10 Best Customer Data Platform Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
Customer data platforms help you centralize customer information so your teams can deliver more personalized, connected experiences. But with so many tools calling themselves CDPs, it’s hard to know which ones actually unify your data and make it actionable.
In this article, I'll share my top picks for the best customer data platforms to help you segment audiences, activate real-time insights, and coordinate CX across teams and channels. Whether you're managing service requests, launching campaigns, or personalizing user journeys, these tools offer the data foundation to make every customer interaction count.
Best Customer Data Platforms Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of my top customer data platform selections. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best software for your budget and business needs.
Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Best no-code, highly customizable customer data platform | 30-day free trial + free demo available | From $35/user/month (billed annually, min 20 users) | Website | |
2 | Best for centralized customer data management | 14-day free trial | From $25/user/month | Website | |
3 | Best for for managing customer data for ecommerce marketing | Free plan available | From $45/month | Website | |
4 | Best for understanding health of customer portfolios | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
5 | Best for integrating CDP functions with content management and search | Not available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
6 | Best for ingesting user analytics data and distributing it to data warehousing third-party applications | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
7 | Best for startups seeking flexibility in optimizing customer journeys | 14-day free trial | From $249/month (2 users + 200 customer accounts) | Website | |
8 | Best for small businesses | 14-day free trial | From $249/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
9 | Best CDP with a visual workflow builder | 14-day free trial | From $100/month | Website | |
10 | Best for powering connected customer experiences through unified user data | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website |
-
CRM Creatio
This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.7 -
monday service
This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.6 -
Issuetrak
This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.1
Overviews Of The 10 Best Customer Data Platforms
Here are my top choices for the best customer data platforms (CDPs) available today, accompanied by a short description of what each platform is best for:
QuickBase is a leading cloud-based platform that specializes in enabling businesses to design and deploy custom applications with ease. This platform is particularly celebrated for its user-friendly interface and flexibility, allowing users from various technical backgrounds to craft solutions that precisely meet their operational requirements. Through QuickBase, companies can significantly streamline their workflows, foster collaboration among teams, and enhance their overall productivity, positioning QuickBase as a pivotal tool for organizational development and efficiency.
Why I Picked QuickBase: In the context of serving as a customer data platform, QuickBase demonstrates exceptional proficiency by facilitating the creation of customized applications tailored to manage and analyze customer data effectively. It shines by providing businesses with the tools to aggregate customer information from multiple sources into a unified database, offering a comprehensive view of customer interactions and behaviors. This capability enables companies to gain deeper insights into their customer base, personalize customer experiences, and make data-driven decisions. QuickBase's adaptability and ease of customization make it an invaluable asset for organizations aiming to leverage their customer data for strategic advantage, standing out as a versatile and powerful customer data platform.
QuickBase Standout Features and Integrations
Features include unmatched customization options without the complexity of coding. Users have the liberty to create database applications that are finely tuned to their unique business and sales needs. This characteristic is particularly transformative, as it levels the playing field, enabling individuals without a programming background to devise solutions that meet their precise requirements. As a result, teams can achieve highly specialized applications that mesh well with their workflows, an advantage not readily available with more rigid platforms.
Additional key features include no-code application development, real-time reporting and analytics, automated workflows, custom forms, granular permission settings, data integration capabilities, cross-application connectivity, mobile access, cloud-based architecture, team collaboration tools.
Integrations include Salesforce, Gmail, Slack, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft Office 365, QuickBooks, Zapier, Mailchimp, Tableau.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Comprehensive integration options
- Strong automation and workflow capabilities
- Highly customizable no-code platform
Cons:
- Limited design customization for user interfaces
- Steep learning curve for new users
CRM Creatio is a platform designed to automate customer-facing processes, offering tools for marketing, sales, and service management. It provides a unified CRM experience, no-code customization, and real-time analytics, catering to organizations seeking flexibility and efficiency in their customer relationship management.
Why I Picked CRM Creatio: It offers the ability to consolidate all customer information into a single, accessible database. This centralization allows your team to manage data related to customers, leads, and opportunities efficiently, ensuring that all account and contact information is stored in one place. I also like the platform's real-time analytics and reporting capabilities. These tools enable you to track performance, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions across your sales and marketing departments.
CRM Creatio Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a 360-degree customer view, which provides full visibility into each customer's profile and interaction history, aiding in delivering personalized experiences. The platform also offers campaign management tools that allow you to plan, execute, and analyze multichannel marketing campaigns effectively. Additionally, service management capabilities enable your team to handle customer service operations, ensuring timely responses and issue resolution.
Integrations include Accelo, Act!, ActiveCampaign, Acumatica, Adobe Analytics, Asana, Microsoft Exchange, Excel, Mailchimp, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Google Calendar, and Tableau.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- No-code platform for non-technical users
- Extensive customization options
- A scalable solution for various business processes
Cons:
- Learning curve for new users
- Configuring the platform can be time-consuming
Best for for managing customer data for ecommerce marketing
Klaviyo is a robust customer data platform (CDP) designed to help ecommerce businesses harness their customer data for more effective marketing. It consolidates customer information from various touchpoints, allowing businesses to create highly personalized marketing campaigns. By integrating with ecommerce platforms, Klaviyo empowers businesses to drive engagement and increase sales through data-driven insights and automation.
Why I Picked Klaviyo: Klaviyo excels as a customer data platform for ecommerce marketing due to its ability to gather and analyze data from multiple sources. It provides businesses with a comprehensive view of their customers, enabling them to segment audiences based on behavior, purchase history, and other criteria. This granular segmentation allows for targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with specific customer groups, leading to higher conversion rates and customer loyalty. Furthermore, Klaviyo's predictive analytics help businesses anticipate customer needs and tailor their marketing efforts accordingly, enhancing the overall shopping experience.
Klaviyo Standout Features and Integrations
Features include its powerful automation capabilities. Businesses can set up automated workflows that trigger personalized emails and SMS messages based on customer actions, such as abandoned carts, product purchases, or browsing behavior. This automation ensures timely and relevant communication with customers, improving engagement and driving sales. Additionally, Klaviyo offers robust A/B testing tools that allow businesses to optimize their campaigns by testing different messages, subject lines, and sending times.
Another key feature is Klaviyo's in-depth reporting and analytics. Businesses can access detailed reports on campaign performance, customer behavior, and revenue attribution, providing valuable insights into what strategies are working and where improvements are needed.
Integrations include Shopify, Salesforce, Wix, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), BigCommerce, Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Instagram, Stripe, PayPal, QuickBooks, Zendesk, and Slack.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Advanced segmentation capabilities
- Good analytics and reporting tools
- Over 300 integrations available
Cons:
- Can't embed videos directly into email campaigns
- Can get pricey with more active profiles
Velaris is an AI-powered customer success platform designed to assist customer success teams in managing their operations more efficiently and improving customer experiences. The platform consolidates and enriches customer data into a single, user-friendly interface, offering insights for proactive, data-driven decision-making.
Why I Picked Velaris: The platform allows users to find any type of customer data in seconds, measure and understand the health of their customer portfolio, and visualize data on clean, beautiful dashboards. Additionally, Velaris offers sentiment analysis to understand how customers are feeling at a glance, and custom objects to tailor the data to specific business needs. The integration of AI capabilities further enhances the platform by enabling proactive customer success management.
Velaris Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a drag-and-drop automation builder that enables users to create flexible automation workflows. This feature helps in automating internal and customer-facing actions. The platform also offers structured playbooks to standardize and speed up their processes.
Furthermore, Velaris' success plans help in managing account plans and proving ROI. Users can track customer outcomes' progress and ensure that they are meeting their goals. The platform even offers a customer portal where users can collaborate externally with their customers.
Integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Intercom, MailChimp, Outlook, Google Drive, HubSpot, Jira, and Salesforce.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- The tool offers automation features
- Good customer data aggregation
- AI-powered analytics
Cons:
- New users may face a learning curve when getting started
- Could offer more integrations
Best for integrating CDP functions with content management and search
The Bloomreach suite comprises Engagement, Discovery and Content.
Bloomreach helps users collect, store, and analyze data to gain granular insights into customers’ preferences and behaviors. Bloomreach Engagement is an omnichannel marketing automation platform that unifies your customer data and helps design personalized experiences.
Why I picked Bloomreach: Bloomreach Engagement expertly combines CDP functions with content management for streamlined omnichannel orchestration of user journeys. Using Bloomreach, you can weave email and SMS marketing automation into your personalization strategies to build more effective and targeted ad campaigns.
Bloomreach also registers all your customer’s preferences across various channels such as websites, mobile apps and social media. Subsequently, the tool is great for e-commerce brands wanting to improve their customer engagement and conversions.
Bloomreach Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature of Bloomreach is that it stores data in an IMF (in-memory framework) format. This enables high read and write speeds, advanced reporting and dynamic data, and content management.
The software also seamlessly collates data between multiple data sources allowing you to instantly activate any additional marketing channels. Using this functionality, you can stay relevant using real-time audience insights and optimize campaigns.
Bloomreach also has its own AI product, Loomi, that boosts conversions through informed recommendations. Loomi also predicts the probability of purchase, churn, return, etc.
Integrations include 130+ third-party applications, such as Amazon MWS, Attentive, Contentsquare, Freshdesk, MongoDB, Salesforce B2C Commerce, Shopify, Slack, SugarCRM, TikTok, Twitter, Zoho Subscriptions, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Custom data tracking and quick real-time analytics
- Loads of targeted segments based on browse and purchase behavior
- Intuitive UI with AI tools for campaigns
Cons:
- Complex web layers and reporting structure
- No automatic dashboards for creating and tracking surveys
Segment
Best for ingesting user analytics data and distributing it to data warehousing third-party applications
Segment (by Twilio) is a leading customer data platform, having helped more than 25,000+ businesses worldwide collect, clean, analyze, and activate their user data to drive targeted marketing initiatives.
Why I picked Segment: Segment leverages audience data in 450+ marketing tools that operate in real-time. These tools offer several useful features, including marketing automation, data analytics, email marketing, advertising, and more.
Such a wide opportunity for data integration translates to the ability to gather customer information from multiple websites and mobile applications. You can then use that information to approach customers based on a thorough understanding of their pain points. Consequently, you can create customized real-time brand experiences for your customers.
Moreover, Segment offers a generous freemium plan. The free plan offers two data sources to collect information from and allows you to send the data to unlimited destinations. Moreover, the free plan also lets you create a comprehensive customer profile and track up to 1,000 users every month.
Segment Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature of Segment is its data filtering and schema-locking capabilities that set defaults on event requirements to regulate data cleanliness. As a result, your data warehouses and integrations are guarded against rogue events.
Additionally, Segment helps you align your marketing, engineering, and analytics teams with a shared data dictionary. Segment also migrates historical data to new integrations, unifies user histories across devices and channels to build comprehensive user profiles, and provides cross-domain analytics.
Integrations include 450+ third-party applications, such as Amplitude, Bucket, ChurnZero, Contentful, Drip, Freshsales, Gladly, Hotjar, Impact, Intercom, Looker, MadKudu, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Enables building event pipelines across apps and integrations
- Easy deduplication for streamlining real-time data updates
- Handles PII information and GDPR and CCPA compliance well
Cons:
- Struggles with large data volumes and loading data in one sync
- Retrieving user data with frontend libraries can be difficult
Totango
Best for startups seeking flexibility in optimizing customer journeys
Totango specializes in designing and optimizing customer journeys at scale. It provides access to real-time customer data, enabling you to take preemptive measures and nurture customers at various marketing touchpoints.
Totango is a favorite among scaleups and startups, owing to its flexibility and scalability in running the user journey throughout the customer lifecycle. Totango streamlines project onboarding via goals, KPIs, client segments, success plays, marketing, and other resources.
Why I picked Totango: Totango helps startups and scaleups expand predictably by using time-based triggers, product telemetry, and other signals to tweak campaigns in real-time. Totango also features useful journey templates to start mapping customer journeys in minutes.
Totango ships a customizable platform to design, build, manage, and assess various stages of your customer experience. It also makes account management with complex hierarchies a breeze. The platform offers an outcome-oriented solution design and modular pre-built building blocks.
Totango Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature of Totango is its early warning system that proactively assesses and notifies sales teams about waning customer health. The platform also offers executive reporting and dashboards to measure team performance and optimize workflows for increased productivity.
Additionally, Totango enables customer engagement with NPS surveys and drives product adoption through its targeted campaigns. Totango also offers enterprise-grade privacy and security and complies with data compliance standards like SOC 2 and GDPR.
Integrations include 45+ tools, such as Amazon S3, Chorus, Dropbox, Gong, Google Cloud Storage, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Jira Software, MS Teams, Monday, Pendo, Slack, Zendesk, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Successplays feature to help CX teams standardize user experience
- Easy and configurable journey mapping
- Customer health score tracking and analysis
Cons:
- Product usage aggregation sometimes creates blank accounts
- Logging updates on touchpoints takes many clicks
Keap is a versatile business automation and customer relationship management (CRM) software designed to help small businesses enhance their operations and enhance customer engagement. It provides a comprehensive solution for managing customer data, automating marketing and sales processes, and tracking customer interactions.
Why I Picked Keap: I picked Keap because of its robust capabilities in managing and leveraging customer data effectively. Keap's contact management system allows businesses to store and organize comprehensive customer profiles, including interaction history, preferences, and purchase behaviors. This centralized data repository ensures that businesses have a complete view of their customers, enabling personalized and targeted communication. Additionally, Keap's automation features help with repetitive tasks, ensuring timely follow-ups and consistent engagement throughout the customer journey.
Keap Standout Features and Integrations
Features include its customizable landing pages, which facilitate lead capture and conversion. Businesses can create tailored landing pages to attract potential customers and gather essential contact information, which is then integrated into Keap’s CRM system. Another notable feature is lead scoring, which helps businesses prioritize their leads based on predefined criteria, ensuring that the most promising leads receive timely attention and follow-ups.
Furthermore, Keap's dynamic form creation allows businesses to design custom forms for various purposes, such as surveys, event registrations, or feedback collection. These forms can be easily integrated into websites or emails, making it simple to gather and organize customer data.
Integrations include QuickBooks, Zapier, WordPress, Shopify, Gmail, Outlook, PayPal, Stripe, Leadpages, and ScheduleOnce.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Robust CRM features
- Good business automation capabilities
- Extensive customization options
Cons:
- Pipeline reporting could be improved
- May be pricey for businesses with limited resources
With Customer.io, you can easily automate messaging campaigns. Data Pipelines (the CDP product of Customer.io) is great for collating first-party data from various sources, including websites, applications, databases, and warehouses. Consequently, you can consolidate accurate customer data and leverage insights to kickstart personalized interactions with customers across mobile and web channels.
Why I picked Customer.io: Customer.io leverages real-time behavioral data for personalized and relevant communications. This involves sending messages via emails, push notifications, SMS, in-app messaging, and more. The tool supports Android, iOS, React Native, and Flutter mobile software development kits (SDKs).
Moreover, Customer.io has a data-driven audience segment and a visual workflow builder. The builder is ideal for hyper-targeted campaigns. You can also set up triggered drip sequences that keep the engagement going when your customer performs a desired action. Overall, the workflow is simple to set up and has great automation possibilities.
Customer.io Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature of Customer.io is turning your segments into ad audiences by connecting data to your desired ad platform.
In addition, you can use library languages (including Ruby, Python, Go, and others) to submit event data from your application to Customer.io.
Integrations include almost 200 third-party applications, such as Appcues, Help Scout, Jira, ManyChat, Nexmo, Productboard, Shopify, Smartsheet, Stripe, Twilio SMS, Zapier, Zoom, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Support for liquid data makes highly detailed personalization possible
- Easy creation of campaign workflows for emails
- Robust customer segmentation and A/B testing capabilities
Cons:
- Lacks the ability to schedule messages on a daily or weekly basis
- Requires a better automation builder
Best for powering connected customer experiences through unified user data
Treasure Data is an enterprise customer data platform that unifies data from marketing, sales, and service teams to create exceptional user experiences. The software mainly uses IoT devices to build customer profiles and provides access to top-notch database management tools.
Why I picked Treasure Data: Treasure Data offers different versions of its CDP capabilities for marketing, sales, and service departments. The platform aims to help users activate customer data across various functions and channels. As a result, organizations can overcome the challenges of siloed data and work in tandem to improve customer experiences.
Moreover, Treasure Data uses machine learning algorithms to create narrow customer segments based on AI-powered analysis of customer behaviors.
Treasure Data Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature of Treasure Data is its customer data cloud: Users can integrate data and resolve identities for building unified customer profiles. Additionally, this feature empowers businesses to collate customer experiences across various departments.
Treasure Data offers a clean UI and several out-of-the-box data connector options. The tool also has a recommendation engine and robust data enrichment features.
Integrations include 170+ third-party applications, such as Adobe Commerce, Adobe Marketo Engage, Amazon Advertising, Branch, Cordova SDK, DataRobot, Facebook Page Insights, Google Ads, Instagram Custom Audiences, Klaviyo, Mode Analytics, Salesforce Pardot, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Data integration is efficient
- Processes raw data to create a confined report
- Speed recording of events and other user activities
Cons:
- Lacks the ability to update segments or activations in bulk
- Customer reporting needs additional enhancement
Other Options
Here are a few more customer data platforms that didn’t make my cut but are still worth checking out:
- Pimcore CDP
Open-source CDP for automating data integration, unification, modeling, and personalization
- Adobe Real-Time CDP
For collecting B2B and B2C customer data in real-time across systems for instant activation
- Tealium AudienceStream CDP
For optimizing data infrastructure to develop single customer views
- Rudderstack
Warehouse native CDP delivering value across the entire data activation cycle
- Zeta
CDP with scalable data processing capabilities and schemaless architecture
- Emarsys
For fostering customer engagement through automated cross-channel marketing automation
- mParticle
For data management, analytics, user journey orchestration, and predictive customer intelligence
- Medallia
For collecting customer data using surveys
- Sitecore
For capturing, unifying, and activating omnichannel customer data to drive exceptional customer experiences
- Amperity
For creating comprehensive customer profiles using first-party data
Related CX Software Lists
If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for here, check out these related customer experience management tools that I’ve tested and evaluated.
What Is a Customer Data Platform?
A customer data platform is software that collects and unifies data from multiple sources to create a centralized, real-time view of each customer. It enables teams to analyze behavior, personalize interactions, and coordinate experiences across channels.
Customer Data Platform Selection Criteria
When selecting the best customer data platforms to include in this list, I considered common buyer needs and pain points like data integration challenges and real-time analytics. I also used the following framework to keep my evaluation structured and fair:
Core Functionality (25% of total score)
To be considered for inclusion in this list, each solution had to fulfill these common use cases:
- Collecting customer data from multiple sources
- Unifying data into a single customer view
- Segmenting customers based on behavior
- Providing real-time analytics and insights
- Ensuring data privacy and compliance
Additional Standout Features (25% of total score)
To help further narrow down the competition, I also looked for unique features, such as:
- Advanced machine learning capabilities
- Predictive analytics for customer trends
- Customizable dashboards and reports
- Integration with IoT devices
- Support for multi-language data processing
Usability (10% of total score)
To get a sense of the usability of each system, I considered the following:
- Intuitive user interface design
- Ease of navigation through features
- Minimal training required for basic tasks
- Flexibility in customization options
- Speed and responsiveness of the platform
Onboarding (10% of total score)
To evaluate the onboarding experience for each platform, I considered the following:
- Availability of comprehensive training videos
- Access to interactive product tours
- Availability of ready-to-use templates
- Support through chatbots during setup
- Access to live webinars for guidance
Customer Support (10% of total score)
To assess each software provider’s customer support services, I considered the following:
- Availability of 24/7 support
- Access to a dedicated account manager
- Variety of support channels offered
- Speed of response to inquiries
- Quality and usefulness of support resources
Value For Money (10% of total score)
To evaluate the value for money of each platform, I considered the following:
- Competitive pricing compared to peers
- Flexibility in pricing plans
- Inclusion of essential features in base plans
- Discounts for long-term commitments
- Transparent pricing with no hidden fees
Customer Reviews (10% of total score)
To get a sense of overall customer satisfaction, I considered the following when reading customer reviews:
- Overall satisfaction ratings
- Feedback on feature effectiveness
- Comments on reliability and uptime
- User opinions on customer support quality
- Insights on ease of integration with other tools
How to Choose the Right CDP
It’s easy to get bogged down in long feature lists and complex pricing structures when choosing the right CDP. To help you stay focused as you work through your unique software selection process, here’s a checklist of factors to keep in mind:
Factor | What to Consider |
---|---|
Scalability | Ensure the platform can grow with your business. Look for solutions that can handle increased data volume and user load without compromising performance. |
Integrations | Check for compatibility with your existing tools. A platform that integrates easily with CRM, marketing, and analytics tools will save your team time and effort. |
Customizability | Look for customization options that allow you to tailor the platform to your specific needs. This includes personalized dashboards and reporting features. |
Ease of Use | Choose a platform with an intuitive interface. Your team will benefit from a shorter learning curve, reducing the time needed to become proficient. |
Budget | Consider your financial constraints. Evaluate the total cost of ownership, including any additional fees for support or premium features, to stay within budget. |
Security Safeguards | Prioritize platforms with robust security measures. Ensure they comply with data protection regulations, such as GDPR, to protect your customer information. |
Trends in Customer Data Platforms
In my research, I sourced countless product updates, press releases, and release logs from different customer data platforms vendors. Here are some of the emerging trends I’m keeping an eye on:
- Real-Time Data Processing: Businesses want immediate insights, and platforms are evolving to process data in real time. This trend is helping teams make faster decisions, with some vendors offering live dashboards and instant analytics to meet this demand.
- AI-Driven Customer Insights: Platforms are incorporating AI and machine learning to predict customer behavior and personalize experiences. This trend is giving businesses a competitive edge by tailoring interactions more effectively.
- Data Privacy Enhancements: Platforms are boosting their security features. Vendors are adding tools for better compliance with regulations like GDPR, ensuring customer data is handled responsibly.
- Omnichannel Integration: Platforms are focusing on unifying customer data across various channels. This trend helps businesses create a cohesive customer experience by integrating data from social media, email, and in-store interactions.
- Enterprise-Focused Solutions: Provides customer data platform solutions tailored for larger enterprises, designed to boost campaign performance and create impactful customer experiences by unifying huge amounts of data effectively.
Features of Customer Data Platforms
When selecting customer data platforms, keep an eye out for the following key features:
- Real-time data processing: This feature allows for immediate insights, enabling quick decision-making based on the latest customer data.
- AI-driven insights: AI capabilities provide deeper analysis and predictions, helping tailor customer interactions more effectively.
- Omnichannel integration: Integrating data from various channels ensures a cohesive customer experience across touchpoints like social media and email.
- Data privacy compliance: Tools that ensure adherence to regulations like GDPR protect customer data and maintain trust.
- Customizable dashboards: Personalized dashboards allow users to view the most relevant data in a way that suits their needs.
- User-friendly interface: An intuitive design makes it accessible for team members without a technical background to utilize data effectively.
- Customer segmentation: This feature helps in dividing customers into groups based on behavior, enabling targeted marketing strategies.
- Unified customer profiles: Combining data from different sources into a single view helps in understanding individual customer journeys.
- Integration with existing tools: Seamless connection with CRM and analytics tools saves time and enhances workflow efficiency.
Benefits of Customer Data Platforms
Implementing customer data platforms provides several benefits for your team and your business. Here are a few you can look forward to:
- Improved customer insights: AI-driven analytics offer deeper understanding of customer behavior, enabling more personalized interactions.
- Enhanced decision-making: Real-time data processing allows your team to make informed decisions quickly, reacting to customer needs as they arise.
- Consistent customer experience: Omnichannel integration ensures that customers receive a uniform experience across all touchpoints.
- Efficient data management: Unified customer data, combining information from multiple sources, reducing duplication and errors.
- Targeted marketing efforts: Customer segmentation helps in crafting marketing strategies that resonate with specific audience groups.
- Regulatory compliance: Data privacy features ensure that your business adheres to regulations like GDPR, protecting customer trust.
- Resource optimization: Workflows and tools to save time and resources, allowing your team to focus on higher-level customer success strategies.
Costs and Pricing of Customer Data Platforms
Selecting customer data platforms requires an understanding of the various pricing models and plans available. Costs vary based on features, team size, add-ons, and more. The table below summarizes common plans, their average prices, and typical features included in CDP solutions:
Plan Comparison Table for Customer Data Platforms
Plan Type | Average Price | Common Features |
---|---|---|
Free Plan | $0 | Basic data collection, limited analytics, and access to community support. |
Personal Plan | $10-$30/user/month | Advanced data segmentation, customizable dashboards, and email support. |
Business Plan | $50-$100/user/month | Real-time analytics, AI-driven insights, and integration with CRM tools. |
Enterprise Plan | $150-$300/user/month | Full omnichannel integration, dedicated account manager, and enhanced security features. |
People Also Ask
Here are some relevant FAQs on customer data platforms that explain how they work in a bit more detail:
How do customer data platforms work?
A customer data platform (CDP) centralizes and assimilates customer data from diverse sources and marketing touchpoints to create unified customer profiles. These profiles encompass demographic data such as age, gender, location, etc. They also comprise psychographic data such as behavior, preferences, lifestyles, online browsing habits, interactions with the brand, and more.
CDPs enrich data consolidation and ensure proper data cleansing for accurate customer profiling. With CDPs, you can spearhead data-driven decision-making and personalized marketing initiatives. The best CDP software also has features to assist businesses in navigating the complexities of contemporary data management and privacy compliance.
CDPs act as a single source of truth for your customer data. A culture of CX data literacy can lead to more personalized interactions and higher customer satisfaction.
What are the 4 types of customer data?
The four types of customer data are:
1. Identity Data: Information that identifies the customer, such as name, email address, phone number, and social media profiles.
2. Descriptive Data: Detailed information about the customer, including demographic details, career, lifestyle, and family status.
3. Behavioral Data: Data on how customers interact with your brand, such as purchase history, website visits, email interactions, and social media activity.
4. Transactional Data: Records of the customer’s transactions, including purchase history, order details, payment information, and returns.
These data types help businesses create a comprehensive customer profile to improve personalization and customer experiences.
What’s the difference between a CDP and a CRM?
Customer data platforms (CDP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems have related but somewhat different functions.
A CDP focuses on combining and centralizing customer data from multiple channels and sources to produce a single customer profile that enables data analysis for personalized marketing. A CDP emphasizes data consolidation and enrichment for effective targeting and conversion purposes. It can delve into primary, secondary, and tertiary data and enable customer segmentation and cross-channel personalization in real-time. CDPs prioritize first-party data instead of third-party data.
In contrast, a CRM focuses on sales, support, and relationship management while managing and tracking interactions with current customers to inform and optimize future campaigns. A CRM is focused on managing customer contacts and building connections. It frequently includes features like lead tracking, sales forecasting, and customer support capabilities. It can delve into first-party data only but cannot prioritize third-party data. CRMs also do not come with real-time capabilities.
Ultimately, both CDPs and CRMs are essential for customer engagement and retention.
What is identity resolution and how does it work?
Identity resolution is the process of accurately identifying and connecting data silos related to a single customer. The data comes from multiple channels and sources and helps create a comprehensive user profile. Here is how it works:
- Data collection: A CDP gathers customer data from various marketing channels, including website visits, emails, previous purchases, chat interactions, and more.
- Matching and deduplication: To match and eliminate repeated information, a CDP uses algorithms that examine identifiers to see if they are unique to one person only.
- Identity stitching: Once the matches are discovered, a CDP unites the data elements to create a comprehensive customer profile.
- Continuous updating: A CDP updates consumer profiles in real-time to reflect changes in preferences, behavior, or contact information as new data is gathered.
- Personalization: With precise identity resolution, marketers can leverage data insights to craft tailored marketing strategies targeting ideal customer profiles with highly personalized content, offers, and experiences.
What is customer journey orchestration and how does it work?
Customer journey orchestration is the management and optimization of the entire customer experience through the design and automation of a sequence of personalized interactions and touchpoints across various channels. Here is how it works:
- Data integration: A CDP gathers customer data from multiple sources, such as CRM systems and marketing automation platforms.This data includes customer demographics, behaviors, preferences, and interactions with the business. There are several ways to collect customer data, and with a CDP, you can do so while staying GDPR-compliant!
- Customer segmentation: Marketers categorize consumers based on their demographic and psychographic insights derived from a CDP.
- Journey mapping: Businesses further develop graphic blueprints of the customer journey for each segmented audience group, outlining key touchpoints and interactions. These journey maps detail the customer’s actions, decision points, and potential paths toward conversion. This is where customer journey analytics help extract valuable insights from customer interactions and implement those to map the path toward positive business outcomes further.
- Personalization: Marketers then customize content and communications for each consumer category using the data they’ve acquired. The campaigns can then be used to target the relevant audience segment using various automation solutions including email, SMS, social media channels, and the company website.
- Optimization based on feedback: Marketers can continuously optimize journey maps for an effective customer experience by monitoring and analyzing user interactions in real-time, thanks to a CDP.
Ultimately, customer journey orchestration ensures that customers have consistent and effortless brand experiences across all touchpoints. This further encourages customer satisfaction, loyalty, and thus, retention.
How do customer data platforms use AI and machine learning?
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) can use AI and machine learning in several ways to better understand and engage customers. Here are some key examples:
- Customer Segmentation: AI can analyze customer data to group people with similar behaviors, preferences, or needs, making it easier to target specific groups with tailored campaigns.
- Predictive Analytics: Machine learning models can predict customer actions, like who might make a purchase, churn, or respond to an offer, helping businesses stay ahead of trends.
- Personalization: AI can create personalized content, offers, or product recommendations for each customer based on their past interactions, improving the overall experience.
- Data Unification: Machine learning can merge and clean data from multiple sources, ensuring the CDP has a single, accurate view of each customer.
- Behavioral Insights: AI can analyze patterns in customer activity, like website visits or purchase history, to give businesses insights into what customers value most.
- Real-Time Engagement: Machine learning enables instant responses by predicting the best time, place, or message to connect with customers in the moment.
Using AI and machine learning, CDPs make data smarter, enabling businesses to connect with customers in meaningful, efficient ways.
How do customer data platforms ensure data protection and privacy?
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) ensure data protection and privacy through several key measures designed to keep customer information safe and comply with regulations:
- Data Encryption: CDPs use encryption to secure customer data both while it’s stored and during transmission, making it unreadable to unauthorized parties.
- Access Control: They implement role-based access control, ensuring only authorized personnel can access sensitive information.
- Compliance with Regulations: CDPs are designed to comply with laws like GDPR, CCPA, and others, giving customers the right to access, delete, or restrict the use of their data.
- Anonymization and Masking: To protect identities, CDPs often anonymize or mask personal data when it’s not needed for specific processes.
- Audit Trails: They maintain detailed logs of data access and changes, helping businesses track and manage data use responsibly.
- Consent Management: CDPs allow businesses to collect, track, and honor customer consent preferences, ensuring data is only used for approved purposes.
These measures help CDPs maintain trust and safeguard customer data while adhering to privacy laws.
Other Customer Data Software Reviews
Before you switch tabs, you can check out these other types of software if you’re interested in managing customer journeys and ensuring memorable customer experiences:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
- Big Data Customer Analytics Software
- Free Customer Database Software
- Customer Journey Analytics Software
Customer Data Platforms Unite Your Marketing Insights
Choosing the right customer data platform for your business can be overwhelming. However, it can help you centralize and unify visitor data from numerous sources and create comprehensive customer profiles. This further enables you to personalize user experiences and improve customer engagement, satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.
You can sign up for The CX Lead newsletter to stay up-to-date on all the latest trends and insights in customer experience from leading industry experts.