As customer expectations continue to evolve, companies all over the world have discovered the only way to stay one step ahead of the curve is with access to the right data. Data is the lifeblood of any customer experience strategy, guiding brands to create more intuitive, innovative interactions for consumers across every stage of the consumer journey.
However, capturing, processing, and leveraging data in an efficient and compliant format hasn’t always been easy. That’s why leading CRM companies, like Salesforce, have introduced tools to help make meaningful insights more accessible.
Built into the Marketing Cloud for the Salesforce ecosystem, the Salesforce CDP (Customer Data Platform) is a self-service solution companies can use to organize, unify, and align their data across all potential sources. Once information is implemented into the CDP, companies can use their all-in-one solution to deliver engaging, personalized experiences.
What is the Salesforce CDP?
The Salesforce CDP, or Customer Data Platform, is a tool designed to provide businesses with an end-to-end view of the ever-changing consumer lifecycle. In today’s complex world, consumers often move through a range of stages when interacting with any brand, but they expect a personalized, convenient service wherever they are. The CDP provides companies with the behind-the-scenes view they need of the customer journey to improve overall experiences.
The CDP combines data from a host of different omnichannel touchpoints into one platform, leveraging real-time streams of information for instant results. The technology collects, harmonizes, and evaluates data, transforming distributed information into comprehensive customer profiles.
With this platform, companies can:
- Create unified customer profiles: Draw information from multiple touchpoints, and connect identities, engagement information, loyalty, and marketing journeys into a single profile.
- Improve audience segmentation: Use behind-the-scenes insights of different customer groups to filter through different types of audiences for marketing and sales.
- Unify disparate data: Connect the various data strings from across the marketing and sales landscape to activate insights from anywhere in an organization.
- Analyze meaningful data: Leverage additional Salesforce tools like Marketing Cloud Intelligence and Tableau within the Marketing Cloud for useful insights.
- Expand and evolve: Work with a network of trusted providers to transform data into actionable steps for improving customer experience and enhancing marketing campaigns.
What’s Included in the Salesforce CDP?
The Salesforce CDP solution is a tool within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It provides companies with the tools they need to connect and unify data from both Salesforce tools and third-party solutions, including hundreds of industry-leading APIs.
Once companies have all of their data insights integrated into the same space, they can match data to people to create enhanced customer identities. There are built-in matching rules and AI to assist with profile creation, as well as tracking tools for monitoring consent and preference management.
Salesforce CDP includes access to “Calculated Insights”, which allows companies to add modelled data like LTV metrics to audience segments. Plus, it offers access to Marketing Cloud Intelligence and Tableau, so business leaders can activate the information they collect.
