Customer Data Platform Tips for B2B Marketing

Globalisation has changed the way people do business. In globalisation, the internet is the primary channel of communication between the business entities and customers. There are a few occasions when you come face-to-face with your customers. Otherwise, the dealings are online. Under such circumstances, it becomes essential to maintain customer data and analyse it on a continuous basis thereby giving birth to a new concept known as ‘customer data platform.’

In simple words, we shall define a customer data platform (CDP) as a real-time unified customer database accessible to other systems. The role of the CDP is to pull data from multiple sources, clean and combine it to create a unified customer profile. You need to update this profile on a real-time basis to create segmentation for personalised marketing.

CDPs have great significance in both the B2C and B2B marketing. We shall concentrate on the CDP attributes in the B2B category. Here are some CDP tips for B2B marketing.

· Integration of data

Integration of customer data from multiple sources is the starting point for the creation of any CDP. The best sources of data in B2B are various platforms such as Customer Relationship Management, marketing automation, product usage data, support ticketing system, and the financial platform. There are some other avenues such as calendar data and email details of sales personnel.

Procuring customer data should not be a problem because you have data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift and Snowflake. Systems like Salesforce also allow you to use APIs to export data.

· Organising data

Collection of data is easy. It is a challenging task to organise the data. It is an essential aspect of customer marketing analysis. To coordinate data from multiple sources, you should have a 360-degree vision of the customers. Organising data is vital to avoid duplication. As you extract customer data from the individual CRMs, you can find them having multiple accounts that need elimination. You need the services of a capable IT team to collect and assimilate data from various sources. Secondly, it requires continuous maintenance.

· Analysing your data

Analysing your data becomes easy when you have the requisite data in place. As you have the 360-degree view of your customers, it becomes easy for you to distinguish the attributes of the customers that are good for sales metrics like new bookings, renewing, and upselling the existing bookings. You can also use this 360-degree view to determine the customer lifecycle marketing.

The CDP allows you to concentrate on attributes like engagement with marketing campaigns, product usage, and determining the volume of sales and so on. In other words, you get a complete picture of your customers that can be helpful to your business.

· Use the Data

The most important aspect of B2B marketing is to use the data that you have meticulously organised. The best way to do so is to push the leads and contacts back to your CRM. It will help you to provide real-time information to your sales team whereby they can accurately focus on the customer’s wants.

The CDP also allows you to make adjustments by slicing data to suit your campaigns. It also allows you to automate reports thereby enabling you to gauge the performance of your business.

We have seen four important CDP tips for your B2B marketing campaigns. It is essential to update this information on a regular basis so that you have real-time data on your hands.   

Why is customer data platform gaining importance?

The competition is becoming intense on a daily basis. Every business has to be on its toes to stay ahead of the competition. The marketing campaign is the most significant aspect of the success of any business. Everything depends on the proper analysis of your customers as well as your competitors. It is why you see most of the companies relying on CRM for capturing and interpreting customer data. The objective is to make it easy for the customer to have a great shopping experience.

The CRM has been a practical analysis tool for a long time. Nowadays, you see the emergence of the customer data platform (CDP) as the most effective marketing tool in the industry. We shall now see what CDP is and why it is gaining in importance today.

What is the CDP?

Knowing your customer is paramount to success in business. It is vital to have a persistent unified customer database which is accessible to other systems. The CDP is such a market managed system.

The CDP enables the collection of data from all the corporate channels to channelise it towards a single platform for marketing and sales. The idea is to deliver a higher level of personalised service to your customers. You should have a 360⁰ view of the customer to ensure that. It involves the collection, assimilation, and analysis of a vast volume of data. This analysis provides real-time insights into the business thereby enabling it to take prompt action.

How do you ensure the collection of data?

In the ordinary course of marketing, the sales and the advertising teams have access to customer data from various sources. Some of them are call-centre interactions, social media, emails, product usage data, and mobile apps. The data collected from these sources enables the company to respond to the customer’s needs promptly.

Example of how CDP is useful

You can take the example of the German National Rail Company, the Deutsche Bahn. This rail company uses the CDP to cater to the immediate needs of the passengers. It offers an automatic and timely upgrade to their customers whenever it senses massive overcrowding in the trains. How do they manage to do that?

The Deutsche Ban uses the CDP to gain insights about the customer. It collects data on the customers who are travelling by their trains. It does not matter whether the customer books the tickets through their official mobile app or an online store. The system gathers information even when the customer gets his/her ticket from the railway station. The CDP links the personal data of the customer with the real-time data of the train and endeavours to offer a better experience.

The advantages of the CDP

The CGP can collect data from all the sources, be it the individual shop servers, a dedicated customer database, or even the data warehouse in the cloud.

· The CDP is a cloud-based platform.

· It is a centralised platform that manages the segmentation of the customers.

· The CDP is compatible with existing database management systems like the CRM.

· It provides access to complete and accurate information about the customer thereby helping the business offer the highest quality of services to the customer. It results in enhanced customer loyalty.

· The significant advantage of CDP is that you can link it to contextual events. The example of the Deutsche Bahn is a prime one.

Companies across the world are now concentrating on using the CDP to gain valuable insights into the customer. If one company does not do it, someone else will do it. The customer has a wide choice. Therefore, it is imperative for all businesses to use the CDP to improve their profitability. It explains the importance of the CDP.

       

Customer Data Platform Tips for B2B Marketing

Globalisation has changed the way people do business. In globalisation, the internet is the primary channel of communication between the business entities and customers. There are a few occasions when you come face-to-face with your customers. Otherwise, the dealings are online. Under such circumstances, it becomes essential to maintain customer data and analyse it on a continuous basis thereby giving birth to a new concept known as ‘customer data platform.’

In simple words, we shall define a customer data platform (CDP) as a real-time unified customer database accessible to other systems. The role of the CDP is to pull data from multiple sources, clean and combine it to create a unified customer profile. You need to update this profile on a real-time basis to create segmentation for personalised marketing.

CDPs have great significance in both the B2C and B2B marketing. We shall concentrate on the CDP attributes in the B2B category. Here are some CDP tips for B2B marketing.

· Integration of data

Integration of customer data from multiple sources is the starting point for the creation of any CDP. The best sources of data in B2B are various platforms such as Customer Relationship Management, marketing automation, product usage data, support ticketing system, and the financial platform. There are some other avenues such as calendar data and email details of sales personnel.

Procuring customer data should not be a problem because you have data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift and Snowflake. Systems like Salesforce also allow you to use APIs to export data.

· Organising data

Collection of data is easy. It is a challenging task to organise the data. It is an essential aspect of customer marketing analysis. To coordinate data from multiple sources, you should have a 360-degree vision of the customers. Organising data is vital to avoid duplication. As you extract customer data from the individual CRMs, you can find them having multiple accounts that need elimination. You need the services of a capable IT team to collect and assimilate data from various sources. Secondly, it requires continuous maintenance.

· Analysing your data

Analysing your data becomes easy when you have the requisite data in place. As you have the 360-degree view of your customers, it becomes easy for you to distinguish the attributes of the customers that are good for sales metrics like new bookings, renewing, and upselling the existing bookings. You can also use this 360-degree view to determine the customer lifecycle marketing.

The CDP allows you to concentrate on attributes like engagement with marketing campaigns, product usage, and determining the volume of sales and so on. In other words, you get a complete picture of your customers that can be helpful to your business.

· Use the Data

The most important aspect of B2B marketing is to use the data that you have meticulously organised. The best way to do so is to push the leads and contacts back to your CRM. It will help you to provide real-time information to your sales team whereby they can accurately focus on the customer’s wants.

The CDP also allows you to make adjustments by slicing data to suit your campaigns. It also allows you to automate reports thereby enabling you to gauge the performance of your business.

We have seen four important CDP tips for your B2B marketing campaigns. It is essential to update this information on a regular basis so that you have real-time data on your hands.   

Top Technological Trends Transforming Fashion & Retail

The constant innovation taking place in retail technologies in fashion are quite progressive. It is dynamic and transformative. The demands of customers in retail today are changing and brands have already begun to adapt in order to be relevant and achieve customer satisfaction. New technologies like fashion AI, the retail business’ intelligence software for fashion are taking the market by storm. They drive valuable business operations, augment overall customer experience and value proposition. The fashion industry is gradually harnessing new technologies that help retailers boost their business. Let’s have a look at the top technological trends in fashion. 

Artificial Intelligence

AI is one of the biggest technological advancements in the recent past. Artificial Intelligence has the ability to convert a large amount of data into enhanced information. This improves speed, reduces cost and elevates flexibility across the value chain. In the fashion industry, AI helps retailers with predictive fashion forecasting, capacity planning, and merchandising. In a 2017 report, McKinsey & Company said that an AI-based approach can result in the reduction of fashion forecasting errors by 50%.

Automated Supply Chain

Technologies driven by insights provided by the web and software solutions backed by data enable retail businesses to make better decisions with regard to their daily business operations. Automated supply chain process in the industry is followed and practised diligently as it enhances retail tracking while increasing competence. Why is this technology being rigorously followed by fashion businesses? Customers today expect brands to attend to them when they really need it, at any time of the day – be it change of orders, delivery, or product info. Customers today want modifications and services to take place at the click of a button and brands need to modify themselves. 

Better Procurement Tools

With new technologies every day, the lead time to create merchandise is shrinking. The purchasing managers in the fashion industry need to have the ideal procurement tools. As the demand increases, the procurement tools help a retailer streamline operations, faster access to breakthrough trends with latest data, and effectively regulate cash flow with the help of real-time admission to the status of the invoice, by putting in place an intelligent procurement tool.

Cloud Solutions

Fashion brands are eventually taking to novel technologies that help them reduce the effects of turnover on the business. They are moving towards using cloud-based services for better collaboration with suppliers, shortened administrative functions, lower costs of materials & goods, and of course, increased profits. Cloud-based services modify the fashion infrastructure outlay and involve fewer resources with enhanced workflow.

Looking for analytics services and insights to better your retail business? Manthan designs prescriptive applications using AI while providing contextual analytics for fashion retail. To know more, visit www.manthan.com for more info.