“The amount of customer data doubles every two years, but 99% of new data is never used, analyzed or transformed to drive customer experience” – MIT

As consumers demand more from the brands they interact with, making sense of the torrents of data they produce throughout their experiences both offline and online remains a challenge. Consumer journeys have continued to move from a linear awareness-to-purchase funnel to an unpredictable series of experiences online. To deliver on this new reality, brands need to invest in tools to drive clarity and simplify the experience matrix. It is in this space that Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) play and joining us this week to set the record straight on the basics, was Abbas Makhdum, Global Director of Product Marketing, Data & AI, at Oracle Advertising and CX, with a comprehensive demo on how Oracle’s CDP, Unity, works.

“Data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire new customers, 6 times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times as likely be profitable as a result” (McKinsey & Company) – but where does one start?

Makhdum suggests that starting with customer intelligence is critical. By integrating both predictive and deterministic data to gain a singular view of a customer through a unified profile, CDPs allow for mulitiple data points to effectively speak to one another, granting brands the ability to create and activate unique experiences for individual consumers across different departments and marketing channels in real-time.

Makhdum outlined the top 5 things an organization needs in a CDP and why:

• Privacy & Consent – securely manage user access, while centralizing consumer consent.

• Flexible Data Management – that exists in a unified profile, in real-time, for data enrichment.

• Scalable Identity Management – cleanse and unify identities that may be fragmented, and match IDs (in real-time) to make more scalable.

• Real-Time Intelligence – that can then be leveraged by AI/machine based learning, allowing for segmentation and modeling.

• Omnichannel Activation – with personalized experiences across all CX engagement.

A CDP operates as an end-to-end consumer strategy helping brands move toward moment-based-marketing. CDPs help marketers by making sense of the mass array of data and making it highly actionable all at a time when brands are going all-in on big data to acquire new customers through predictive modeling and maintaining loyalty through advanced communications and responsive offerings.

IAB Canada is particularly interested in CDPs as part of the industry’s move towards Cookie Independence. Our recently released CDP guide can be found here and the full Unity presentation is also available on-demand.

To join our discussions on Cookie Independence, reach out to councils@iabcanada.com