The value of customer data platforms (CDPs) lies in their ability to gather all the customer data into one organized place. CDPs can reveal important things about a company’s customers that it can use to build better and deeper relationships. But what has been missing from CDPs is the customer activation layer. The customer data marketing platform (CDMP) represents the continual evolution of data marketing platforms as a result of industry changes in privacy, legislation and consumer preference.

The special thing about a CDMP is that it takes your first-party data and helps you plan how to market better. It knows how to work with your customer information and use it to fuel your marketing strategy and activate on media.

There are four main types of customer data platforms, as defined by the Customer Data Platform Institute.

Data CDPs collect and organize information from different sources, then put all this data in one place, like a big digital filing cabinet. This helps businesses see the bigger picture of their customers’ actions and behaviors.

Analytics CDPs take all the data collected by Data CDPs and turn it into useful insights to show trends, patterns, and even predict what customers might do next.

Campaign CDPs help you create targeted marketing campaigns based on what you’ve learned.

Delivery CDPs make sure your messages reach the right people through various channels like email, social media, or even physical mail. They’re like the messengers that make sure your carefully crafted campaigns get to the right doorstep.

CDPs have evolved beyond their initial role, expanding their capabilities to serve a broader range of needs. Think of a CDP as the foundation of a house, with the potential to build upon it with different capabilities as needed to cater to specific business requirements.

You want to know everything you can about the people who interact with your brand to the extent that they are willing to share it and what you can observe, that is — what they like, what they buy, and how often they interact. This will enable you to make more personalized and meaningful connections with your current customers. Leveraging the characteristics of your best customer will enable you to acquire new customers.

But here’s the challenge: all this information about your customers is often hiding in disconnected places and is not always standardized and cleansed through data normalization.

Such situations call for specialized CDPs that provide functionality for marketing needs. The customer data marketing platform is a fresh take on CDPs, blending the strengths of various solutions into one package designed for marketers. CDMPs offer additional features like data visualization, data enrichment, predictive modeling, and media recommendations to both retain and acquire new customers. They collect all that information from disparate places and systems and put it together to create a 360-degree view of each customer. So instead of seeing just one piece at a time, you get the whole picture, everything about a customer in one place.

Why is this important? Well, with all this information in one spot, you can figure out what people like and don’t like. You can send them special offers or messages that match their interests. It’s like giving each customer a personalized experience, which — and this is the payoff — will enable you to strengthen those relationships and likely have a positive return on sales.

CDMPs also help you organize your data better. You can query customers into different groups based on things like their age, what they buy, or where they live. This helps you create targeted ads or messages that are just right for each group. Plus, CDMPs update on a cadence that creates a healthy data flow depending on the vertical.

Introducing NXTDRIVE

NXTDRIVE is a customer data marketing platform that simplifies the process of uncovering valuable insights from your business’s first-party data, allowing for more personalized and meaningful customer engagement. NXTDRIVE empowers marketers to overcome data challenges, delivering a unified, consultative solution to streamline first-party data utilization, boost marketing intelligence, and drive personalized customer engagement for optimized marketing performance.

Unlike traditional CDPs, NXTDRIVE enriches first-party data with Vericast’s proprietary Consumer Graph™ data, creating media experiments tailored to the ideal audience. This gives NXTDRIVE the unique ability to influence both acquisition and retention, curating and augmenting the most crucial data to drive targeted marketing efforts. With NXTDRIVE marketers only have to work with one partner, in one solution.

Key Features of NXTDRIVE

Capture and Synthesize Customer Data: NXTDRIVE empowers retailers to collect, integrate, and enrich data to deliver highly targeted and personalized campaigns that resonate with customers.

End-to-End Multichannel Experience: Seamlessly manage digital and print marketing campaigns, integrating with existing databases and tech stacks for efficient execution and measurement.

Automated Recommendation Engine: Gain insights and generate audiences for both digital and traditional channels within a single tool, enhancing customer discovery and engagement.

Marketing Optimization and Efficiency: Swiftly iterate and optimize campaigns across channels using integrated measurement, reporting and recommendations, maximizing campaign effectiveness.

As the retail landscape continues to evolve, the importance of data-driven marketing strategies cannot be overstated. CDPs have undergone a significant transformation, and NXTDRIVE stands at the forefront of this evolution, offering a comprehensive suite of tools that help brands capture, synthesize, and leverage customer data for powerful and personalized marketing campaigns.

For further insights into practical use cases, you might find these resources useful:

• Learn to avoid these common pitfalls when using first-party data
• Discover the real value of first-party data

Learn how NXTDRIVE cleans, enhances and uncovers opportunties from your brand’s first-party data.

_{1 Customer Data Platform Institute, “What is a CDP?,” August 2023.}