A CDP: personalization paradise for marketers in the cookie-free era

In an era where third-party cookies are disappearing and privacy regulations are being further tightened, the battle for personalized customer journeys is getting fiercer. To win that personalization battle, the importance of First-Party Data is increasing. Crucial to this is the role of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). In this article, you will read more about the essence of First-Party Data and how to make maximum use of it with a Customer Data Platform for engaging, personalized customer experiences.

• What is a Customer Data Platform?
• The downfall of Third-Party Data
• The power of First-Party Data
• A CDP: personalization paradise for marketers
• BlueConic; the world's most powerful CDP

What is a Customer Data Platform

CDP stands for Customer Data Platform and is a system that you can integrate into your organization's data streams. The system collects data from all customer interactions with your brand. Within the CDP, all this information is combined, after which you can create highly detailed customer profiles.

All available information about your target groups is collected, managed, bundled and intelligently forwarded to your channels such as Google Ads, Facebook or DV360. Exactly where your target group is located. Through that ultimate personalization, you make your (potential) customers feel understood with content that exactly matches their individual needs in each phase of their customer journey. 

The downfall of Third-Party Data

Before you can understand the critical importance of First-Party Data, you need to know more about Third-Party Data and its demise. Third-Party Data is a term that refers to data that comes from an external data provider. That data serves as an excellent source of information for increasing the reach of your marketing campaigns, better identifying your target audiences, and targeting those audiences in a more targeted way. 

With privacy protection becoming increasingly important, major platforms such as Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Apple have taken measures against Third-Party cookies to stop that large-scale data collection.

This demise of Third-Party Data makes it increasingly difficult to collect relevant data on specific target groups. Target group segmentation and targeting becomes less accurate and it becomes increasingly difficult to track user interactions. So to still keep accurately mapping your target groups and their customer journeys, you need other data sources. And that's where First-Party data comes in. 
 

The power of First-Party data? 

A whopping 91% of consumers say they are inclined to make purchases from brands that understand their needs, and 76% are willing to share data for more personalized experiences. So winning the battle for personalized customer journeys is crucial. First-Party Data plays a key role in this with the disappearance of Third-Party cookies. First-Party data is information that you, as an organization, collect directly from the people you want to know the most about: your target audiences; be they customers, website visitors or social media followers.

First-party data is used for retargeting through advertising, lead nurturing (feeding leads with valuable information) and during the sales process. It also teaches you what your ideal or best-fit customer(s) look like.

First-party data can be collected in many ways. Through your website and social media profiles, for example, but also from your own CRM or through customer surveys. By collecting and aggregating all that data, you can create highly detailed customer profiles and shape personalized customer journeys without the help of Third-Party Data. And that brings us back to a Customer Data Platform.

A CDP: personalization paradise for marketers

A Customer Data Platform gives your marketing team a complete picture of all your target audiences. Because you are using your self-collected customer data, your marketers no longer have to worry about the integrity, access to and control of all the information. Free runway thus for cross-channel personalization, in which you serve out your marketing messages at the right time, to the right people and through the right channels. 

So what are concrete applications of a Customer Data Platform? On the huge list of possibilities, you'll find, among other things, this dozen or so key benefits: 

• Rely on AVG-proof and heavy-duty data encryption
• Get all your channels working together on your brand experience
  
• Automate a lot of manual work 
• Combine transactional data with your marketing data
• Calculate your Customer Lifetime Value per individual customer 
• Make one-on-one (product) recommendations
• Improve your return on ad spend (ROAS) targeting campaigns
• Optimize your Lead generation campaigns
• Identify and approach new audiences
• Create personalized website content

BlueConic, the world's most powerful CDP

Adwise CDP Partner and global market leader BlueConic provides the collective capability, expertise and approach to successfully navigate the ongoing challenges of the post-cookie, privacy-first era. BlueConic is transforming the way business teams interact with customers and learn to understand target audiences in detail.