Customer Data Platforms

Summary: Use cases are more important than identity in constructing a customer data platform. To understand their relative roles, use the device framework and the person framework. The former involves understanding device requests, activity, and collecting identifiers, while the latter deals with complex individual identities across devices. The article stresses the need to consider both…

Summary: The article explains how to use two frameworks — device and person — for refining CDP (customer data platform) use cases. It applies these frameworks to personalization. Under the device framework, personalization involves responsive design, contextual links, and location-based changes. The person framework focuses on individual profiles, devices, identifiers, and personas, emphasizing the need…

Summary: The article delves into deterministic and probabilistic matching in CDPs (customer data platforms). Deterministic matching seeks exact attribute matches like email addresses, while probabilistic uses statistical algorithms for likely matches. It notes deterministic isn’t always accurate and suggests a confidence-based approach tailored to use cases. It underscores the need for caution in merging profiles…

As if the CDP landscape wasn’t complicated enough, now we have the additional complication of composable vs. integrated, or packaged CDPs. To unpack this, let’s start with “composability.” From Wikipedia … Composability is a system design principle that deals with the inter-relationships of components. A highly composable system provides components that can be selected and…

Resolving identity can get in the way of your use cases and create a bad customer experience. In this presentation, which I did for the recent Martech conference, I discuss two frameworks and a few rules to help identify and avoid these problems. Two frameworks to harmonize identity and business needs This video is especially…

When marketers get too caught up in chasing the “golden record” in a Customer Data Platform, they can allow “identity” to foul up their use cases. My daughter Anne had an experience that illustrates this well. We planned a family trip, and I added her personal email address as a guest on the reservation. But…

You should examine your use cases from two very different perspectives: first, from the data you can collect from devices, and second, from the perspective of your customers as human beings. For example, “promote my iPad app to visitors” can stop at the device level, while “promote my e-newsletter to people who don’t have it”…

Think of CDP capabilities this way: there are back-end functions and front-end functions. By back-end I mean the data collection, cleaning, and processing efforts to create the mythical “golden record.” By front-end I mean the activations: managing paywalls, displaying special offers to discrete audiences, personalization, and so on. You may only need the front-end. To…

In this podcast version of The Krehbiel Letter I walk through the December 2022 issue, giving the key takeaways and summarizing each article. Topics include …  Customizations can cause no end of headaches. They’re necessary sometimes, but think three times before you dive in.  What if programmatic advertising died? According to Bob Hoffman’s Adscam, it’s…

If you’re starting or contemplating a relationship with a Customer Data Platform provider, you’ll regret it if you don’t take these CDP implementation issues into account. A CDP can be a great tool, but if you’re not careful, it can be a disaster. Read through these common mistakes carefully, and have an honest (and skeptical)…

In this 12-minute video I explain the benefits publishers can reap from a customer data platform by outlining 14 use cases. The list is not exhaustive, but it will give publishers an idea how they can benefit by implementing a CDP. Things such as … Customized emails in response to a visitors online activity Encouraging…

Sellers of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) promise their software will gather data from various applications, and assemble it into a single-source-of-truth “golden record” for each customer. It’s a lovely vision, but rarely achieved. And that’s perfectly okay. The trick is to press on anyway. Let’s use this common CDP use case to illustrate the complexity:…

Our ability to collect and use data about our customers is skyrocketing, but consumer expectations can seem contradictory. How can we craft a data strategy that’s beneficial to our brands and to our customers? Read on to find out. On the one hand, many consumers don’t want websites to collect their data. On the other,…

I get this question pretty frequently. If you’re one of those shoppers (like me) who looks at the price first, investigating Customer Data Platforms is going to frustrate you. The best answer to “how much does a CDP cost?” is “it depends.” But don’t worry. I will give you some general ideas. The pricing question…