Introduction
A customer data platform (CDP) gathers data from online and offline sources and assimilates it into exhaustive customer profiles, and the CDP market is forecasted to surpass USD 5.7 billion by 2026.
Insights gathered via CDPs can come in handy for your marketing and sales teams to render pleasant customer experiences that contribute to customer acquisition, retention, increased customer lifetime value (CLTV), and so much more. To understand how CDPs can help businesses with personalization, read its overview here.
The digital marketplace is inundated with a number of CDPs with variable features and pricing structures. While some platforms may be suitable for startups and solopreneurs, others work well for agencies and large enterprises. We’ve made the process of picking the right CDP for your business easier. Let’s get to it…
How to Pick the Right CDP?
You must consider several parameters while choosing the right CDP for your business. They are:
1. Scope of pre-built data connectors
The main aim of investing in a CDP is collecting and consolidating customer data from maximum touchpoints or sources. Your CDP should be powerful enough to retrieve data from internal as well as external sources. Consequently, you will be able to create more comprehensive customer profiles.
Moreover, you must also see that your CDP lets you create custom connectors so that you can formulate better loyalty programs, customer support systems, billing, etc.
2. Technical independence
After you have tested the initial data connections, marketers must be able to complete the remaining configuration. Your CDP should not be too technologically intensive so that it reduces the deployment time and cost.
3. Customer data security
As a CDP deals with sensitive customer data, it should abide by the data security guidelines. The tools should offer data encryption features between data sources and integrated systems to prevent any security issues.
4. Actionability of the data
Generally, CDPs have basic features like customer segmentation and data analytics. So, your marketing team will be able to use this data more powerfully in the marketing campaigns. Moreover, the CDP should also offer access to the raw data, thereby enabling you to employ AI and ML models for specific use cases. 81% of people prefer companies using AI to personalize recommendations.
5. Integration with third-party tools
The CDP you choose should come with easy integrations to third-party tools including visualization dashboarding tools (Microsoft Power BI or Tableau), app development platforms (Microsoft Power Apps or AppSheet), and workflow automation solutions (Microsoft Flow or Zapier).
6. Cost-effectiveness
CDPs have different pricing structures according to their features and the businesses they are suitable for. Choose the CDP that brings the maximum ROI for your investment. Remember that every feature won’t be included in the core plan. You might have to go for add-ons in such cases.
To make it easier, here is our list of top CDPs with their key features to help you decide faster.
Top 6 Customer Data Platforms
We understand that it can get overwhelming to pick the correct platform from so many different solutions, all claiming to be the best. So, here are the top 6 CDPs that would be the best for your business.
1. Adobe Real-time CDP
Adobe Real-time CDP gathers B2C and B2B data from across different systems and incorporates it into real-time profiles. You get real-time profiles ready for activation across different channels that allow you to create personalized experiences. You can collect, enrich, and distribute data at an amazing speed and manage your customer experience. It gives you unlimited prebuilt connections and customized integrations that help you connect data from virtually anywhere.
Pricing
The pricing varies according to the edition you wish to invest in and the features you are looking for.
B2C edition: For B2C brands who want to personalize experiences for consumers
B2B edition: For B2B brands who want to personalize experiences for leads and accounts
B2P edition: For combined B2C and B2B brands who want to personalize experiences for the same person across different business lines
2. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a robust customer data solution that gives you a comprehensive insight into the customer’s real-time behavior across different platforms. You will get 360-degree unified customer profiles that will facilitate advanced segmentation.
It comes with more than 300 integrations that sync with the top software tools in just a few clicks without any technical intervention.
Klaviyo gives developers a huge playground to create custom integrations and connect with third party tools to get more flexibility.
With this platform, marketers can include a JavaScript snippet in the website and capture customer browsing behavior. You can also use Webhooks and automate actions on different platforms.
Pricing
In a broad sense, the pricing depends on the number of contacts and platforms you need. For example: If you have 1001-1500 contacts and need help with email and SMS marketing, the plan starts at USD 60 per month. It will allow you to send 15000 emails and 1250 SMS monthly. For enterprises, they have Klaviyo One, which offers additional services to leverage the platform in the best possible way.
3. SAP Customer Data Platform
SAP CDP is perfect for enterprise-level businesses looking forward to driving relevant, personalized engagements. With this platform, you can get real time insights that help you boost revenue and drive business growth.
SAP bridges front-end and back-end data that deliver trusted, personalized engagements at every step of the buyer’s journey and understand customers better.
You can visualize customer profiles with their connected relationships and associated accounts. It will give you insights into real-time customer behavior that will enhance audience segmentation and uncover trends. It also has API connectors that let you feed real-time data to upstream and downstream systems.
Pricing
As it is an enterprise-grade CDP, the pricing is available upon request. It is available as a SaaS product with an annual subscription. The pricing will vary according to the number of profiles and other business requisites.
4. Salesforce Customer Data Platform
Salesforce is one of the most user-friendly customer data platforms. According to Casey’s Customer Story 2021, it offers 30x faster segmentation compared to other solutions. It helps you connect all your data in real-time to get a complete customer profile. With Salesforce CDP, you can build intelligent audiences faster and make every engagement personalized, cost-efficient, and scalable across different platforms.
It allows you to understand your customers, thereby driving better decisions, saving time, and cutting down costs. As you have a network of trusted partners, you can easily connect your data on the go and integrate your own AI. As it comes with an open ecosystem, you can enrich customer profiles and activate trusted, first-party ad data without any custom integrations.
Pricing
The Data Cloud Starter for Marketing starts at a yearly price of USD 108000. You can use additional credits of USD 1000 per year for features like segmentations and activations or data services. Ad audiences feature is available at USD 2400, while data storage is at USD 1800 per year.
5. Insider
Like Salesforce, Insider is also a user-friendly CDP that offers individualized, cross-channel customer experiences in the true sense. It helps in connecting data across different channels and predicts future behavior with AI. The best part of using Insider is that it is suitable for startups as well as enterprise brands. So, you can easily scale with it.
Imagine the huge range of platforms like mobile apps, web push notifications, email, WhatsApp, and SMS. Insider creates delightful customer experiences across all these channels. It will support customer acquisition and retention.
Insider is the top choice for renowned global brands owing to its AI-powered optimization capabilities. Moreover, it integrates with 100+ connectors across 20+ categories like advanced analytics, CRMs, social media, and email marketing solutions.
Pricing
You will have to contact Insider for a detailed pricing structure according to your business needs. However, they do offer a free trial to make the decision making easier for you.
6. Hightouch
Hightouch is a composable customer data platform that distributes customer audiences on the go with a no-code interface. Being warehouse-first, Hightouch is better, more powerful, and easier to set up in relation to the legacy CDPs.
This tool adapts to your business needs and data collection practices. It helps connect to 150+ tools and send structured data from Google Sheets or practically anywhere to 150+ destinations. You can eliminate manual intervention and do away with data silos across your business operations.
Hightouch enables data syncing from your warehouse to any tool without any APIs or CSVs, also known as the reverse ETL process (extract, transform, and load). It goes beyond analytics and extends the reach of your warehouse directly into more than 150 SaaS applications without any custom work. Whether you need to sync a row every 5 seconds or 5 million rows each day, it is a scalable and flexible solution that can handle it all.
Pricing
Free Plan
- 1 billable destination
- Unlimited free destinations, data fields, sources, source rows, and 30-day trials of any additional destination
- 5 user seats
- 2 workspaces
- 5 active syncs per billable destination
Pro – USD 800 per month
- 4 billable destinations
- Unlimited 30-day trials of any additional destination, free destinations, data fields, sources, source rows,
- 5 active syncs per billable destination
- Custom alerting
- 5 user seats
- 2 workspaces
Business – Custom pricing
- Custom # of destinations
- Premium destinations
- Customer Studio builder
- Personalization API
- Granular RBAC and label-based access controls
- SSO login
- Audit logs
- Git version control
- Approval flows and drafts
- Real time syncing
Note: The pricing for Hightouch is according to annual billing. It includes a 20% discount on monthly billing.
Wrapping Up
Your customers expect personalized service everywhere, be it online or offline. And a CDP helps you with well-maintained, accessible, and up-to-date customer data. It serves as the perfect platform to centralize the customer data infrastructure.
Having the right CDP combined with an effective strategy can work wonders for your business growth. So, are you ready to fuel your business bottomline? Invest smartly in a CDP that caters to all your needs.
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Minal Joshi is a content marketer at Krish with a flair for eCommerce and Digital Commerce aspects. She is a MarTech fanatic with a knack of writing with which, she helps brands to curate, create, & commence digital brand positioning. Sharing insights via articles, case studies, eBooks, Infographics, and other forms of content creation is what she lives for. Being an ardent traveler, when not writing, you'll find her sipping coffee into the mountains or petting a stray.
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