How to create a CDP worksheet from your use cases

By Greg Krehbiel

Getting the right mix of front-end and back-end functions is key to your CDP evaluation and implementation. Start with your use cases and build a worksheet.

Back vs. front end

The back-end component is responsible for ensuring that customer data is accurate, complete, and accessible, with the goal of merging disparate records from multiple sources to create a single customer view. The front-end components can be divided into marketer-facing and customer-facing features. Marketer-facing features would include data visualization and reporting. Customer-facing functionality might include recommendation engines, paywall management, and custom content displays.

Recommendation engines for content

Adding customized recommendations to an article on your website can enhance a visitor’s experience with your brand and increase page views. The functionality required by that use case depends on what data the recommendation engine will use. If you only want to make recommendations based on the user’s web behavior, you don’t need that back-end function, and you might not even need a CDP. Many stand-alone recommendation engines can handle that.

Questions to ask:

Does this use case require back-end data management? Is the CDP’s front-end function good enough, or do I need a dedicated service? Does the CDP integrate with that dedicated service?

“Customers who bought this…”

In retail, vendors want to provide product recommendations, which can increase the value of each order. If recommendations are based (at least in part) on the customer’s order history, the recommendation engine needs that back-end data.  If the recommendations are simply based on averages across all customers, specific information about the customer’s purchase history is irrelevant.

Surveys can help you understand your customers, which can help you provide better service. Many CDPs can manage surveys, but very few CDPs can compete with the functionality of a dedicated survey platform. How does this affect your evaluation of potential CDP vendors?

Surveys

Publishers who don’t wish to rely exclusively on ad revenue to fund the creation of their content may offer access to premium content for a fee. This requires the creation and maintenance of accounts to manage access to this content.

Managing a paywall

Landing page optimization

A/B or multivariate landing page tests can dramatically increase the success of an online store, online forms, and e-newsletter sign-up pages. However, if you have reason to believe that your customers are significantly different than the average web visitor, you might need your landing page optimization calculation to show different stats for different groups.

Dig deeper:

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