customer behavior is central to effective marketing. A CDP can track and analyze behavioral data, such as website visits and online reviews. It helps in understanding what motivates customers, their preferences, and their overall opinions about a brand.

For example, a CDP can monitor email open rates and click-through rates. This data provides insights into what type of content resonates with customers. Marketers can tailor their campaigns based on this information to increase engagement.

CDPs also allow for tracking lifestyle and career information. Knowing such details helps in creating targeted marketing messages. A user interested in fitness might receive different offers compared to someone interested in home decor. This level of personalization can significantly improve conversion rates.

What Metrics Can Be Improved with a CDP?

A well-implemented CDP can improve several key marketing metrics. Conversion rates can see a boost due to better-targeted campaigns. By analyzing consumer behavior, marketers can create more effective sales funnels.

Click-through rates on emails and online ads are likely to increase. The ability to send personalized content tailored to individual preferences makes marketing efforts more effective. Open rates for emails may also improve as a result of relevant, targeted messaging.

Customer retention metrics benefit from a CDP as well. By understanding the lifecycle and family information of a customer, marketers can offer timely incentives to keep them engaged. Metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) are positively impacted, showing the long-term benefits of using a CDP.

More about how CDPs can influence marketing metrics can be found at 11 Main customer data platform (CDP) use cases for marketers.

What Are the Benefits of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) for Ecommerce Managers?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) offers several benefits for ecommerce managers, including improved customer segmentation and personalized marketing.

How Does a CDP Enhance Customer Segmentation?

A CDP enhances customer segmentation by collecting and integrating data from multiple sources. This consolidated data allows for more precise segmentation of the audience.

Ecommerce managers can use this data to create detailed customer segments based on demographics, behavior, and purchase history. For instance, tracking customer behavior across different channels, from email to browsing history, helps build a comprehensive profile.

One key benefit is centralized data. Having all customer data in one place makes it easier to identify trends and common characteristics among distinct customer groups. This is crucial for targeting marketing efforts more effectively.

Additionally, the ability to segment customers accurately can improve campaign performance. By targeting specific segments with tailored messages, ecommerce managers can increase engagement and conversion rates. Learn more about this from Bloomreach on customer data platforms.

What Role Does a CDP Play in Customer Personalization?

The role of a CDP in customer personalization is significant. It allows for personalized customer experiences by leveraging the extensive data collected.

A CDP integrates data from various touchpoints, enabling ecommerce managers to deliver personalized marketing messages. This can include personalized product recommendations, tailored email campaigns, and targeted advertisements.

One of the key advantages is dynamic content personalization. By understanding individual customer preferences, ecommerce managers can dynamically alter website content, email messages, and promotions that resonate more with their audience.

Further, real-time data processing allows for immediate personalization. This means that as soon as a customer completes an action, like viewing a product, the platform can instantly adjust to display related items or offers.

Lastly, the trust factor with data integrity ensures that sensitive customer information is used responsibly, enhancing the overall customer experience. More insights can be found on HubSpot’s guide to Customer Data Platforms.

What Should Marketers Look for When Choosing a Customer Data Platform (CDP)?

Marketers need to ensure a CDP offers essential features and integration capabilities that align with their business needs. Key areas to focus on include core features, integration options, and compatibility with existing systems.

Which CDP Features Are Essential for Marketers?

Identity Resolution: A top feature is the ability to create a single customer profile from data across multiple channels, devices, and touchpoints. This helps marketers understand customer interactions better.

Data Management: Superior CDPs manage both first-party data and platform data efficiently. They should store customer data long-term and allow easy retrieval.

Segmentation and Personalization: Marketers benefit from CDPs that offer advanced segmentation and personalization tools. This enables targeted campaigns tailored to customer preferences.

Compliance: CDPs must be compliant with data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA. This ensures that customer data is handled responsibly.

Integration with Analytics Tools: CDPs should integrate with tools like Salesforce for enhanced customer insights and sales strategies.

For more on essential CDP features, see Customer Data Platform Basics.

How to Evaluate the Integration Capabilities of a CDP?

Data Sources: Evaluate if the CDP can gather data from multiple sources such as data warehouses, CRMs, and social media. A good example can be found in how some platforms gather data from multiple sources.

Real-time Data Syncing: Real-time data syncing is vital for timely marketing actions. Ensure the CDP supports real-time data updates.

Compatibility: Ensure the CDP is compatible with existing systems, particularly your data management platform (DMP) and other marketing tools.

Ease of Integration: The CDP should offer simple API access and plugins to connect with your current marketing stack.

Scalability: Consider if the CDP can scale as your business grows. The ability to handle larger data sets and more users is crucial.

Choosing the right CDP involves careful evaluation of these integration capabilities to ensure seamless data flow and effective marketing strategies.

How Does a Customer Data Platform (CDP) Drive Data-Driven Marketing?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) significantly enhances marketing efforts by leveraging customer data to create more personalized and effective marketing campaigns. It enables real-time marketing and supports various data-driven marketing strategies.

What Are Data-Driven Marketing Strategies Enabled by a CDP?

A CDP allows marketers to utilize first-party data and third-party data to build a comprehensive understanding of individual customers. By integrating identity resolution and creating a unified customer profile, businesses can tailor their marketing campaigns more precisely.

Machine learning algorithms and analytics tools within a CDP help generate valuable insights from transactional data and qualitative data. This helps in segmenting customers based on demographic information, preferences, and behaviors. Marketing automation platforms connected to a CDP can then execute personalized campaigns across multiple channels.

A CDP also supports data activation, enabling businesses to utilize descriptive data and reporting to measure the success of their marketing efforts. Leveraging artificial intelligence within the CDP provides advanced customer insights, ensuring that every interaction is relevant and engaging.

How Does a CDP Facilitate Real-Time Marketing?

Real-time marketing is made possible by the real-time customer interactions that a CDP supports. By aggregating data from various apps, websites, and customer touchpoints, a CDP updates centralized customer profiles in real time.

This enables the creation of a unified view of the customer, allowing for immediate responses to customer actions. For example, when a customer makes a purchase, the CDP can trigger related marketing campaigns in seconds. This immediate response capability enhances customer experiences and boosts engagement rates.

CDPs also integrate with existing marketing platforms and the broader martech stack, ensuring that customer data flows seamlessly between systems. This integration helps in real-time decision-making, providing marketers with up-to-date business intelligence and marketing analysis that drives better results.

For more details, you can read what a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is and how it helps in personalizing the customer experience at scale. Additionally, explore the different Enterprise Data Platform options available.

How Can Ecommerce Managers Leverage a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to Increase Sales?

Ecommerce managers can use a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to gain deeper insights into customer behaviors and optimize marketing strategies. This leads to more personalized experiences and higher sales.

What Sales Tactics Can Be Enhanced with a CDP?

A CDP allows ecommerce managers to create detailed customer profiles by collecting data from various sources, such as purchase history and social media activity. This data can be used to tailor marketing campaigns to individual customer needs. Personalized emails, product recommendations, and targeted offers can significantly improve conversion rates.

CDPs also help with retargeting efforts by tracking site traffic and customer interactions across channels. Managers can use this information to re-engage customers who abandoned their carts, leading to higher conversion rates. Additionally, understanding customer lifetime value helps in segmenting high-value customers for special loyalty programs and exclusive offers.

How Does a CDP Support Omnichannel Marketing?

CDPs help ecommerce managers coordinate a seamless customer journey across different touchpoints. By integrating data from email, social media, and website activity, a CDP ensures that the customer experience is consistent across all channels.

This data orchestration allows for more effective campaign management. For example, a customer who clicks on a social media ad can receive follow-up emails tailored to their interests, driving them back to the website for a purchase.

Omnichannel strategies supported by a CDP also track the success of various marketing efforts. By analyzing metrics like site traffic and conversion rates, managers can refine their strategies to focus on the most effective channels, improving overall campaign performance.

For more detailed strategies on integrating customer data, visit CDP Basics.

Explore CDP strategies to better understand how to implement these tactics effectively.

How to Implement a Customer Data Platform (CDP) Successfully?

Implementing a Customer Data Platform (CDP) involves multiple steps to ensure reliable data management and integration. This process demands careful planning and attention to data quality.

What Are the Steps for Implementing a CDP?

First, assess your readiness by evaluating your organization’s goals, technical requirements, and data infrastructure. Engaging stakeholders from different departments is crucial in this phase to align everyone’s objectives.

Next, select the right CDP by comparing features and capabilities that meet your needs. A customer data platform that provides robust data ingestion, integration, and analytics is ideal.

Then, prepare your data by identifying what customer data you have and where it resides. Consider using tools to facilitate data collection from various sources, such as CRM systems and eCommerce platforms.

After that, implement ETL processes to extract, load, and transform your data. Ensuring your CDP can seamlessly integrate with existing data lakes and transactional systems is vital for consistent data flow.

Finally, test and refine your CDP setup. Conduct pilot tests to ensure data is accurately managed and insights are actionable. Continually monitor performance and make adjustments as needed.

How to Ensure Data Quality and Consistency in a CDP?

Maintaining data quality and consistency starts with effective data management platforms. Implement strong data governance policies to define how data should be collected, stored, and accessed.

Standardize data formats and naming conventions across all sources. This practice prevents inconsistencies and simplifies data integration. Use automated tools to cleanse and validate incoming data, ensuring it is free from errors and duplicates.

Establish a single source of truth by centralizing customer data in the CDP. This approach eliminates silos and ensures that every department works with the same accurate data.

Monitor data flow continuously. Regular audits and automated monitoring tools help detect anomalies early, safeguarding data integrity.

Train your team on best practices for data entry and management. Educating end-users on the importance of data accuracy enhances overall efficiency and reliability.

How Does a Customer Data Platform (CDP) Ensure Data Privacy and Security?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) ensures data privacy and security by implementing strict protocols and advanced technologies. These methods protect customer information and comply with regulations like the GDPR and CCPA.

What Measures Does a CDP Take for Data Privacy?

A CDP takes several measures to ensure data privacy. One significant step is compliance with data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. Compliance means that customers have control over how their personal data is used. They can grant or withdraw consent, request data deletion, and know how their data is being utilized.

Data governance is another crucial aspect. CDPs enforce strict data governance policies to manage data accuracy, usability, and security. These policies ensure that personal customer data is handled responsibly and ethically.

CDPs also combat data silos by centralizing data from various sources into one secure platform. This centralization makes it easier to monitor data privacy practices and avoid unauthorized data access.

How Is Data Secured in a CDP?

Data security in a CDP is achieved through various technological solutions. Encryption methods are used to protect data both in transit and at rest. This means that even if data is intercepted, it cannot be read without the decryption key.

Authentication and authorization protocols ensure that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive data. Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security, requiring multiple forms of verification before access is granted.

CDPs also undergo regular security audits and assessments to identify and fix vulnerabilities. By continuously monitoring security protocols, CDPs maintain a secure environment for customer data.

Additionally, data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA require that businesses employ strict security measures. Compliance with these regulations ensures that customer information is stored and handled with the utmost care, reducing the risk of breaches.

Frequently Asked Questions

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are vital for businesses looking to improve customer engagement, making sense of large amounts of customer data, and integrating with various marketing technologies.

How do Customer Data Platforms differ from Customer Relationship Management systems?

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems serve distinct purposes. CDPs collect data from different sources, creating a unified customer profile. In contrast, CRMs manage customer interactions and relationships. While a CRM focuses on sales and customer service activities, a CDP offers a centralized database to enhance customer experiences at scale by providing detailed insights.

Can you list some top Customer Data Platforms available in the market?

Several reputable CDPs are available today. Some of the top choices include Segment for its robust integration capabilities and Tealium for its real-time customer data orchestration. Other notable platforms are Adobe Experience Platform, Treasure Data, and BlueConic, each offering unique features tailored to different business needs.

What are the key functionalities of a Customer Data Platform?

A CDP comes with several essential functionalities. It integrates customer data from multiple sources, provides a unified customer profile, and enables real-time data analysis. Additionally, it supports data privacy and compliance requirements. These features make the data more accessible and useful across different marketing and sales systems.

In what ways can a business benefit from implementing a CDP?

Implementing a CDP brings numerous advantages. It allows businesses to create personalized marketing campaigns, improving customer engagement and satisfaction. The platform aids in identifying customer trends and preferences. Companies can thus refine their strategies. Overall, it drives better decision-making by providing a comprehensive view of customer behaviors.

What are some common use cases for Customer Data Platforms?

Common use cases involve personalized marketing, customer segmentation, and improved customer support. Businesses use CDPs to deliver tailored content and offers to customers. They also leverage the platform for precise customer segmentation based on data-driven insights. Additionally, CDPs enhance customer support by providing unified and updated customer information.

How does a Customer Data Platform integrate with other marketing technologies?

CDPs integrate seamlessly with various marketing technologies by acting as a central data hub. They can connect with tools like HubSpot and Salesforce to synchronize customer data. This integration ensures that marketing, sales, and support teams have access to consistent and comprehensive customer information, enabling more effective campaigns and improved customer experiences.

Get More Customers With A Retarget Customer Data Platform

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A customer data platform needs the right fuel to achieve growth—data from sales systems, customer loyalty data, insights from programmatic advertising, and advanced analytics all help. Ultimately, the way to lift conversion rates requires significant first-party data. 

Why First Party Data Should Be The Core Of Your Marketing Strategy

If you ask most marketing teams, they’ll say they are drowning in data from analytics tools. The burden gets even more significant when you factor in customer insights from third-party data. That’s why your customer data platforms need to emphasize direct interactions with customers (i.e., first-party data).

To make the most out of your marketing activities and get better retargeting results, you need the proper foundation in place first. With the right marketing technology, it is far easier to focus your advertising campaigns to achieve better click-through rates and increase conversion rates.

Gathering Your First-Party Data For Retargeting

Fulfilling your business strategy is easier when you can make Facebook ads, email marketing, and overall digital marketing deliver more results. Effectively gathering first-party data into a centralized database makes it easier to provide personalized experiences.

To build accurate customer profiles, look at the data you already have, like purchase history, insights from your legacy systems, and other data points available in your marketing automation platform. These data points are vital to building a company’s first-party data foundation. However, there is much more high-quality customer data you can gather.

4 Marketing Opportunities To Gather And Use First Party Data 

Online events and community experiences give you an unusual way to transform anonymous visitors into potential customers. To achieve this feat, your tech stack needs to be equipped with marketing automation tools like Arena Personas and live chat. Once your email systems and preferred marketing solution are ready, it’s time to engage your target audiences. 

1) Offer Online Experiences To Potential Customers

Using marketing campaigns to gather today from various customer segments is easier when there is a value exchange. Every single customer should get something out of interacting with your company like a community experience, pricing (e.g. discounts), early access to products or useful insights.

For example, you can use Arena live chat to deepen your customer relationships by running engaging online events. As you add more engaging experiences, customer acquisition cost may go up for a period of time. In the long term, providing customers live event experiences can raise customer retention.

Instead of attempting to understand the desires of anonymous segments, tracking user engagement in different types of online activity (e.g. chat and website use) leads to more actionable insights. Let’s break down how gathering first-party data with an online experience can help.

E-Commerce Business Use Case

For example, B2C customers may react with excitement in a chat session during a livestream event. To see how this information could be used, consider e-commerce brands. They may be considering launching 10 products over the next quarter but  can use this insight to improve the results of product launches. By observing the chat and related behavior patterns like website clicks, you can estimate demand for products (e.g. “Hey, we noticed over a hundred people wanted the new blue shirt!”). 

With this insight in mind, there are at least two ways you can get more business. First, you can run a targeted campaign to your current customers and reference your chat experience (e.g. “We saw that many of you are excited about our new linen blue shirts! Order by Friday and you’ll get 10% off!”). Second, you can then make changes on your advertising platform to emphasize the new shirt. 

2) Create Campaigns For Your Current Customers 

Marketing campaigns often focus on bringing in net new customers and prospects. In addition to that objective, it’s important to engage your current customers. In many respects, it’s easier to  execute data-driven personalization is to focus on customers. Unlike anonymous website visitors, customers have signaled what they value with their buying behavior including offline purchases. Let’s illustrate this use case for enterprise-level companies in the software industry. 

B2B Enterprise Use Case

Selling complex business software often feels like a Herculean task. Achieving business success often requires a full team of sales professionals like account executives, sales development representatives and others. Further, the marketing team is constantly working hard to collect customer stories, optimizing online advertising campaigns and more.

In this context, it’s vital to make the most of your customer base. For example, you might have a significant percentage of customers on a mid tier plan while your goal is to emphasize the top tier enterprise plan. In that case, you might offer online experiences showcasing the success of users in the top tier plan and encourage them to share their success stories. For instance, enterprises users might rave about the analytics capabilities and native integrations available in your top tier plan. Running a live event where customers have the opportunity to share their experiences with each other is powerful!

There are some downsides to this type of campaign. It requires significant insight into customer behavior. It’s vital to know your customer satisfaction levels so that you shine a spotlight on your most delighted customers. This type of campaign also requires significant collaboration between sales and marketing. Fortunately, solutions like Arena Personas make such marketing efforts easier to arrange. 

3) Get Better Lookalike Audiences

In Facebook advertising, it has been a common practice to create a lookalike audience by uploading your customer list. Facebook then uses its customer match capabilities to find more people who are similar to your current customers. This approach to Facebook advertising isn’t your only option. What if your target audience isn’t on Facebook or Facebook campaigns aren’t producing satisfactory results? The first party data you gather can help you to market more effectively.

The downside to relying entirely on an advertising platform for lookalike audiences is that you are dependent on their database. If some or many of your customers are not active users on Facebook, retargeting via the Facebook pixel may not work well.

The alternative is to build your own lookalike audiences. With a large enough audience, you may be able to pursue granular segmentation in a custom audience as shown in the following example.

Individual Audience Factors

Every purchase is ultimately made by an individual, whether they are buying as a consumer or at a company. Therefore, it is usually wise to start with these factors.

  • Age: understanding the typical age profile of your ideal audience helps you to decide which channels, creative and offers to use.
  • Gender: it is helpful to know if gender differences are relevant to your market.
  • Geography: contrast the geography of your website visitors to your ideal customer profile.
  • Interests: find out the topics, publications and media your audience likes. If you offer online event experiences like virtual conferences, look at registration records to see 

B2B Audience Factors

If you are focused on appealing to B2B audiences, the following customer attributes are important. 

  • Industry: to minimize confusion, use a standard industry classification like the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
  • Company Size: use number of employees or revenue as a filter. 
  • Technology Stack: If you offer technology products or services, knowing the customer’s tech stack is helpful. For example, does it matter if the customer uses Salesforce?

Is Your Audience Segment Too Large?

Audience segmentation can become less useful when the audience becomes too large. IF you end up with an audience segment with millions of individual customers, it may need to be narrowed down. Leverage feedback from the sales team and customer service to narrow the list. They may be able to help you identify the customer attributes associated with the most valuable customers (e.g. people who tend to move through the customer journey quickly).

4) Lapsed Customer Engagement

When a customer cancels their account or stops buying for a long period of time, all hope is not lost. In many cases, you have a good chance to reengaging lapsed customers with a retargeting campaign. To build this type of audience segment, it’s important to choose who to include and who to exclude.

Start by defining a lapsed customer. For simplicity, let’s define a lapsed customer as a prior customer whose last purchase was six to twelve months ago. Once you have that list, it’s vital to filter it further using your customer relationship management data. Specifically, you want to exclude customers who complained or experienced significant problems. Reengaging such former customers is much more challenging and may require more guidance from the sales team.

Now that you have your audience segment prepared, prepare a custom advertising campaign. B2C companies often find that a simple “we’ve missed you!” style message with an incentive (e.g. 10% off coupon) is an effective way to bring back customers. For B2B campaigns, communicating new features or capabilities can help. Even better, reengage lapsed customers by inviting them to an online event.

The Final Ingredient To Successful Retargeting: Leverage Market Awareness

Once you choose one of the ideas from above to execute, there is one more critical point to consider: market awareness. The three part market funnel – top of funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of funnel – gives us a good framework. Let’s pair the market funnel concept with the audience segmentation we covered earlier.

1) Top of Funnel

In the top of the marketing funnel, most prospects have little to no understanding of your product and how it might help them. This is the marketing equivalent of cold calling. The advantage of top funnel marketing is that you have the greatest opportunity because this segment is always the biggest. The disadvantage is that you usually need to be more patient.

With a top of funnel focus, leveraging the “Offer Online Experiences To Potential Customers” strategy makes sense. In this case, your primary marketing campaign would focus on inviting prospects to an online event. After the event, you would follow up with retargeting campaigns to offer an event recording or other assets to give people a reason to opt in to your marketing.

If you use events, use our how to promote your virtual event guide to get more attendees.

2) Middle of Funnel

Also known as the evaluation stage, the middle of the funnel is an intermediate step in the customer journey. In this stage, the potential customer has some awareness of what you offer. It’s now up to you to nurture the prospect further. In contrast to top of funnel, you likely already have some prospect or customer data in place so you can start off with a retargeting campaign.

Consider adapting the “Create Campaigns For Your Current Customers” concept to middle of the funnel campaigns. Highlighting your current customers via an event, case study or interview is a powerful way to prove your credibility. Using your customer data platform, identify prospects who have interacted with your brand in the past 3 months (e.g. attended a webinar, participated in a live chat etc). Once you have identified this audience segment, create a marketing campaign to emphasize your case studies.

3) Bottom of Funnel

Converting leads at the bottom of the marketing funnel depends on your business model. If customers make an online purchase, a campaign offering a deadline and incentive is often a good bet. For B2B or enterprise sales, running marketing campaigns may not be your best best. Instead, it may be more effective to collaborate with the sales team to find out what type of campaigns they want. For example, highly customized and targeted direct mail campaigns may be the best way forward.

Use Arena Personas To Get More of The Right Data

Data driven personalization campaigns and advanced audience segmentation all depend on having high quality data. To help companies get more of the data they need to grow, use Arena Personas. It’s the fastest way to collect and import first-party data into your customer data platform. Then you’ll find it far easier to run retargeting campaigns across the marketing funnel.

Metaverse: virtual world experiences using CDP

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The next phase of the Internet – the Metaverse – is coming. There’s a lot of hype and uncertainty around how to make the most of the Metaverse. The technology underpinning metaverse experiences are still evolving. For a quick introduction to the Metaverse and what it means for marketing, check out our post “4 reasons the metaverse matters to marketers and what to do now.”

In addition to technology, two factors will drive metaverse success: good content built on a foundation of customer insights.

Why The Metaverse Is Like Fire

Fire was one of the most potent forces in early history. Used effectively, fire helped us thrive in hostile environments, prepare food, and more. Yet, fire can also hurt people and destroy buildings if used poorly. The difference between fire creating warmth and value and disaster lies in planning and skills. Finding success in the Metaverse is no different.

What does this have to do with the Metaverse and marketing, you ask?

Without the right plan, a poorly executed Metaverse virtual world may hurt your brand. Launching an irrelevant metaverse experience that does not speak to your audience’s interests will consume your team’s time without creating much value.

The Twin Pillars of a Successful Virtual World Experience

As a newer technology, it will take experimentation and patience to succeed in the Metaverse. However, random trial and error efforts take far too long. That’s why you need to think

Content

You might object to focusing on content first in the metaverse experience. Indeed, there is excellent value in emphasizing community and connection among your audience. That said, we need to give your audience why they should join your metaverse experience instead of doing something else with their time. Engaging content, therefore, forms a vital pillar of an engaging virtual world experience.

The type of content you create for a virtual world will vary depending on the technologies and scope of your plans. Use the following list as a starting point to create your content experiences.

  • Event scripts. You may feature presentations, speeches, and talks in your virtual world. Taking the time to create an engaging script and visual aids will make your event more enticing. 
  • Worldbuilding content. To create an immersive experience, every facet of the world must be planned. Do you want to create a virtual town experience? Or scale down to a virtual booth at a conference?
  • Narrative experiences. Take inspiration from the successful video games experiences that feature virtual worlds. Users have the experience to act out stories and interact with other characters. This storytelling approach is another way to use content in your company
  • Gamification ideas. Gamification means using video game mechanics (e.g., experience points, in-game rewards, leaderboards, etc.) to drive engagement. Your virtual world may use these types of mechanisms to encourage people to spend time in the virtual world.

Customer insight

The other pillar of a thriving virtual world is customer insight. Without this insight, you might create an entertaining world that fails to speak to the needs of your audience. A customer data platform is a virtual resource to inform the creation of virtual world experiences. Assuming you have collected data for at least a few months, you will be able to validate your virtual world content ideas.

Here are some helpful questions to sort through which virtual event experience ideas are worth pursuing.

  • What is your customer profile?

Ideally, you want to have quantitative (e.g. age, gender, location) and qualitative insights (e.g. what ideas and concepts get them excited).

  • What questions do customers ask most often?

Check your; live chat platform and staff to see what questions come up most often. For example, you may notice that a large percentage of your customer base asks technical support questions. In that case, your virtual world experience should start with a high degree of technical support.

  • What digital content has driven the highest engagement and conversions?

When possible, look for content linked to conversions (e.g., purchases or lead generation). If this information is not available, look for content that has driven the highest engagement in user time, likes, and similar metrics.

If you lack robust customer insights, get started today with the Arena customer data platform.

Using your customer data platform in the Metaverse

There are several ways to use your customer data platform to create and optimize virtual world experiences.

Plan and create a virtual world

A customer data platform can give you valuable insights about the kinds of content your users have enjoyed the most in the past. Based on this information, you can plan more successful metaverse experiences. For example, if your customers like virtual events that emphasize networking, then you can plan a virtual event with a focus on virtual events

Run a virtual world

A customer data platform can support running a virtual world. For example, you may use tracking links and discount codes to track purchases back to metaverse experiences. Tracking customer behavior is especially important when you offer large virtual worlds with many different experiences. Without tracking, you will not know which experiences and content resonate most with customers.

Optimize a virtual world experience

Once a customer leaves a metaverse experience, they will continue interacting with your brand. They might share feedback about what they liked and disliked in response to a survey or mention it during a live chat session. With a customer data platform, you can keep all of these forms of feedback organized.

Get Started The With Arena Customer Data Platform

Before investing time and effort in a virtual world, you need to understand your customers first. To keep your staff organized, install the Arena customer data platform. Once you have the application installed, you will have a single place to view customer activity. You can see the entire customer journey – website chat sessions, interactions with the sales team, and purchases – in one place. Get started today by learning more about the; Arena customer data platform.

14 Ways Live Chat a Customer Service Game-Changer

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Live Chat is transforming customer care across many segments. Discover how this tool is leading a “micro revolution” to customer support and sales teams.

What are the main pillars that sustain the relationship between companies and customers? Let’s think for a second about brands that are known for excellent customer experience.

Digital apps, fintech, eCommerce, you name it. No matter the segment, it’s clear that successful brands offer more than great products, advertising, and content. They have a superior approach towards customer service and always try to make sure communication is dynamic and assertive. 

Live Chat is the ultimate tool to offer that. After all, in the age of instant communication, people are not willing to wait much time to have their questions answered. Besides, they increasingly want to count on omnichannel support.

Well, Live Chat is changing Customer Service in many ways. In this post, we’ll explore how this tool is boosting productivity and efficiency in Customer Service and customer satisfaction. 

The context behind Live Chat

For those who are not familiar with Live Chat, here goes a brief description of it.  Live Chat is a tool that allows customers to ask for support via instant messages directly on a company’s website or app while browsing products and viewing content.

Besides, some brands have integrated their Live Chat tools to other messaging platforms to provide a seamless support experience across different brand channels. 

By why exactly is Live Chat disrupting the customer care business? According to Forrester’s study,; 33% of consumers now expect to see Live Chat services offered on every website.

The same report says the number of U.S. online shoppers who use live Chat has increased from 38% to 58% in the last five years. 

Live Chat is mostly used in B2C businesses by support agents and Customer Care teams, but it can also be used by Customer Success and Sales teams in B2B companies.

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Why Live Chat can take Customer Experience to the next level

Live Chat makes communication between brands and their customers much quicker and organic as it emulates conversation platforms. 

Why have the customers reaching for support through email or phone if you can help them in real-time through Live Chat? Here are a few reasons Live Chat is changing customer service in companies. 

1) Enhancing brand experience

It’s no secret customers are more demanding when it comes to customer experience. They have become used to personalized messages and offers in every aspect of their lives, and thus they have high expectations regarding customer service. 

According to Salesforce, 80% of customers believe brand experience is just as important as a brand’s products or services. Another study by Capgemini shows that the same percentage of customers are willing to spend more money to have better customer service. 

Following this logic, customer service can be the central element to differentiate your brand from the competition.

2) Providing fast responses

A few years ago, it might have been OK to make customers wait a couple of days to get responses to their requests via phone or email. That is no longer the truth. 

A study from Hubspot says 90% of customers rate “immediate response” as very important when they have a query. 

Having Live Chat on your website or app gives you the ability to answer queries in real-time. In addition, Live Chat has proven to provide higher customer satisfaction rates than channels such as phone, email, and social media. 

3) Decreasing resolution time 

From a business perspective, Live Chat also has helped companies streamline their customer support processes and optimize customer care strategies. 

With Live Chat, you can route customers to specific departments and agents according to the keywords they use in the chat, for instance, avoiding repeated communication across different support channels. Because it offers instant communication, Live Chat can potentially decrease the average answer and requests resolution time. 

4) Boosting brands Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Agile and effective customer service is the key to drive customer satisfaction. If you want to improve your company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), Live Chat is the way to go. Offering real-time, personalized support shows that your company is truly customer-centric;. That is why many companies notice better retention rates after using this type of software.

5) Non-intrusive communication

The best thing about Live Chat is that it happens in an inviting and non-intrusive way. Unlike emails that flood up your mailbox or phone calls from support agents that happen at the worst timing, Live Chat offers an easy way for customers to get done with your requests – in the best timing for them.

It is estimated that 46% of consumers prefer live chat over email and social media, for example. 

Live Chat empowers customers in many ways, allowing multiple interactions on a single web interface. That is vital in today’s digital landscape. According to a study by E-Consultancy, 51% of customers prefer live chat to other channels precisely because it allows them to continue performing other tasks.

6) Using Live Chat Data to improve overall business 

Apart from the; benefits Live Chat brings to daily tasks of customer service, it can serve as a strategic tool to enhance your brand’s marketing, sales, and product strategies.

Because Live Chat provides detailed insights about your website visitors’ journey, it can offer valuable data to help companies grow their bottom lines. 

You can use Live Chat customer insights for:

  • Mapping the customer journey and identifying frequent complaints
  • Personalizing your conversations according to different buyer personas
  • Routing chats to the right department or team
  • Feeding CRM and other data management tools, like Customer Data Platform
  • Improving support agents training according to customers needs and response
  • Improving customer service important KPIs, like first response time and average queue time

7) Understanding where customers come from

One of the challenges for online players is to understand how their Customer Care efforts connect to online conversions. 

Some Live Chat tools allow you to connect the dots between chat sessions and the marketing sources that led the customer to the chat, whether it was a campaign, a disclaimer on the website, or a web search.  Some tools allow you to integrate Live Chat to Google Analytics, for instance, and see a bigger picture of what led customers to chat sessions. 

Such data is important to determine if your marketing channels are actually bringing people to your page and how they are connected to your Live Chat. 

8)  Increasing conversion rates

The study by Forrester shows that consumers who use Live Chat are 2.8x more likely to convert to a sale than those who don’t.  By allowing users to get support without moving to other channels, Live Chat makes buying decisions much quicker and can boost conversion rates.

Placing Live Chat across different touchpoints on a website can also be a good idea. Some companies are using Live Chat in their checkout pages, which helps to solve doubts about payments and shipping, for instance, and thus reduces cart abandonment rates.  

9) Avoiding repetitive tasks for customers and support agents

With a Live Chat customer service tool integrated into your CRM or Data Management Platform (DMP), your team can access customer data or notes from previous interactions to assist customers. That way, you save time that could otherwise be wasted in repetitive conversations. 

Actually, 72% of customers expect customer support agents to know their details like buying history and detailed information — without asking for them.

10) Increasing customers Lifetime Value (LTV) 

Having a sustainable repeat customer base is the dream of every brand, right? Research shows that 63% of consumers who used live chat on a website are likely to return to that site. That is why Live Chat is boosting Customer Life Time Value (LTV) among companies that use it, adding value not just to customer service, but to the whole business. 

11) Cross-selling and upselling products 

Around 33% of the money spent online comes from repeat customers and they generally spend 3 times as much as one time shoppers. Once you build a loyal community of shoppers around your brand, you have the chance to offer proactive communication through Live Chat whenever they access your website. 

Your team can start the conversation, suggesting personalized offers and products through the chat according to the customers buying history and interests, leveraging upselling and cross-selling rates. 

12) Increasing customer engagement

With Live Chat, you are likely to see a significant rise in customer engagement. Because Live Chat emulates messaging apps, it makes interactions with brands more fluid and organic. 

Besides, you can add layers of engagement to Live Chat by adopting a few features in it, such as:

  • Co-browsing: Co-browsing, in the context of Live Chat, is when a customer and a support agent browse a page together during a chat session. It delivers a guided experience and it’s a great way to guide customers through form fill-ups and complex applications, for instance. 
  • Vídeo and Voice Chat: Customers sometimes have requests that are complex or take too long to explain by text. With that in mind, some companies are adding Vídeo and Voice Chat to their Live Chat experience. Not only can it help solve queries quicker, but it also makes interactions more dynamic and personal. 

13) Increasing productivity in Customer Care

At last, another triumph of Live Chat is to leverage Customer Care productivity. It reduces the queue time and enables faster resolution of issues, but beyond that, it allows agents to handle multiple chats at the same time. 

As a result, Live Chat can boost important productivity KPIs such as first response time (FRT), average queue time, number of chats answered, and so on. 

14) Human touch

In the era of hyper-automation and chatbots;, a human approach to customer experience might give you extra points in the relationship with customers. Even though automated emails and chatbots; can benefit customer support, users have shown that they want to interact with humans whenever possible.

The 2019 CGS Customer Service Chatbots & Channels Survey found out that 86% of American customers prefer to talk to humans over chatbots. With Live Chat, you can give customers personalized, warm assistance in an easy, user-friendly way. Besides, much like at physical stores, consumers are more likely to buy when they are treated well.

Conclusion

As we have seen, Live Chat has the potential to change Customer Care across many different industries, and your company shouldn’t be left behind. 

Live Chat can optimize many aspects of a digital business, and executives are increasingly aware of its importance. A 2018 survey from Bold 360 found out that 71% of respondents believe Live Chat will surpass traditional customer service communication channels by 2021.

If your organization has not yet incorporated Live Chat into customer service, it’s time to change that.

Arena; has one of the most complete Live Chat solutions on the market, and the best thing is that you can try it for free. 
Click here to access the free trial of our Live Chat and start answering your customers quickly right now!

Customer Data Platform: where audience data and sales strategy meet

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Are you having trouble improving conversion rates and connecting customer insights from different touchpoints? A Customer Data Platform helps you understand your audience in a granular way and enables you to craft better campaigns and product offers.

Understanding customers always required brands to look at their audience through different lenses – whether through other marketing channels, relationship platforms, or customer segments. On the verge of Big Data culture, however, just having a fragmented view of your audience is not enough anymore. 

What drives sales is the ability brands have to deliver a cohesive customer experience (CX) across different channels, which is only possible by fully understanding channel correlations and cause and effect connectors along the audience’s touchpoints. 

These days, people interact with brands more often than ever before, and so making sense of different interactions is a lot more complicated than it once was.

Recent research by Ascend2 and Research Partners consulted more than a thousand marketers and found that 43% see data integration across different platforms as one of their main goals. In contrast, 37% wish to enrich data quality and completeness.

No wonder executives are investing more and more in their technology stacks: one-third of industry professionals believe it’s essential to have the right technologies for data collection and analysis, according to a study by Digital Doughnut. Currently, 44% of marketers say they already have data management platforms.

But amongst all data platforms available, the Customer Data Platform is undoubtedly the best you can have if your goal is to understand your audience better and drive more sales. We’ll show you why!

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What is CDP? And how does it work?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software that unifies customer data from different data systems and customer-facing platforms. It combines customer’s demographic data, buying history, social media and content preferences, call centers, and customer navigation data. 

Once implemented, the CDP acts as a 360º data solution: it collects, filters integrates, and analyzes customers’ data in real-time. 

CDPs can ingest structured and unstructured data from Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM), Data Management Platform (DMPs), customer support channels, eCommerce websites and apps, payment systems, social media, etc. They also track behavior across different devices.

By acting as a hub for many data sources, the Customer Data Platform allows marketers to build a holistic view of single customers and their pain points. 

But how exactly do they organize so much data? Well, CDPs rely mostly on first-party data so they can determine the so-called Unified Customer Profiles, which are profiles based on information from real customers and prospects.

That makes the data match consistent across different platforms, and hence the audience insights end up being much more reliable for marketers.

Check out some practical examples of data collected by customer data platforms:

  • Transactional data: order details, customer and product value, renewal dates, abandoned baskets, stage in the conversion funnel
  • Behavioral data from web and mobile: Products and categories browsed, clicks, store visits, interaction data, number of pages visited, etc
  • Profile data: Contact and opt-in data, psychographic data, details about channel and content preferences, lifestyle, etc
  • Brand Relationship Data: Email interactions with customer support, social listening insights, social media comments, etc

The end-to-end role of a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

In today’s competitive landscape, marketing executives are expected to keep track of all customer interactions and connect marketing efforts to other departments, such as sales and customer success, to provide customers with a satisfactory customer experience (CX).

The rush for data management optimization is seen clearly by the CDP industry’s growth in recent years. According to the Customer Data Platform Institute, the number of CDPs available in the market doubled from 2017 to 2018. Now, there are more than 50 CDPs in the industry worldwide.

The truth is that CDP can be an asset for every department within a company, working as an end-to-end solution to enrich customer experience. We’ll soon explore how brands can use CDPs to drive sales, but first, let’s explore CDPs’ overall benefits for companies. 

Breaking Data Silos

CDPs integrate data from multiple departments, which encourages different teams to collaborate and speeds operational routines. With a CDP, marketing, sales, customer experience, and support teams can be on the same page regarding customers’ needs.

Automating marketing workflow

Because they automate a lot of the data integration and analysis, CDPs make the lives of marketing professionals a lot easier, freeing them from repetitive work and allowing them to spend more time in strategic planning. 

Speeding up decision-making

As data processing happens in real-time in the CDP, it also makes it possible for companies to easily spot changes in customer behavior and act upon them while quickly sharing relevant insights with different teams.

The power of CDPs in driving sales

As we pointed out, CDPs are an excellent liaison point for different departments and can be at the heart of customer experience management. But to what extent can CDPs contribute to final sales? 

There are many ways CDPs can directly or indirectly improve conversion rates, drive customer loyalty, and decrease churn and bounce rates. In fact, a report from Forbes Insights highlighted that 44% of organization leaders believe the Customer Data Platform is helping them drive customer loyalty and increase ROI.

We have made a list of 11 ways CDPs can help you drive sales while also better understanding your customer base. 

1) Know your customers across multiple devices or channels

The mandatory philosophy among marketers is that they should reach their customers on the right channel, at the right moment, and with the right messages and products. To do that, they need to let go of assumptions and understand exactly how users interact with them across different channels and devices.

With all such information concentrated in the CDP, marketers can tailor better experiences and advertising segmentation across devices, increasing campaign success chances

2) Accurately track shopping events

A CDP is a great tool for retailers and eCommerce as it tracks customers’ buying behaviors and relevant transactional data in significant volume. CDPs allow them to keep a consistent record of the products customers added to the cart, the duration of checkout and order completion, abandoned carts, and other information that is crucial for online operations.

3) Improve pricing 

Collecting data from many sources – from your eCommerce website, app, or even physical stores – CDPs help you clarify how much customers are spending and how much they are willing to pay for your products according to their stage in the customer journey, search, and navigation patterns. 

CDPs can also be connected to your supply chain systems to help you adjust costs and manage the relationship with suppliers, which are aspects that often impact pricing. With such information updated in real-time, you can be more assertive in your pricing strategy.

4) Offer personalized discounts and product recommendations

Having a holistic customer profile at hand also allows brands to offer clients personalized discounts and product recommendations that ultimately can turn them into loyal customers.

A study by Salesforce shows that 57% of customers are willing to share their data to exchange personalized offers or discounts. In comparison, 52% will share their data in exchange for product recommendations that meet their needs.

While knowing customers in detail, companies’ teams can offer precisely what users need to advance in the sales funnel – whether it is a discount, a free trial, reviews from peers, or a personal approach from the support team.

5) Connect physical and digital shopping experiences

For retailers that also operate offline, a CDP can connect insights from online and offline systems, which is often a challenge for companies looking forward to addressing omnichannel experiences. A survey from the CMO Council found only 7% of respondents said they are always able to deliver real-time, data-driven experiences across physical and digital touchpoints.

With a CDP, brands can offer better customer experience from the website to the physical store – and vice-versa – increasing sales opportunities.

6) Be quick to react to customers interactions

Being quick to answer customer’s signals is also crucial for both customer acquisition and retention strategies. Still, many marketers struggle with the amount of real-time insights they can access and act upon. 

Research published by MediaPost, commissioned by technology consultancy Vanson Bourne, shows that only a minority of marketers feel they can immediately react to online customer interactions. According to the study, only 43% act quickly over customer behavior in the pre-purchase stage, 38% during purchase, and just 35% in the post-purchase phase.

By providing CRM, sales, and marketing teams with a continuous data stream, CDPs can make customer data more actionable. Isn’t that the point of having so much customer data? 

7) Prevent churn and cart abandonment 

Retail managers and online marketers are often investigating why customers abandon carts or churn after a few purchases. A CDP can give you deep insights into what stands in the way between your customers and the checkout.  

It helps you spot gaps throughout the entire customer journey (and not just in specific channels) that might be leading customers to give up purchases. Are there problems with website usability? Is your customer support too slow? 

By figuring out what is wrong, your team can work on fixing these gaps and segmenting churn prevention campaigns to attract customers back. 

8) Optimize Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and Conversion Rates

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable. 

With the Customer Data Platform’s assertiveness, companies can better streamline marketing segmentation and customer success efforts, thus optimizing results related to Conversion Rates (CR), Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC), and Customer Lifetime Value.

9) Qualify your leads

One of the best aspects of CDP for sales is that it allows you to qualify your leads better and nurture the relationship with customers across their entire lifecycle. Not only it supports marketers in optimizing strategies to attract qualified customers; it also gives you the necessary information to engage with customers who are ready to buy. 

A study by Forbes shows, for instance, that 53% of marketing executives are using CDPs to engage with existing customers’ needs, increasing the likelihood that they will become recurring clients and the chances of upselling them. 

10) Enhance predictive marketing

Predicting customer behavior and preferences are what helps giant retailers like Amazon to drive sales. This marketing technique, which determines the probability of success of different marketing strategies, is essentially fueled by high volumes of customer data, which only a CDP could support. 

Armed with a CDP, data scientists and marketing analysts can gather data from several sources and apply predictive models with a great accuracy level.

11) Improve attribution models

With so many touchpoints with the audience, it is often difficult for companies to determine accurate attribution models and discover which channels drive more sales. According to Google, almost 80% of all transaction value involves at least two marketing channel interactions – a number that can be much higher depending on your business’s complexity.

The Customer Data Platform can optimize the attribution framework since marketers can send attribution data to the CDP and have a more accurate view of campaign performance.

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Why CDPs are more complete than other data management platforms

So you have learned the many benefits that CDPs can bring to the table. Many leaders still ask themselves if they should ditch their existing data management tools for a CDP. What has to be clear for marketers and sales managers is that different data platforms don’t need to exclude each other. 

A Customer Data Platform can potentialize the outcomes of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and Data Management Platforms (DMPs).

In a survey by The Relevancy Group conducted in 2018 with US executive marketers, about 6 in 10 respondents said they were integrating CRM data into their CDP. 

From a digital advertising perspective, CDPs can make the work of Data Management Platforms a lot more precise as well – with at least 29% of marketers feeding CDPs with digital advertising response data.

Although CDPs, DMPs, and CRM systems share some similarities, they all have different purposes within a company, with CDP serving as a primary data hub to make your teams more confident in responding to customers’ needs. 

Want to become an expert in CDP?

If you plan to purchase a CDP for your company, the next step is to check out the platforms available in the market and consider which one is the best fit for your business goals.

If you feel like it is time to learn more about CDPs, we invite you to download our eBook Customer Data Platform: the future of marketing and sales.

The eBook will give you details about CDPs’ features, how they work, and how they can be incorporated into your marketing and sales strategies. We hope you enjoy it!