The Customer Data Platform has rapidly evolved over the past few years. Significantly the organization’s interest in CDP has deepened during the Covid-19 crisis. The past year has dramatically transformed the way we live, work, and connect with people. Starting from the retail sector to healthcare and education to the public sector was forced to accelerate their marketing and digital transformation strategies. When it comes to Digital Marketing, the role of Customer Data is inevitable. In this blog let us see about CDP Market Trends expected for 2021.

CDP has become quite popular over a couple of years. The drastic transformation that all the sectors have experienced during the pandemic has made them a crucial part of the tech stack. Since CDPs are becoming more accessible and common, we have listed the top predictions of CDP trends in 2021

Let’s further explore how the CDP market trends are expected to evolve. 

How are CDPs being used?

As mentioned above, the understanding of CDP is highly essential, but how organizations are using it is crucial. A study reveals the below statistics:

• 61% for access and accountability
• 73% for data collection
• 57% for data standardization
• 58% for comprehensive customer profiling and data unification
• 48% for privacy compliance

 CDP for AI and machine learning:

Predictive analytics is not different from CDP solutions. Still, CDP consists of real-time data (demographics, behavioural, transactional), profile data, mobile and IoT data when it comes to various types of data. Hence, predictive analytics on determining customer behaviour can be great with CDP. 

The Evolution of Customer Data Platforms within IT

While there are several advantages to marketing teams, CDP can also offer great value across the company, including data and Information Technology teams. A CDP can aid in data silos breakdown by combining data stored across multiple tools and systems. Identity resolution is the most compelling and critical functionality for the IT teams. The CDP’s capability to stitch anonymous and known customer data across data devices and sources is a challenging feature to replicate. While the CDPs have the ability to ingest data, at the same time, they can also send it across to other systems offering synchronization and syndication capabilities. CDPs will not replace data warehouses or data lakes, and instead, when both CDP and data warehouses are combined, they can offer better customer data across organizations. A data warehouse is a primary data source of a CDP and can efficiently resolve identity, offer decisioning, and enrich data in the data warehouse. 

Better Insights with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

As the data repository grows, the complexity of the data handling and finding insights grows simultaneously. Several CDPs already possess built-in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities that utilize customer data to predict user behaviour. Data-driven prediction tools help in combining a user-friendly interface with modern functional design to let analysts and data scientists work. These smart recommendations offer automation with the ability to configure. Typically CDPs need dedicated resources, but with a combination of ML and AI, you can experience various other opportunities and great value to your data. Getting better insights with AI and ML is another evolving trend to get better automating processes and revealing the association between the user and their journeys. 

Focus on Data Privacy and Compliance

In the recent era, customers seek personalization, but organizations and marketers need to be optimizing data privacy and their communication preferences. Establishing efficient data governance around customer communication and data privacy preferences can help in establishing loyalty and trust with your consumers. Whether it is a highly regulated industry or should comply with general data protection regulation, A CDP can enable you to adhere to data privacy regulations while enhancing the customer experiences. When the data is consolidated into a single consumer record, it makes the task easier to enforce across all communication channel preferences and automate requests. These use case types can save businesses money in operational or compliance costs. 

In terms of the highly regulated industries such as financial services or government or healthcare sector, one-to-one personalization may seem to be out of reach. With all the technical support, let see how the customer data platform can do better data control over the marketing stack by enabling compliance use cases and data privacy. 

Determine if CDP is providing value

Indeed, implementing a CDP does not come cheap. As per the study, over 62% are expected to spend around $100,000 on CDP. When it comes to CDP implementation, there are various digital experience platforms, and not all the CDP offer similar features. Further, it also depends on how much you spend. 

If you wonder if the CDP provides value, the following statistical data can clear your doubts. As per statistics, over 56.8% of the respondent’s state, they anticipate 5 – 10 times of ROI. Most of them measure the success rate with sales and revenue growth, improved customer satisfaction scores, cost savings, and customer acquisition. 

Takeaway

The CDP industry has been developing and expanding for years, and the upcoming years is expected to be its peak. If you have been considering investing in a customer data platform, the industry has finally reached the top of its maturity, providing competitive solutions. As the pandemic continues to force every organization to accelerate its digital strategy, leveraging the full potential of customer data will be essential to enable the personalized experiences your users expect. Organizations increase their competitive benefit by staying ahead of the curve and adopting the change. This is all about CDP Market Trends expected for the year 2021.