This April, Digital Additive is diving into customer data platforms (CDP) and how they can transform customer engagement, streamline data management, and so much more.
We’ve turned to our partners at Search Discovery for additional insights on not only CDPs in general, but also to better understand why CDPs have risen to prominence in the last couple of years and what unique strengths Salesforce’s CDP capabilities can offer the companies using its platform.
We asked Dan O’Neil, Search Discovery’s Managing Director of Partnerships and Salesforce Business Lead, to fill us in on Search Discovery’s background and what he sees as the future for CDP.
Tell us a little bit about Search Discovery. How did you get started? What are your areas of expertise?
Search Discovery is a data transformation and activation company. Our focus is helping our clients use data to make the right decisions. We started 18 years ago as a search marketing agency that was always striving to discover more and better data to make better recommendations to our clients. Then, about ten years ago, we saw the criticality of data in every business decision and pivoted to make that the focus of our business. We support our clients with Strategy, Data & Cloud Engineering, Data Science, Analytics, Optimization, Technology Development, and Digital Marketing.
What unique strengths does Search Discovery see within the Salesforce ecosystem and particularly its CDP capabilities?
The Salesforce ecosystem is an incredibly powerful platform for clients to transform their business, providing both CDP capabilities and omnichannel personalization.
Salesforce’s capabilities are a combination of acquired and developed capabilities. In 2020, Salesforce acquired Evergage (now Marketing Cloud Personalization), one of the leading real-time omnichannel experience orchestration tools. At the same time, Salesforce has invested heavily in developing its native CDP platform, Data Cloud, to ensure it fully integrates data across its core cloud solutions.
Data Cloud can connect real-time data across all Salesforce clouds (connecting the Customer 360), and when integrated with the omnichannel orchestration capabilities of Personalization, we believe Salesforce can step outside its Martech legacy and drive business impact across the enterprise.
Why have CDPs risen to prominence over the last couple of years? Why is it a smarter approach?
For decades, marketers have attempted to create a 360-degree view of their customers. The thinking went like this: If we, the marketers, could combine data on one customer in one profile — including all a customer’s information across all systems and transactions — then, with this unified view, we could anticipate and respond to the customer’s needs at every touchpoint.
Now, this is possible! We can create a complete and accurate customer profile thanks to advances in data storage and computing capabilities and reduced costs for moving processes to the cloud.
CDPs are a more intelligent approach because they unleash growth and improve profitability for the enterprise by enabling decisions based on accurate and complete data about its customers.
Tell us more about your approach to implementations and the services you offer?
By their nature, CDP implementations are complex, and many CDPs offer unique solutions and functionality. Our first step in an implementation is to understand the client’s business challenges and how they expect the CDP to impact their business. We’ve developed a CDP ROI calculator and can take the client through a workshop to help them understand what’s possible and establish expectations.
We often find that as we start connecting data sources in a CDP, the source systems don’t contain exactly the information that different parts of the business assume they contain. So, we’ll help clients with a data assessment and help them develop a data strategy and governance process if necessary to ensure they’re capturing the data they need to make the CDP more impactful over time.
We help clients select and implement the right CDP that meets their needs. We can work collaboratively with their team through the process, provide documentation and knowledge transfer at the completion, or provide ongoing support for those clients who need more time to allocate and develop their internal resources.
How can a CDP drive personalized, one-to-one communication?
This is the most important question clients ask. The honest answer is that a CDP provides rich profiles that enable previously difficult or impossible customer segmentation, scoring, and recommendations. However, clients should also understand that a CDP doesn’t create customer engagement. Instead, it must be connected to other systems like marketing, sales, and customer service. Those systems can then leverage the insights in the CDP to deliver personalized experiences that create engagement.
What can success with a CDP look like for a client?
We measure success in three ways: Increased revenue, reduced cost, and/or improved client satisfaction. Uniquely, a correctly implemented CDP can drive improvements across the enterprise. While there are obvious benefits for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service, a CDP can also benefit departments such as Product Management, Finance, Operations, Risk, Strategic Sourcing, and more. A CDP can help every business area make data-informed decisions.
Want a complete picture of what personalization and CDP implementation can look like for your company? You can count on Digital Additive — and the strength of our partnerships with companies like Search Discovery — to help you make the most of your Salesforce investment. Ready to know more? Contact us today.
