customer data platforms

It’s been 10 years since the term “Customer Data Platform” was coined by David Raab, Founder of the CDP Institute. Needless to say, the definition of a CDP has evolved a lot, and slowly but surely, the beast that is the CDP has grown new heads – or components – each of which serves a specific purpose.   

Part of the confusion regarding what a CDP even means stems from the fact that companies that recognized the opportunity early have been pushing the CDP envelope by building or buying complementary solutions, while others are selling CDP components but calling themselves a CDP nonetheless. 

Segment, which was acquired by Twilio in late 2020, has been around since the early days. And so has their VP of Product, Kevin Niparko who’s been with Segment since 2015 and has had a front-row seat to how the CDP space has evolved over the last 8 years. 

In this episode, our host, Arpit Choudhury, and our guest, Kevin Niparko rapidly discussed his early days as a growth analyst at Segment followed by the key innovations that put Segment on the map. We concluded the episode by discussing the two underrated but extremely important components of the CDP – data quality and privacy.

I learned a lot while researching for this episode and my key takeaway was that the industry needs to focus less on what’s new and flashy and take a moment to acknowledge the innovations that enable most of what’s new and flashy. 

Fun fact: In late 2015, Segment launched its Warehouses product that let customers sync data to their own Redshift or Postgres database – long before the rise of the cloud data warehouse. 

P.S. A conversation about CDPs in 2023 is incomplete without shedding some light on the Composable vs Packaged CDP debate. 

If you prefer to read, here you go: https://databeats.community/p/the-evolution-of-the-cdp

In this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, I’m joined by Matt Nolan, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Decision Sciences, to talk about one of my favorite topics: data, analytics, and how you can use them to provide customers with top notch experiences. We also explore Pega’s latest product release: Pega Customer Data Connectors — which I see as a definite gamechanger for organizations in every industry.

For consumers, whether B2B or B2C, experiences can be the difference between a closed sale and a lost revenue opportunity, and sometimes even the difference between a loyal customer who touts a brand to friends and family and one who spreads a negative word because of a less than stellar customer experience. In a word, customer experiences are everything.

This is not new news for many organizations, which is why customer data platforms (CDPs) are quickly becoming a ‘must have’ part of the MarTech stack. They help organizations manage massive amounts of customer data from a number of different channels, with the goal of providing insights to deliver better customer experiences. But CDPs alone aren’t a holy grail and unfortunately in many instances they can be siloed and/or data can go unused. So, what do businesses need to know or what other technologies do they need to adopt to avoid common CDP pitfalls and serve up experiences that will be a key differentiator in today’s marketplace. That’s exactly what Matt and I talked about.

Here are just a few of the things we covered:

• The current state of marketing and why first party data is king
• Why CDPs are that are connected and accessible throughout the organization are

so immensely important for today’s organizations

• The common challenges organizations face with their CDPs
• How organizations can maximize their data to make customer interactions more meaningful

We wrapped up the conversation by exploring Pega’s newest release, Pega Customer Data Connectors. This new solution is an exciting one, as it integrates data and decision-making in near real time. Organizations can tap into their data to provide just what the customer needs exactly when they need it — which is a fundamental element of delivering unparalleled customer experiences.

And if you’d like more information on Pega and the Pega Customer Data Connectors, you’ll find it here.