Privacy, Agility, and AI: Emerging CDP trends for 2024

Reliable, actionable data underlies today’s most lucrative, innovative, and growth-accelerating business decisions. Armed with validated patterns from customer behavior and real-time data, organizations can adopt a data-driven business strategy and outperform their competition. But none of this is possible without the right tooling for your data management and customer experience goals. One solution that addresses both gaps? A customer data platform (CDP). 

By 2026, the CDP market is forecasted to surpass $5.7 billion. Meanwhile, the volume of data in the world is expected to double (IDC). 

As customer data investments grow, the imperative for data privacy, AI-enablement, agile data management processes, and automation does, too.  

5 Emerging trends in the CDP landscape

The customer data platform (CDP) space has been evolving rapidly, especially over the last few years. As businesses look to better understand and engage with their customers, more and more of them are turning to CDP technology to collect, integrate, and manage customer data from various sources — and to create a unified 360-degree  customer view. This unified view can then be used to personalize marketing efforts and improve customer experiences.

“CDPs provide a way to refactor the data infrastructure built from the data and analytics layer without having to rip and replace a host of customer-facing systems across the front office, and they enable a customer data foundation that can support business transformation through new apps, markets, and products and services. The proliferating use of AI/ML as co-pilots to customers and CX professionals also mandate the need for a strong customer data foundation.”

As we move toward 2024, there are several emerging trends in the CDP space that are worth paying attention to. Here are a few top trends, and their potential implications for businesses.

1. CDPs will become more AI-driven.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been transforming industries across the board, and the CDP space is no exception. In the coming year, we can expect to see that continue. This means that it will become the norm for AI algorithms to be used to analyze customer data and identify patterns and insights that can inform marketing strategies.

For example, AI can be used to analyze customer behavior and predict future purchasing patterns. This information can then be used to create targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate with customers.

2. We’ll see a continued focus on data privacy.

With increased scrutiny on data privacy laws and regulations, businesses are under pressure to ensure that they are collecting, storing, and using customer data in a responsible and ethical manner. This is particularly true in the EU, where the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in effect since 2018.

As a result, we can expect to see increased focus on data privacy in the CDP space in 2024 and beyond. CDP providers will need to ensure that their platforms are GDPR-compliant and that they are transparent about how customer data is being collected, stored, and used. 

Lytics, the first privacy-centric and GDPR-compliant composable CDP, offers flexibility, business agility, and transparency to keep up with regulatory changes as they shift.

3. Enter: the rise of real-time data processing

One of the key benefits of a CDP is its ability to provide a unified view of the customer by integrating data from various sources. However, this integration process can take time, and the resulting data may not always be up-to-date.

To address this issue, we can expect to see the rise of real-time data processing in the CDP space. Real-time data processing involves collecting and processing data in real-time, allowing businesses to make faster and more informed decisions. For example, a CDP that uses real-time data processing — like Lytics— can analyze customer behavior as it happens and provide personalized recommendations in real-time.

4. Demand for omnichannel capabilities will hit a new high.

Consumers today interact with businesses through a wide range of channels, including email, social media, mobile apps, and more. As a result, businesses need to be able to provide a consistent experience across all channels in order to meet customer expectations.

As they race to achieve this, we can expect to see increased demand for CDPs with omnichannel capabilities. An omnichannel-ready CDP, like Lytics, can collect and integrate customer data from a wide range of channels, providing a single, complete and unified view of the customer that can be used to personalize marketing efforts and improve customer experiences across all channels. 

5. Integration with marketing automation platforms will be priority.

Marketing automation platforms have been growing rapidly lately: helping businesses automate marketing tasks and personalize marketing efforts with customer data at the core.

Naturally, in 2024, we can expect to see increased integration between CDPs and marketing automation platforms. This integration will allow businesses to use the unified customer data provided by the CDP to create more personalized and effective marketing campaigns using the automation capabilities of the marketing platform.

Avoid undermining your critical CDP investments

Is your customer data bringing you value?

Most modern CDPs have powerful analytics capabilities that consolidate, enrich, and assess that data, in order to help businesses derive meaningful insights and value. Unfortunately, most users miss out on these capabilities. Today, 59% of marketers use CDP mainly as a data consolidation tool. 

It’s time to think bigger. A CDP is crucial to building a cohesive data ecosystem, to standardizing data collection, and adopting a data-driven business strategy.