You have a CDP. So what?!

In October I had the privilege to speak 1:1 with 16 different marketing leaders (CMOs & SVPs) in B2C. Every one of them had a CDP (Customer Data Platform). Average time with it was 2.5 years. Only 1 liked it.

Why did 15/16 marketing leaders not like their CDP? The answer was the same across the board. It was expensive and hardly being utilized. None had built a Customer 360 yet. Every convo got into the “joke” if they had a Customer 45 or 90 or 180. Some thought their CDP only collected data for them so functionally it was just another database… and a costly one at that.

When I asked about performance lifts from specific use cases I got a bunch of “not sure” and “not yet.” When I asked about ROI from specific features or services of the CDP the answer was the same.

Let me be clear that I am a HUGE fan of CDPs. I wrote 2 years’ worth of blog posts on the subject. I led in-house (we now call these composable) CDP builds for omni-channel retailers. I advised major brands in the space on buy vs build decisions as well as advising some CDPs themselves on GTM. It’s not the fault of CDPs that they haven’t met ROI expectations.

CDPs are not products that by themselves can improve your marketing ROI. There is no magic bullet in a CDP. They are not as much software as they are storage.

What CDPs are great at is a hugely important and meaningful thing. Adding resolution and fidelity when aggregating your customer data. The more data sources you put into the CDP the more their value increases. But CDPs are not prescriptive or opportunistic about their contents.

This gets to the core issue of ROI from a CDP investment.

People are needed to operationalize the data in the CDP. Really skilled and experienced people are needed to take the data in a CDP and turn it into ROI. People with rich SQL data skills who have customer empathy and deeply understand marketing across all paid and owned channels.

These people are in very short supply. If you are reading this and say “that’s me” you probably work as a consultant since it pays better than working for a brand. Brands with CDPs take on added costs for consultants to operate them. Meaning costs for the CDP are larger than initially expected and the bar for ROI from their CDP gets a lot higher with ongoing investment.

This is the CDP death spiral.

If you know brands that are in this situation and not utilizing their CDP well, please reach out and introduce me. I have been working on solving this problem for the past year and a half and we are having some great success already building increased value for CDPs and measurable ROI for brands from their investment. We make the data you have more valuable.