The evolving CDP
Customer data platforms continue to evolve as organizations modernize their technology and look to CDPs as a cornerstone of their MarTech strategy.
What is a CDP?
The CDP Institute defines a customer data platform as “packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.
CDPs originally had four simple characteristics: ingest data from multiple sources, manage identities, segment audiences, and provision data to other systems.
The original CDP characteristics are still important to marketers. But as the pressure to personalize intensifies and the technology environment gets more complicated, many are looking to their CDPs to go well beyond data management and simple segmentation.
The modern CDP offers more capabilities, market growth – and growing pains
CDPs today are critical as marketers move away from simply unifying data to combining channels and creating personalized experiences.
As marketers ask more of their CDPs, vendors have responded – and the lines between the traditional CDP and more comprehensive, multichannel marketing suites have begun to blur. Increased demand, explosive growth and a variety of vendors and capabilities have led to CDP challenges that marketers need to be aware of.