As a company you want to have loyal customers. They are loyal and will be the first to come back to you if they need anything. But how do you turn a 'regular customer' into a 'loyal customer'? The first thing you need for this is a solution that is able to create a central customer view. From there you can offer your individual customers an optimal brand experience.

In order to arrive at a central customer view, you must organize all your customer's data in a system. For this you have to continuously integrate data from various data sources. It is actually impossible to do all this manually. Fortunately, there are good solutions for this.

A 'Customer Data Platform (CDP)' is a solution to obtain a central customer view from various data sources and to realize a good customer journey. A Customer Data Platform is sometimes confused with a 'Data Management Platform (DMP)'. At first glance, these two solutions look similar, but there is indeed a big difference between the two.

You choose a Customer Data Platform if you have known leads and customers based on want to offer their specific behavior a personal brand experience. And if you want to build a relationship with individual customers to achieve optimal customer lifetime value. You choose a
DMP if you want to advertise in a more targeted way online and reach people you don't know yet based on third-party data.

The choice is often not that easy, so we outline the differences for you below. There are many variables to consider. If you are sure that you want to create the perfect customer journey for your customers, a Customer Data Platform is the right solution.

What options does a Customer Data Platform offer you exactly? We would be happy to explain this to you in a personal conversation. Please feel free to contact us. We will show you the opportunities and possibilities for your company!

1. Origin

Customer Data Platform: Originally developed to optimally support customers in their customer journey based on insight into current behavior. Regardless of which phase of the customer lifecycle.

Data Management Platform: Knows its origins in creating global behavioral profiles to target unknown leads more effectively with online advertising campaigns.

2. What does it do

Customer Data Platform: Creates a persistent database of customer profiles. Analyzes individual customer behavior from all channels, identifying potential churn, repeat purchase, up and cross-sell information.

Data Management Platform: Knows its origins in creating global behavioral profiles to target unknown leads more effectively with online advertising campaigns.

3. Database

Customer Data Platform: You only use one database with customer data from which you can create one central customer profile.

Data Management Platform: With the implementation it forms an extra data source (which you can then link with a CDP, to add the data to the central customer profile).

4. Dates

Customer Data Platform: Works primarily with first-party data. This is data from customers and leads that you know yourself. You obtain this data via your owned media (a webshop, cash register system in stores, marketing automation system, CRM, Facebook page, e-mail, mobile app, etc).

Data Management Platform: Works mainly with third-party data. This is data from anonymous leads whose profile is based on a cookie ID.

5. Insights

Customer Data Platform: Provides detailed insight into the behavior of individual customers with the data you collect.

Data Management Platform: Uses the data it collects to provide insight into the behavior of defined target groups (so-called audiences). That insight becomes more reliable the more customers of the DMP start using it.

6. Storage

Customer Data Platform: The data you collect remains available indefinitely. Of course, taking into account the retention periods that you agree in accordance with the GDPR/AVG regulation.

Data Management Platform: Due to the storage of large amounts of data and for the purpose of feeding short-term online advertising campaigns, data is often only kept for 90 days.

7. Links

Customer Data Platform: By linking first-party data with third-party data that a DMP collects, you can further enrich the individual customer profile in your CDP (just check what the GDPR/AVG prescribes).

Data Management Platform: By linking third-party data that a DMP collects with, for example, the profile of loyal customers in a Customer Data Platform, you can target so-called look-a-like audiences (just check what the GDPR/AVG prescribes).