C1X launches the first CDP with a human marketing touch - Customer Data Marketing Platform (CDMP).

And with post-Covid economic recovery underway, I think most marketers have now reached a point of no return. It’s time to invest in cookieless solutions, surround yourself with new and different talent, upskill current talent and walk through walls to get it done before the competition does.. 

The good news: When brands own this valuable balance sheet asset, they can operationalize it by querying real-time audience data and combine it with CRM, marketing, and computed data processed by real machine learning algorithms as opposed vaporware sales pitches (that approach did not work out well for DMPs). GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy pressures must be integrated by design with functional and understandable digital privacy and consent settings. Technology providers can no longer fake it until they make it in the post-cookie world. Once this single customer view has been established, brands can further operationalize this enriched data to facilitate effective 21st century marketing and measurement to influence customer experiences and behaviors. The kind marketers have been sold for years but not yet attained. The demise of the cookie is a glass half-full because it is the catalyst that makes it all possible.

However, marketers have a few key questions that need urgent answering before the real journey begins:

1. What is the difference between a CDP and CDMP?
2. Why should I be thinking in terms of CDMP instead of CDP?
3. What primary problems does a CDMP address?

What is the difference between a CDP and CDMP?

A CDP provides a single view of the customer by pulling data from multiple data sources, cleaned and combined to create a single customer view. This structured data is then made available to other marketing systems.

A CDMP provides the ability to host entire CDP capabilities in-house within a brand's walled garden and enables real-time feedback loop connecting both customer and marketing data to optimize marketing efforts, improve customer experience, and boost sales performance

Customer Data Marketing Platform (CDMP)

 Video: Think of each box a piece of puzzle that you already own. 

 Why should I be thinking in terms of CDMP instead of just CDP?

The end of the third-party cookie and new privacy regulations have already significantly affected digital marketing, causing brands to rethink their strategy on how to engage with growing audiences. Since marketers think in terms of delivering constant improvements to customer engagement experiences, all these changes are ultimately about shaping customer behaviors into desired actions.

Although marketing has also evolved tremendously over the years, with brands looking for recurring subscriptions or to improve measurement or increase daily active user counts, the actual marketing job-to-be-done has not changed at all. The marketing job is still, and always will be, about connecting a product with a market. That job remains stable overtime, but how the job gets done with new tools and approaches continues to change at a very fast pace leaving many marketers off balance. This is precisely why thinking in terms of CDP + Marketing as a job-to-be-done is so important. 

As martech paces forward, brands are moving from blockbuster-moments to micro-moments, constantly trying to measure quick feedback from audiences and improve their messaging. As Sir Martin Sorrell astutely noted at Advertising Week, “What you have to have is a continuous, iterative process. It’s like running a political campaign, but with no election date. It’s an iterative process where you develop content, you test it, you send it out, you test it, you get the results and you develop the content further.” This is a perfect illustration of how a CDP combined with a marketing job-to-be-done mindset is so critical. Start future proofing today, reap the rewards sooner. 

A CDMP addresses two primary concerns: Identity and Privacy

# 1 — Identity Resolution 

Mission: Bring all data from all sources (across all offline and digital channels) onto one platform to create one identity unique to each individual consumer. This is your single source of truth. Treat it like a new balance sheet asset. 

Work: Stitch and create an identity graph with your brand’s first party data and third-party marketing data (digital/device identities like email, username, phone number, IP address, person ID etc). Is this fundamental step easy? No, it’s not easy, but it is very doable with a goal-oriented project plan and management 101 to drive a team quickly forward. 

Experiment: Using CDMP marketers can (in near-real or real time) connect all of the millions of data points and records across all touchpoints where prospects and customers come into contact with a brand. However, the key is thinking and acting like a growth hacker by trying hundreds or thousands experiments in an organized kanban-like way. 

Result: Campaign outcomes are dramatically improved by knowing the details of what worked, when it worked, and on what device it worked best in near-real time. In other words, a CDMP mindset is a human management and decision-making feedback tool at the end of the day. Instead of thinking about all the CDP noise as yet another “easy button” solution, think of a CDMP as an extension of the human brain. As Rishad Tobaccawala might say, these amazing tools are only amazing if they help bring back the “soul of business.” 

# 2 — Consumer Trust and Privacy:

Mission: Your customers are real people and deserve to be engaged with in a human way. Being thoughtful about your customer’s privacy, and soliciting permission where possible, builds immediate goodwill and fosters trust. Since trust is about the brand’s intent, a CDMP combined with a human mindset allows marketers to show and prove their intentions are good and meaningful to the consumer. 

Work: Given the regulatory environment, brands that get ahead of the law, and engage with their customers in a human way create competitive moats and long term value creation. These new and often unpredictable regulations demand transparency and privacy controls, but compliance can feel anti-consumer if not done properly. The systems used to manage data should facilitate these human conversations while the compliance frameworks put lawyers in a comfort zone instead making the customer feel like a legal checkmark.

Experiment: Brands sometimes use technology partners or media agencies to activate, manage and process customer data. This practice or fall-back approach has become more challenging for brands who need to meet increased expectations of consumers and manage all partners in a more transparent manner. Both brands and agencies not only have to ensure they’re compliant with the regulatory issues, but also that they’re honoring the implicit agreements they’ve made with their customers about how that data can be used. Brands and agencies need solutions that can support both the legacy tools (e.g. cookies) and approaches, and the new people-based identity world we’re all quickly moving toward. 

Result: There are different kinds of customer data such as first, second and third party. First party data is created when a customer registers with the brand and gives them information in exchange for better products or services. First-party data is the absolute key to unlocking new insights and driving engagement and increasing brand loyalty. When this vital asset is thought of and designed into consumer needs around trust and privacy, the CDP + human mindset delivers a win-win payoff. 

And CFO’s... don’t forget to add this new asset to your balance sheet!

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