Visitors to our OMR Masterclass 2019 know that the platform economy has massively shaken up marketing. For decades, the unattractive procedural costs of switching between brands have kept customers loyal. In other words, the cost of researching, evaluating, and searching for a product from a new brand has kept customers coming back to an old one that they know. However, the platform economy has taken a hammer to procedural switching costs: products and brands can be researched at the click of a button, customer reviews minimize economic risk, instant information has replaced needing to speak to an employee. Switching brands is now hardly an issue for customers, and marketers’ problems pile up as customer loyalty diminishes. Brands are left having to put a lot more focus on their active brand-customer relationship, but that’s a lot easier in theory than it is in practice.

Marketers need to think outside the box and create opportunities to connect with customers at times and places that haven’t been traditionally utilized. Dr. Markus Wuebben shows in his OMR Masterclass 2019, I Got 99 Problems but my CDP Ain’t One, that when trying to connect with customers in new, innovative ways, the data requirements come thick and fast. Marketers are left feeling that they have 99 problems.

Dr. Wuebben explains in his OMR Masterclass talk that CDP technology cuts through our problems and gives marketers unparalleled opportunities for connection and relationship maintenance. The CRM and marketing landscape has changed rapidly: It’s fortunate that, thanks to CDPs, the ability for marketers to rapidly adapt and change along with it has arrived with perfect timing.

Too Long; Didn’t Watch

Here are the key takeaways from Dr. Wuebben’s talk:

Simple Engagements Aren’t so Simple

  • Marketers want to engage customers with the right message at the right time through the right channel.
  • That requires a lot of real-time data, as well as sophisticated segmentation and campaign automation.
  • Marketers have 99 problems.

Three Possible Solutions

  • Proprietary solutions are possible in theory – but they require a few million euros in budget (at least), the necessary expertise and a lot of development time.
  • Marketing clouds have the benefit of being a single do-it-all tool but they aren’t capable of real-time data handling or of integrating third-party tools. They also have limited segmentation and campaign management capabilities.
  • The Integrated Best-of-Breed approach is ideal for marketers who need to run highly engaging campaigns: integrate the best or most suitable tools available into a single system, with access to detailed, real-time data. It’s enabled by a Customer Data Platform – a CDP.

A CDP? Break It Down for Me.

The CDP Institute defines a CDP as a ‘marketer-managed system that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.’

  • A CDP is a packaged system, a bundled system with standardized processes and generic interfaces that is usable by marketing teams without assistance from IT.
  • The CDP’s customer database is persistent as data is stored for as long as it is needed, and it unifies data from all available sources to create a complete customer view.
  • The CDP is accessible to other systems: it provides access to data for any system that requires it.

The 100th Problem – Merging Retention and Acquisition

  • The next main topic for marketing, in general, will be the changing face of retention in the platform economy. It is now much easier for customers to switch between brands, making traditional brand loyalty harder to achieve.
  • Customers today no longer stay with brands because it’s easier and more convenient – customers now stay with brands because they feel connected with the brand.
  • Retaining your customers, in most cases, now means re-acquiring them for further purchases. A brand-customer connection must be steadily built.
  • Retention and acquisition techniques and data must be merged to create effective re-acquisition. Lower-funnel CRM data enriches upper-funnel data.
  • CDPs (lower-funnel specialty) and DMPs (upper-funnel specialty) can orchestrate to effectively merge retention and acquisition.

Marketers today are working in a drastically changing context, one where traditional approaches to brand loyalty are disappearing. CDP technology is enabling marketers to adapt. A CDP-enabled Integrated Best-of-Breed Approach, in tandem with a DMP, allows for informed, dynamic engagement that keeps customers loyal on large scales.