- Raab Associates Inc. and CrossEngage join forces as founding partners
- CDP industry doubled in 2017 with the fastest growth outside the U.S.
Hamburg, March 27th 2018. The Customer Data Platform Institute has announced the launch of the CDP Institute Europe together with its founding partner CrossEngage at one of Germany’s largest marketing conferences, Online Marketing Rockstars. Martech and analytics expert, David Raab, founded the CDP Institute in the U.S. as a vendor-neutral organization to help marketers manage customer data. The announcement marks the official expansion of its activities into Europe to encourage customer centricity in digital businesses.
According to the CDP Institute’s latest report from January 2018, the industry has doubled since 2017 with a total funding of $1.2 billion. The fastest growth can be seen outside the U.S. In order to stand their ground against the ever growing platform economy, companies have to invest in direct customer access and retain existing customers. Only through sound customer relationship management can companies remain profitable in the long term. In this light, CDPs offer many advantages such as unified and comprehensive customer profiles as well as open access for other systems.
“Marketers everywhere recognize that they need to deliver the data-enabled experiences that customers want while carefully guarding the personal data their customers provide”, says David Raab. “GDPR has made the need even more pressing. CDPs provide a solution to this challenge by making it easier to collect, protect and activate customer data while respecting their customers’ rights. We are pleased to launch the CDP Institute Europe to help European marketers take advantage of the benefits that CDPs has to offer.”
The CDP Institute was founded in 2013 with the mission to educate marketers about the challenges, methods, and technology related to customer data management. With a special focus on Customer Data Platforms, the institute provides valuable insights and resources such as case studies, guides, and a comprehensive library around this topic. With the new partnership, the CDP Institute and CrossEngage aim to raise awareness for customer data platforms as a crucial tool in today’s technology-driven marketing industry.
A Customer Data Platform is a marketer-managed system that serves as a central location for first-party customer data and makes it available to other systems and tools in real time. Data collected from all online and offline customer touchpoints allow marketers to segment their customers and to actively shape individual customer journeys across various channels with automated campaigns. With an open interface, CDPs are accessible for other systems such as data warehouses or analytics solutions as well as channel-specific tools for email, push notifications, and other channels.
“Handling customer data in a thought-through and sustainable way and creating meaningful relationships with existing customers is a key success factor for marketers”, says Manuel Hinz, CEO of CrossEngage. “We’re very excited that CDPs finally gain relevance in the European market and look forward to a fruitful cooperation.”
CrossEngage is a German-based company that provides a SaaS solution combining a real-time customer data platform with cross-channel campaign management. The solution is comparable to a layer that can be easily integrated with existing tools, without the challenge of changing the whole infrastructure.
About The CDP Institute
The CDP Institute provides vendor-neutral information about issues, methods, and technology related to customer data management in general and to Customer Data Platforms in particular. Specific activities include publishing of educational materials, news about industry developments, creation of best practice guides and benchmarks, a directory of industry vendors, and an online forum.
About CrossEngage
CrossEngage is a leading customer data platform for cross-channel campaign management. The technology enables customer loyalty and thus increases marketing profitability through personalized, real-time campaigns across all channels. Customers include Deutsche Bahn Vertrieb, HelloFresh, Contorion, BodyChange, Stylefile, Friendsurance, and Mycs. In addition to Vorwerk Ventures, Project A, Earlybird Venture Capital, VC Fonds Kreativwirtschaft managed by IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft, Capnamic Ventures, Ventech, 42 Capital and Cavalry Ventures, the sponsors include numerous business angels who are prominent in the field. The Berlin location currently employs 45 people.