Delivering Relevant Messages in Real Time: The Promise and Reality of Customer Data Platforms

As technology-savvy business professionals, we understand the importance of delivering relevant messages to the right audience at the right time. This is the ultimate goal of marketers, and a real-time customer data platform (CDP) is the key to achieving it.

A CDP is a system managed by marketers that collects customer data from various sources, creates unified profiles, and shares this data with other marketing technology systems for activation. In theory, a real-time CDP has the ability to collect, integrate, standardize, and activate customer data in real-time or as close to real-time as possible.

Real-Time CDPs vs. Traditional CDPs

The main difference between a real-time CDP and a traditional CDP lies in their ability to collect and update customer data. A real-time CDP is designed to update customer profiles with data from various sources in real-time, while a traditional CDP may have delays in updating profiles.

Many CDP vendors claim to offer real-time capabilities, but it's important to understand the different aspects of real-time and how they apply to a CDP. These include real-time updates, real-time lookup, real-time identity resolution, and real-time interactions. Not all CDPs offer all of these capabilities, so it's important to assess your specific needs before choosing a CDP.

Harnessing Real-Time Data for Immediate Action

The process of collecting customer data and turning it into actionable insights is not instant, even with a real-time CDP. The speed of data collection, normalization, AI processing, segmentation, and activation all depend on the capabilities of external systems and the specific use case.

For example, if a restaurant wants to send in-the-moment offers to customers in a specific location, the CDP will need to update and activate data quickly. However, if the need is to send relevant messages to customers interested in a particular topic, data that is a month old may suffice.

Leveraging Real-Time CDPs for Personalization

The ultimate goal of a CDP is to provide a complete view of the customer and enable highly personalized messaging. However, personalization in real-time can be challenging. It depends on the speed of data collection, the frequency of data updates, and the ability to orchestrate real-time interactions.

Before choosing a CDP, it's important to understand your specific use cases and the capabilities of the CDP in terms of real-time personalization.

The Benefits and Limitations of Real-Time CDPs

While a real-time CDP offers the promise of delivering relevant messages in real-time, it's important to understand the limitations of this technology. A CDP is not necessarily a real-time CDP, and its capabilities may vary depending on the specific tasks or processes it is required to accomplish.

Before investing in a CDP, it's important to assess your needs and understand the speed at which the CDP can complete different tasks. This will help you make an informed decision and take control of your customer data.

Interested in learning more about customer data platforms? Download the latest edition of our MarTech Intelligence Report for insights into trends and capabilities of CDPs.

Originally reported by Martech: https://martech.org/real-time-customer-data-platform-the-promise-and-the-reality/
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