Decoding the Segmentation Maze: Choosing between CDPs, data warehouses, marketing automation tools and marketing clouds

Building unified customer view or Customer 360 can be done in many systems a Customer Data Platform (CDP), data warehouse, or a marketing cloud like Salesforce. Each option has its strengths, and the choice will depend on your organization's specific needs and goals.

Customer Data Platform (CDP): CDPs are designed for aggregating and unifying customer data, making them a strong choice for creating a single customer view. However, they may have limitations in handling extensive historical data or high amount of event data or not enough attributes if not implemented well.

Recommendation: Utilize a CDP as your primary source for real-time customer data integration , segmentation and identity resolution but consider complementing it with a data warehouse for historical data analysis and plough back campaign data back into the CDP for best results.

Data Warehouse: Data warehouses are ideal for historical data storage and in-depth analytics but may lack the real-time capabilities needed for immediate customer engagement.

Recommendation: Use your data warehouse for historical analysis but ensure it's well-integrated with your CDP for real-time updates and segmentation. Try to implement some kind of pre-aggregation in Data Warehouses before sending to CDP.

Marketing Cloud (e.g., Salesforce): Marketing clouds excel in marketing automation and lead management but may have limitations in handling broader customer data from various sources. They are good for web driven aggregation and email marketing but suck at everything else. They also have inflexible data models making them bad partners with the rest of the tools

Recommendation: Integrate your marketing cloud with your CDP to leverage its marketing automation capabilities while ensuring data consistency and a unified view.

Marketing Automation Tool (e.g., MoEngage): Marketing automation tools are powerful for segmenting and personalizing customer communications but may not offer the depth of data integration and storage found in CDPs or data warehouses.

Recommendation: Utilize marketing automation tools for targeted campaigns and messaging, but maintain strong integration with your CDP to ensure a comprehensive customer view. To leverage a marketing automation tool , ensure that it integrates seamlessly with your CDP, data warehouse, and other data sources. This integration will allow you to harness the power of real-time data for delivering timely and relevant messages to your customers.

For more insights on the CDP market , please refer www.spectraglobal.tech/blog/cdp-market-in-apac