The importance of a CDP in marketing: using data to boost user engagement

If you’ve been working in marketing for a while, you know that understanding and addressing consumer needs and preferences is more crucial than ever. With the growing demand for personalised experiences, marketers need powerful tools to stay ahead. This is where the importance of a CDP in marketing comes into play. 

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) provide marketers with deep insights into consumer behaviour, allowing the creation of campaigns that truly resonate with the audience. By leveraging personalisation, digital marketers can transform data into meaningful interactions, ensuring they stand out and build lasting relationships with their customers.

This article explores the significance of CDPs and how they differentiate themselves from other data management systems. Experts already demonstrated the importance of a CDP in marketing, and if you don’t know it yet, it is time to dive in! 

1. The role of a CDP in marketing

Let’s start with some context, shall we? Before diving into the world of CDPs, it’s essential to establish a common understanding of what they are. 

What is a CDP in marketing?

There are various definitions of what a CDP is, but this one from Salesforce captures it well: 

In other words, a CDP is a software that collects and organises customer data from multiple touchpoints into a single, coherent customer database that other systems can access and use. 

But why? The reason is pretty simple: to offer a unified customer view in order to personalise marketing efforts, improve customer experience and ultimately, boost user engagement. 

From simple data aggregation tools to advanced analytics and real-time personalisation, CDPs have become vital in helping brands better understand and engage their customers. 

To illustrate this, let’s mention some CDPs used by some of our clients that we’re sure you have already heard from! 

• Adobe Experience Platform centralises and standardises customer data from various sources, creating real-time customer profiles for personalised experiences and insights.
• Tealium AudienceStream collects and unifies customer data from multiple touchpoints, specialising in real-time audience segmentation.
• SAP Customer Data Cloud can also be used as a CDP. It manages and consolidates customer data, ensuring compliance and providing personalised customer interactions through a unified customer profile.
• Raptor, part of the QNTM group, focuses on collecting and analysing customer behaviour data to deliver personalised recommendations and marketing automation.
• Imagino integrates and harmonises customer data from different sources, providing detailed customer insights and enabling targeted marketing campaigns.

Differences between CDPs and other data management systems (DMPs, CRMs, etc.)

CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) and DMPs (Data Management Platforms) are part of CDPs’ evolution, as they are their older cousins. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools focus on managing interactions with current and potential customers, primarily for sales, marketing, and service purposes. Marketers often manually update data in CRMs and this data typically remains within departmental silos, making data sharing challenging.

Data Management Platforms (DMPs) serve as storehouses for collecting and organising vast volumes of data from various sources. DMPs specialise in audience segmentation and targeting for digital advertising, enabling marketers to optimise campaigns based on data insights. However, DMPs generally work with anonymised data and are mainly used for third-party data integration.

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), on the other hand, unify and activate customer data across all touchpoints. What sets CDPs apart from CRMs and DMPs is their ability to integrate data from multiple sources to create unified customer profiles. This comprehensive view allows for personalised marketing campaigns, enhances customer experiences, and boosts engagement through advanced analytics and real-time data activation.

In summary: 

How does a CDP in marketing work

Alright, we’re getting there! We’ve understood what CDPs do and why they are so valuable. Now, let’s dive into how they work! 

CDPs gather data from multiple touchpoints and channels, such as websites, mobile apps, social media and email. This data is processed and organised to create unified customer profiles. The platform also uses advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyse the data and generate insights. These insights are then used to inform marketing strategies. 

A technical explanation 

In more technical words, CDPs consist of several components: 

1. Data ingestion: CDPs collect data from various sources through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), SDKs (Software Development Kits), and integrations with other systems. 
2. Data processing: once the data is ingested, it undergoes cleaning which involves deduplication, formatting, unification and enrichment to ensure accuracy and consistency.
3. Data storage: the processed data is then stored in a centralised database, often using cloud-based storage to ensure scalability and accessibility.
4. Data activation: finally, the unified data is made available for use in marketing campaigns, analytics, and customer service. 

Data unification and customer profiles

We mentioned that an essential function of a CDP is data unification. But what is it? Data unification is the process of merging data from different sources to create comprehensive customer profiles. These profiles consolidate information such as: 

• Demographic details
• Purchase history
• Browsing behaviour
• Interaction history

Because CDPs provide a complete view of every customer, as well as their behaviour and preferences, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts accordingly, which, as we know, is crucial for delivering personalised experiences and boosting engagement. 

Types of data processed by a CDP in marketing

CDPs handle different kinds of data to build these customer profiles we are talking about. 

• First-party data: this data is directly collected by brands from their audience, customers and prospects. It includes information gathered through interactions such as website visits, form submissions, or contest participations. First-party data is highly valuable because it is obtained from your channels and reflects real interactions with your brand.
• Zero-party data: this is data that consumers intentionally and proactively share with a company. It includes preferences, feedback and optional information that users willingly provide to improve their experience with a brand. 

Yes, you got it. We have already told it numerous times: first- and zero-party data collection is the future of digital marketing and personalisation. With the decline of third-party data usage, the focus is shifting to collecting transparent and consented data.  

But how can you effectively collect and integrate first- and zero-party data into CDPs? Leveraging gamification and interactive marketing strategies is key. These methods use game-like elements and mechanics to engage users and provide a value exchange to the audience, making the data collection process more appealing. 

The Qualifio platform, for example, has put this very early into practice to become a reference in data collection. By using interactive formats like quizzes, polls, and puzzles, brands can transform the data collection process into an engaging and rewarding experience, leading to a higher volume of valuable data.

Gamification increases user engagement and motivation, resulting in more substantial collections of first- and zero-party data. This data can then be seamlessly integrated into CDPs. Tools like Qualifio facilitate this integration by automatically injecting collected data into CDPs, which then ingest, process, store, and activate the data to refine and enhance customer profiles.

So why use a CDP in marketing?

Personalised content delivery

CDPs analyse customer data to identify patterns and preferences, allowing marketers to deliver customised content that aligns with customers’ interests. This means presenting content that captures attention and encourages meaningful interactions, leading to higher conversion rates and increased customer satisfaction.

Real-time interaction and responsiveness

CDPs excel at real-time data processing, which is crucial. Real-time interaction allows brands to respond instantly to customer actions, creating engaging experiences. For example, if a customer shows interest in a particular product, the CDP can trigger personalised messages or offers in real-time, boosting conversion rates and creating a sense of immediacy. 

Marketing efforts are time-sensitive. Managing to track a user’s journey and trigger personalised content makes conversion likely. This continuous optimisation of engagement also provides insights into what works and what doesn’t (similar to instantaneous AB testing). Companies can now create engaging interactions, leading to stronger and long-lasting relationships with their audiences. 

Omni-channel marketing & integration

The good thing about using a CDP in marketing is that it allows a general overview of customer interactions across all touchpoints (websites, social media, email, apps). Furthermore, CDPs help brands maintain coherence in their messaging and engagement strategies, thanks to the information they collect from their audience through all channels.

Omni-channel integration involves the seamless coordination of customer data and interactions across various platforms and touchpoints, ensuring a unified and coherent customer journey. By integrating data from websites, social media, email, mobile apps, and in-store interactions, brands can create a holistic view of the customer. This integration enables data synchronisation, ensuring that customer information is up-to-date and accurate across all channels. Consequently, it allows for more personalised and effective marketing strategies.

2. Qualifio, the use of a CDP in marketing and use cases

From Qualifio to CDPs

When combined with the appropriate CDP, a data collection platform like Qualifio offers numerous possibilities:

• Data collection: through engaging formats such as quizzes, surveys, polls, and games, Qualifio helps gather high-quality first-party and zero-party data. This data is essential for building detailed customer profiles within a CDP.
• Real-time data integration: our platform can seamlessly integrate with CDPs to ensure that the data collected from interactive campaigns is immediately available for analysis and activation. This ensures real-time responsiveness and the ability to personalise user interactions.
• Enhanced personalisation: With the enriched data collected through Qualifio, CDPs can create even more precise customer segments. This leads to the delivery of highly personalised content, improving engagement and conversion rates.
• Compliance and trust: Qualifio helps brands comply with GDPR by ensuring transparent data collection processes with users’ consent. This builds trust and guarantees that the data used by CDPs is ethically sourced.

By using Qualifio to collect first- and zero-party data and integrating it with a CDP, brands can maximise the potential of customer data. Many of our clients have already embraced this approach, using gamification to effectively gather and use data within their CDPs. 

L’Oréal EMEA: a data collection strategy that is worth it

There is no need to introduce L’Oréal, the world’s leading beauty company,  that use Qualifio to engage with their audiences more meaningfully and stand out from the crowd. To achieve this objective, one thing was clear: they had to focus on gathering more profound knowledge about their consumers to make informed marketing decisions and deliver innovative, relevant actions that build lasting relationships. Their number one ally in this challenge? First- and zero-party data collection!

L’Oréal launched a massive data capture program using the Qualifio platform, involving 28 brands across the EMEA region. These brands created around 700 campaigns in one year using interactive formats, reaching approximately 5 million users and achieving an impressive 60 to 70% account creation rate.

Just imagine the powerful impact this vast amount of data has. By collecting high-quality first- and zero-party data through engaging formats like quizzes, surveys, polls, and games, Qualifio enables brands to gather invaluable customer insights. All this data collected by different brands in different countries can seamlessly be sent to a central CDP, allowing for precise user segmentation into “beauty profiles” and the delivery of highly personalised content. This ensures that marketing efforts resonate deeply with audiences, fulfilling their need for meaningful interactions.

Unilever and Qualifio: from lead generation to consumer conversion and engagement

Unilever, one of the world’s most prominent FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies, also chose Qualifio to tackle the challenge of standing out from the crowd by addressing the right content to their massive audience. 

Unilever started using the Qualifio’s interactive formats to boost their data collection and engagement efforts for some of their brands in the Netherlands. Shortly after, they extended the use of the platform to additional brands in Belgium and Spain. More European markets and brands later followed, including Denmark, Finland, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, and these have recently been joined by Italy, Hungary, and Norway.

In a matter of one year, Unilever brands in the Dutch, Belgian and Spanish markets launched a combined total of 70 Qualifio campaigns, achieving excellent results:

• 472,000 participants
• 181,000 unique participants
• 48% opt-in rate for newsletter and marketing communications

Just imagine the power that could be unleashed by injecting all this data into a proper CDP. By doing so, Unilever can harness the full potential of their audience knowledge, enabling precise user segmentation and the delivery of highly personalised content. This integration would not only enhance engagement and conversion rates but also foster stronger, more meaningful relationships with their audience across all their markets.

Conclusion

Customer Data Platforms have become essential for boosting user engagement and driving better marketing outcomes. By collecting and integrating data from multiple touchpoints, CDPs offer a unified view of each customer, enabling highly personalised and effective marketing strategies.

The evolution of the place of a CDP in marketing from simple data aggregation tools to sophisticated platforms incorporating real-time data processing, advanced analytics, and machine learning capabilities has revolutionised how brands understand and engage with their customers. Unlike traditional systems like CRMs and DMPs, CDPs push the boundaries by focusing on in-depth customer data analytics, enhancing customer experiences.

With the growing importance of first-party and zero-party data and the decreasing reliability of third-party data, CDPs address the need for more ethical and privacy-conscious data practices. Qualifio, as the leading data collection platform in Europe, plays a crucial role by enabling brands to collect first-party and zero-party data through interactive marketing campaigns. This data is seamlessly integrated into CDPs, ensuring accuracy and compliance with privacy regulations. 

By using a CDP, brands can achieve significant benefits, including:. 

• Enhanced personalisation
• Data compliance
• Customer retention 
• Scalability