CDPs provide efficiencies as well as effectiveness

We have been looking at an interesting report called ‘The State of CDPs, Q3 2020’ by Treasure Data and Advertiser Perceptions. The research is based on 101 respondents working for larger US companies, and reveals that CDPs provide efficiencies as well as effectiveness, however, to realise both takes time.

The CDP use cases for marketing effectiveness are generally well known, and this slide does not provide any real surprises:

top benefit of using CDP to manage customer data

What was more striking though were the improved efficiencies experienced by companies using a CDP.

significant impact where CDPs provide efficiencies

These efficiencies improve as companies have more time to get used to having a CDP.

To get full value from a CDP a company needs to adapt its marketing processes around it, and this takes time. To take a common example, there may have been one team dealing with owned outbound channels such as emails and direct mail, and another with paid digital advertising such as display, programmatic, SEM etc. and, another team managing the website content, optimisation and of course the data. In order to deliver the optimal messaging, customer experience and drive business value, all of these channels need to be merged to deliver a unified customer experience.

One area that does not change with CDP tenure is the freeing up of IT resources. This is because once the feeds into a CDP have been organised, and the CDP configured, IT should be able to take a step back and let the marketers take over. This all happens in the early stages of introducing a CDP.

CDP technology is an enabler allowing marketers to do things differently, and this change process will inevitably take time. This delay factor needs to be built into the calendarisation of benefits when developing the business case for a CDP.

This is a major component which is often overlooked by businesses when considering marketing or advertising technology such as a customer data platform, the people who operate and optimise it. Do they have relevant skills and experience to maximise the investment? Have you allocated time and budget to ensure a consistent coaching and development programme is in place?

Hence the considerable increase in satisfaction with CDPs seen amongst companies with more than two years’ worth of experience of using them.

satisfaction with CDP

If you are at the early stage of considering whether they should introduce a CDP, and would like help establishing the use cases for one, and quantifying the benefits, we would be only too pleased to offer support, without any charge. We have worked on many CDP business casing exercises and can help fast-track you through the process. We also provide in-depth training and support and hold your hand at every step to help deliver your goals.


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UniFida is the trading name of Marketing Planning Services Ltd, a London based technology and data science company set up in 2014. Our overall aim is to help organisations build more customer value at less marketing cost.

Our technology focus has been to develop UniFida. Our data science business comes both from existing users of UniFida, and from clients looking to us to solve their more complex data related marketing questions.

Marketing is changing at an explosive speed, and our ambition is to help our clients stay empowered and ahead in this challenging environment.