In the past couple years, the customer data platform (CDP) has been the shiny new toy that data-driven marketers have been getting excited about. It was said to be the perfect solution to every omnichannel marketer’s needs.
The CDP was born out of envy; about six years ago, ad tech players took note of how martech was harnessing its CRM data by leveraging the emerging range of world-class cloud-based software platforms. Similarly, the ad tech guys were inspired to better leverage their third-party data by investing in data management platforms for their digital ad campaigns.
As first- and second-party data became increasingly central to marketers’ data architectures, advertisers began to focus on the benefits of stitching together the wide range of a brand’s data signals from the entirety of its marketing and advertising channels and platforms including CRM. The CDP was designed to help the industry go beyond last-click attribution models and finally achieve a more sophisticated and comprehensive view of the customer journey.
A multitude of players started to roll out CDPs, but as a testament to the accelerated pace of change and innovation in our space, the CDP is on the verge of going from the shiny new toy to yesterday’s news in just a few scant years. As we begin the new year, 2019 might very well turn out to be the year of the CIP—the next-generation CDP.
Like the CDP, the CIP (Customer Intelligence Platform) can manage vast amounts of customer data from a range of different sources, aggregating it all to provide marketers with a more comprehensive view of each customer. The CIP also includes enhancements that enable the integration of e-commerce as well as sales data for machine learning algorithms to digest for more powerful, actionable insights. With a CIP, marketers can coordinate messaging across channels and devices to reach their most engaged customers with personalized interactions. CIPs also enable omnichannel attribution, so marketers can identify their most effective channels and adjust their strategy accordingly.
At IgnitionOne, we are doing our part to offer a powerful Customer Intelligence Platform that is compatible with marketers’ existing technology. The ease with which a CIP is able to power omnichannel engagement from a single platform means that marketers will be able to free up resources for more strategic endeavors. If CIP adoption hits critical mass in the coming years, digital marketing will become more effective and more productive than ever.