In the dynamic world of online marketing, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have established themselves as indispensable tools for capturing, managing and effectively utilising valuable customer information. However, with so many CDP providers on the market, finding the right platform to meet your individual requirements can be a challenging task.

If you are embarking on the adventure of a Customer Data Platform (CDP), congratulations. It's a smart choice that will move you forward and prepare you for future market changes such as the post 3rd party cookie era. Customers with a CDP can easily master this market change thanks to first-class 1st-party data and benefit from secure, encrypted data exchange solutions with heavyweights such as Meta and Google.

Implementing a CDP is not a simple plug-and-play process. It requires careful planning, buy-in from key stakeholders and a strategic approach that takes into account aspects such as standalone or add-on, integrations, offline data and real-time viewer stitching as well as implementation costs. Let us guide you through this process.

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CDP Standalone vs
Add-on to the existing marketing cloud

Many MarTech providers often only offer their CDPs as additional modules for existing marketing cloud solutions. However, our experience shows that it makes sense to consider a standalone CDP as a valuable, independent player in your data ecosystem.

If you opt for a CDP as an add-on with your MarTech provider, there may be some risks involved:

  • There will be a significant dependency on the vendor (vendor lock-in) as there is no dedicated, independent CDP that can be used outside of the vendor.
  • Important integrations and real-time data exchange may be neglected as the modules are closely linked to the marketing cloud.

A standalone CDP, on the other hand, offers you an independent platform that provides real-time data that is not only relevant for marketing and campaign departments, but also provides valuable insights for the entire organisation. It is important to consider such a system not as an add-on module, but as a standalone tool for real-time data collection, transformation and activation across all departments and channels.

Integrations

Robust integrations are at the heart of an effective CDP. These enable a seamless connection with internal solutions such as CRM, analytics and BI tools as well as big data. External MarTech tools such as Google Analytics, GMP, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Salesforce, Meta, etc. should also be easily integrated. A reliable CDP is characterised by a wide range of technical options for supplying data in real time.

Offline data & real-time visitor stitching

Another strength of a CDP is its ability to process inbound data in real time and synchronise it with master data. This allows online data to be enriched with existing (offline) master data, which can help to identify known customers from unknown web visitors (visitor stitching). Find out more about this topic in this blog post: Online and offline: The best of two data worlds

Implementation & costs

A comprehensive cost analysis often shows that a standalone CDP can be the better choice despite initially higher costs. Add-ons can lead to high licence costs, especially if the licence model changes and there is little room for negotiation due to vendor lock-ins.

While the integrations within the same Marketing Cloud are described as "simple", a standalone CDP shows its true strengths in the multiple connectivity options to other MarTech providers. With a wide range of connectors, a standalone CDP can connect quickly and efficiently. However, if you want to share data outside of the Marketing Cloud, add-on solutions may prove to be complex and costly before a satisfactory data exchange is guaranteed. It is therefore important to carefully consider which option is best suited to your requirements.

Your CDP solution with zweipunkt

Avoid high costs and data loss when changing your Marketing Cloud or CDP. Work with us to discover the optimal CDP solution that is independent and perfectly tailored to your specific requirements. Contact us for an exchange or a personal consultation. We look forward to helping you!

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