What’s stopping you from using a CDP (Customer Data Platform)?

Richard Wall
Printed on: 24 February 2025

In 2024, companies invested $7.4 billion (£5.9 billion) in CDPs (Buyer Knowledge Platforms). Nevertheless, this isn’t unfold evenly; roughly 30% of companies don’t but use a CDP in any respect, and of these which can be, solely half assume they’re getting the utmost attainable functionality from their chosen platform. 

We’ve examined the challenges surrounding CDP adoption and a few of the myths that persist because the expertise turns 12 years previous. 

Challenges 

Problem 1: Lack of correct integration 

The central premise of a CDP actually sounds interesting: all of your buyer information is in a single place, creating a whole view of each buyer.  

Sadly, not each software program that calls itself a CDP really delivers this. Some merely create yet one more silo within the enterprise, holding information in a separate system and making integration more durable relatively than simpler. 

Problem 2: Resistance to alter 

12 years could also be aeons on this planet of promoting expertise, but it surely’s not a lot in comparison with how lengthy many companies have been doing “simply tremendous” with out a CDP. 

If the advantages will not be correctly defined, including a CDP to your tech stack may be seen as simply one other course of the info has to undergo earlier than you should utilize it.  

Nevertheless, information from Advertiser Perceptions exhibits that the typical time it takes for CDP worth to turn out to be apparent is just 8 months from deployment. 

Problem 3: Dodgy information 

Every now and then, our advertising inbox receives a message stating, “We may assist CommuniGator rank increased on Google.” 

The one downside is that we retired the CommuniGator model in 2020! No matter different information the corporate that despatched this message has on our actions, it’s ruined its probability to win us over due to a five-year out-of-date subject someplace in its martech stack. 

Knowledge decays very like any useful resource, so for a CDP to ship you might want to often examine that what about your clients remains to be right. Do they nonetheless stay in the identical place? Has their family misplaced or gained members? The one factor worse than unpersonalised messaging is messaging that will get vital info incorrect!  

How many people can recall occasions once we’ve bought from a model solely to be proven our buy in e mail campaigns and social media advertisements for ages afterwards? A completely joined-up CDP prevents this.  

Myths 

Fable 1: We have already got a CRM, so we don’t want a CDP 

CRMs and CDPs do have lots in frequent, however they aren’t the identical factor. CRM techniques got here onto the scene within the Nineties when the digital channels we depend on at this time didn’t exist. Because of this CRMs aren’t designed to deal with the massive variety of touchpoints that make up a shopping for journey in 2025, and definitely not in real-time. 

Profitable manufacturers will mix each instruments. A CRM holds long-term information like a buyer’s demographic and geographic information or contact logs after they contact the customer support workforce. Related information from the CRM is then fed right into a CDP, the place it may be mixed with engagement and behavioural information from their web site, emails, and social media. 

Fable 2: CDPs are just for digital exercise 

If your online business is predominantly offline (for instance, a automobile dealership), it may appear {that a} CDP isn’t related to you. However this isn’t the case. 

You can use a CDP to trace stock, fee information, work orders, and different crucial enterprise parts. In our instance, possibly drivers wait till the primary day below-zero temperatures to get winter tyres fitted, or possibly they do it on 1 December, so that they’re forward of the sport.  

Fable 3: Solely Entrepreneurs can use CDPs 

It’s not shocking that many organisations mistrust the concept of a “single supply of fact” when so many instruments have rushed to assert the title for themselves. Nevertheless, a CDP can actually be this when you set it up correctly. 

Whereas bringing advertising touchpoints into 1 view is an apparent use case, it’s removed from the one one. Going again to our automobile dealership instance, the Gross sales groups can see {that a} “new” prospect really made it shut to buying a automobile 5 years in the past however pulled out for a cause that you simply’re now higher geared up to take care of. Service Centre groups can see what expectations had been set on new automobile gross sales and proactively reply queries accordingly.