How data-centric brands secure CDP buy in, prove ROI, and align around data advocacy

Businesses are sitting on more data than they know how to use, but struggling with how to leverage it effectively and efficiently. For many organizations, using a customer data platform (CDP) is the right answer to their data challenges. However, gaining buy-in from leadership and throughout the organization can be difficult to achieve.

 How do you prove the value and importance of data? How can you demonstrate the potential that data holds to transform the business and build new revenue opportunities? How do you get technical and business buyers aligned on one solution to fit all the organization’s needs?

These questions can be difficult to answer. However, they are essential queries when trying to wrestle with siloed, disordered, and disconnected data.

The state of data disconnection today

A 2022 Gartner survey indicated that data is still not being used to influence decisions as much as executives would like. Inconsistent data quality and cognitive biases are the main drivers of the disconnect. This lack of buy-in makes it challenging to acquire fuller, detailed profiles of customers, according to Gartner.

• In organizations where marketing analytics influence fewer than 50% of decisions, there’s a greater challenge in proving the value of marketing, according to the survey of 377 marketing analytics users.
• The marketing execs surveyed also reported that about a quarter of decision-makers don’t review information provided to them by marketing, reject recommendations, and rely on gut rather than data.
• Forrester research showed that most data goes unused for as many as 73% of enterprises. That leads to significant lost opportunities caused by not reading, understanding and applying data insights.

The lack of engagement among decision-makers, and the lost opportunities at play can cause many marketers to feel frustrated. It also means their teams are spending inordinate amounts of time cleaning, seeking, and refining data manually.

The true power of a CDP

A CDP can help marketers develop, harness, and enable data in significant ways. However, gaining buy-in can be challenging. Marketers can gain buy-in by helping decision-makers better understand what a CDP can and cannot do.

A CDP helps a brand connect better with its customers, including supporting in the collection, organization, and use of data. While the features of each CDP will be different, they typically include a combination of the following:

• Marketing automation
• Data management
• Campaign management
• Marketing delivery
• Analytics and measurement

Data systems are common in other business segments. Companies regularly deploy data technologies in finance, sales, customer service and fundraising. They are relatively new in the marketing space yet can significantly enhance the efficacy and impact of marketing teams.

CDPs offer considerable benefits, including:

• Audience Insights. A robust CDP solution provides deeper understanding of audiences, segments and behaviors. These solutions use real-time data and office information to build better models and knowledge about customers and what they have done and are likely to do in the future
• Personalization. You can use a CDP to develop more valuable messaging via personalization. Marketing campaigns can use this personalization to customize messages, offers, and communication to existing and prospective customers
• Enterprise Data Coordination. A CDP can breakdown data siloes throughout the organization. The CDP will collect data from various sources, including first- and third-party data. With more accurate and detailed customer profiles, the CDP solution can help the entire enterprise better understand audiences, behaviors, and customer experiences
• Data Accessibility. The CDP solution should provide more easily usable data across the enterprise. With unified profiles of customers, data becomes richer and more detailed. Customer support, sales, and finance can all benefit from the stitched-together data gathered from across the enterprise
• System Enhancement. A CDP can enhance the value and impact of other business systems, including customer relationship management (CRM) and centralized marketing technologies
• Marketing Velocity. Today’s CDP solutions give marketing teams more access to the features that traditionally have fallen to IT teams. Marketers can collect profiles, build lists, write personalized content, launch campaigns and analyze results independently. That means campaigns come together and are completed faster
• Marketing Efficiency. A CDP solution eliminates many of the previously manual tasks previously taken on by marketing and IT teams. Those staff can focus on more high-impact tasks, resulting in more ROI for marketing investments
• Analytics. A CDP gives you deeper knowledge about the impact and cost benefits of campaigns by using more accurate and impactful customer data sets
• Regulatory Compliance. There’s increasing demand to ensure that brands protect customer data and use it correctly. More jurisdictions are passing laws and regulations that, when violated, can result in significant financial penalties. Brands have an obligation to protect data and give consumers more control as to how it is used, if at all. A CDP can help brands maintain regulatory compliance with myriad requirements across state, federal and regional mandates

Getting CDP buy-in through data centricity and advocacy

Enterprises today need to be increasingly customer-centric organizations. They need to think about data as an opportunity to deepen customer engagement, close the consumer privacy trust gap, and develop new revenue streams.

In some cases, robust data can redefine entire business models. Creating a customer-centric organization often begins with a focus on data. If organizations are to think about customers first, they need to know who those customers are, what they do and why they behave the ways they do.

Often, the burden of developing a customer-centric culture begins with teams in IT and marketing. These teams focus squarely on the ability to collect, understand, analyze, and use data most effectively. When those teams both understand the value of data, it can break down barriers that prevent the teams from working together. IT staff may be concerned about marketers’ ability to use data accurately. Marketers may be frustrated with IT’s inability to pull together data cohesively and in a timely manner. However, when the IT and marketing teams are aligned and persuasive, the data-centricity that’s inherent in customer-centricity can thrive.

A CDP like Lytics helps those teams collaborate and work together more cohesively. The CDP puts those teams on equal footing, able to work together and use data correctly.

How a Center of Excellence offers a powerful solution

There are several models available for enterprises to consider when deploying a CDP solution. They include:

• Growth. This model uses a growth team that’s responsible for customer data, insights and activation. They are focused on supporting marketing teams and focus on the customer journey. It’s a good model for B2B companies and product-led growth companies. The model focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning integrations into the organization’s growth strategy
• Matrix. Functional teams are made directly responsible for customer data and insights. It’s a good structure for companies that have a highly complex organizational structure and processes. While it’s highly scalable, it requires lots of coordination, can reinforce silos, and can be slow to act
• Center of Excellence. In this model, a central team is responsible for customer data, insights and activation recommendations to the marketing team. It’s an excellent choice for enterprise B2C companies that have highly centralized IT and data functions

The Center of Excellence model is an ideal choice when organizations are seeking to develop or strengthen their data- and customer-centricity. It’s a model that has multiple applications within a business but is particularly well suited for data management. A Center of Excellence is a team of employees who specialize in providing strategic planning, influence decision-makers and staff alike, and build best practices around business processes. Its structure has several key benefits, including:

• Deeper Customer Knowledge. A core focus of the Center of Excellence model is the emphasis on understanding customers, including demographics, behaviors and predictions
• Efficiency. The model creates efficient operations around data collection and use, deriving data insights and creating high-impact campaigns
• Technologically Forward. When using robust CDP solutions like Lytics, this model is on the cutting edge of technological advances. Artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities let teams better predict consumer behaviors and optimize the experiences at every stage of the customer journey
• Enterprise Buy-In. A Center of Excellence model is an ideal way to gain buy-in at all levels and across functional areas within the enterprise. A key aspect of the model is to help areas with insights and empowerment of data, not just a section’s own but that from across the organization. The team can help business segments learn more about where there are gaps and opportunities while offering actionable solutions

Staffing for a Center of Excellence should involve experts from various parts of the enterprise, including project managers, data managers, technology and IT staff, c-suite leaders, marketing, service, and sales staff, legal counsel, implementation partners and external consultants.One position that can enhance and transform the approach to data and customers is that of a “journey planner.” The journey planner is responsible for the customer journey from end to end. This staff member focuses teams on journey-centric insights, decision-making and targeting. The journey planner’s role also is responsible for designing and implementing the desired customer experience across channels, including metrics. They will set the goals for these journeys for each channel and the measurements (and tracking of those measures) for each. They will ensure alignment among IT and marketing teams.

Customer-centricity requires a center of excellence

The Center of Excellence, by design, is customer-centric. With a focus and leadership on the customer journeys, the model inherently shifts the focus to customer centricity. And because customer-centricity is inherently data-centricity, the organization’s focus, impact and buy-in will evolve in the right direction.

At Lytics, we help transform organization’s collection, analysis and use of data. The Lytics CDP platform is transformational, using data in new and more high-impact ways. To learn more, explore our deep-dive on the potential of a Center of Excellence operating model.