Best Customer Data Platform Companies
By Olivia Deng
Imagine having a bunch of puzzle pieces scattered in different places — that’s not very helpful. If you put them together, they tell a more cohesive story.
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) serve the same purpose — they gather customer data from different sources and store that data in a central place.
Because this data helps businesses better understand their customers and how they behave, CDPs play an important role in helping you make informed product and marketing decisions.
Today, CDPs are vital for brands across industries. But with popularity comes choice. Businesses now have to choose between a wide range of CDP platforms to ensure they’re properly synthesizing and analyzing the right data points for their brands.
With all of the above in mind, it’s not actually that shocking that the CDP market grew from $1.6 billion in 2021 to $2 billion in 2022.
In this post, we’ll discuss the ins and outs of customer data platforms and the best ones to implement into your strategy.
What is a Customer Data Platform?
A CDP consolidates customer data from different tools and software into one centralized database. This database contains customer interaction data and other information from sources such as websites, mobile apps, email, and social media.
CDPs, often confused with Data Management Platforms (DMPs), contain both personally identifiable and anonymous users (for example, IP addresses), while DMPs primarily work with anonymous users.
CDPs consist mostly of first-party data, or data collected directly from the customer. They can also store third-party data, or data you get from another company (or third party).
Types of Customer Data Platforms
Not all CDPs are created equal. There are a few main types:
- Marketing Clouds: Marketing Clouds refers to a suite of cloud-based marketing tools.
- Smart Hubs: Smart Hubs act as a central hub for your company’s marketing technology, or martech.
- Marketing Data Integration: Marketing Data Integration CDPs place data first, with API capabilities.
- Engines and Toolkit: Engines and Toolkit refers to CDPs that are built by the business if the CDPs available are deemed insufficient or to answer specific needs.
Best Customer Data Platform Companies
Segment
Segment is a CDP that helps businesses collect, clean, synthesize, and activate first-party data across different touch points like Facebook, email, and website. Through a single API, Segment can also connect customer data from different business departments, like marketing, sales, service, and web analytics.
Pricing: Free version, $120/month for its Teams, and custom pricing for businesses.
Optimove
Optimove’s Relationship Marketing Hub brings customer data together in a single customer view. The GDPR– and ISO-compliant platform combines first-party data, third-party data, on-site/in-app user activity, and campaign response history.
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Source:: HubSpot Blog
