If you’re looking to avoid Customer Data Platform (CDP) pitfalls, with expert insight and prevention strategies, this blog is for you! In our recent webinar, Sav Khetan (Director of Product Marketing & Strategy at Tealium) sat down with Morgan Gardea, SVP of Client Strategy at Zion & Zion). Their discussion illuminated ways to secure CDP success (and avoid common traps). Let’s dive in!
In the 5 CDP Clients That Failed Whitepaper, you shared that only 51% of CDP projects are successful. I was surprised to see that. Can you talk more about that?
I think we’ve encountered a couple of instances of working with clients who I probably would have said that they fell within the answer of “we’re somewhat failing” or “totally failing” with the current state of their CDP. I think the good news is that there’s always room to go up, so it doesn’t mean that just because these people are failing, they’re going to churn or eliminate the CDP. It allows us to uncover the reasons why they feel like they’re failing and try to turn that around.
What do we mean when we say “failed implementation” in the context of the CDP? Does that mean throw the tool out, start all over again, or go in a completely different direction?
I think when our team is working with organizations or teams who are saying that they’re failing, it’s that they’ve either gotten past a few use cases that they’ve been able to implement and now they’re blocked because they’re unable to get that roadmap built out or continue to get to that walk or run phase of their CDP implementation. Or, they’re just not getting the teams around them all engaged enough to prioritize and focus on moving ahead. Another thing is they’ve gotten a couple of use cases implemented but they don’t know how to measure the Return on Investment (ROI) so they’re saying, “We think it’s working but we don’t have the data that tells us that yes we are successful.” Sometimes it’s about going back and making sure that we can help organizations measure the ROI for the activations that they’re deploying from their CDP.
What do you see as the reasons that people are unhappy with their CDP and what is causing some of these issues?
By and large, it’s not the actual CDP or the platform that’s been chosen. We found that 28% of people thought that it was that they chose the wrong product. But more times than not it was organizational factors such as a lack of cross-functional collaboration between teams, and the lack of there being a clear strategy or goals that the organization needs to achieve by implementing the CDP and no unifying framework that says how we should Implement a CDP and manage it.
I think is important to point out that a lot of people reported that there’s just not enough time in the day. Most people already had a full-time job that was keeping them busy and then somebody said, “Hey, we’re going to get this CDP. Now we need to carve out more hours out of our day to implement this technology.”
Can you give us a CDP use case example to put this into context?
We engaged with a customer who had implemented a CDP and they came to us saying, “Every month we’re hitting our volume limits and we don’t know why! We don’t know if we should keep paying for these overages because we don’t know what we’re getting for what we’re paying for this product.” We did a quick audit just to assess what was set up.
We discovered that the teams knew what they were supposed to do, but they didn’t know why. They set things up, but they didn’t have a strategy behind what fields of data should be coming in, and how they should enrich this data. There was no campaign-oriented thinking to say, “Once it’s in the CDP, here’s what are we going to do with it!” We came back to them and said, “You’re using it as a data pipeline, but you’re not using it for the purpose that it was designed for, which is to enrich audiences and activate them.” Just because you have the data doesn’t mean you put everything in the CDP just because you put the data to do that. I do feel like a few years ago we were getting the message to collect all the data and now I think people are realizing that that’s not helpful even from a data privacy point of view.
If you’re hitting your cost quickly, you probably are not using the CDP surgically and you’re using it like a flashlight and not like a laser. Let’s cover implementation errors in unified strategies! Can you talk about how to get alignment for a CDP?
I think you know sales and marketing, it’s not uncommon for us to see conflict or different ideas for how to get to the same goal. I think what we can do is think about putting the customer as the North Star and think about what your customer journey is and those key touchpoints along the sales process. Then use a campaign-oriented approach, and think “How do we ensure that we get the right communications in front of these customers and give them the best customer experience?” Then go back and decide what are the use cases to build that ensure their experiences are the best. If you do that customer-oriented use case, you’ll get alignment very quickly because now you’re all working in the same direction to achieve the same goal which is ensuring that your future or current customers have the best experience with your brand, either retention or acquisition.
Can you share a use case of somebody that you dealt with that had CDP implementation issues?
I would say one example that comes to mind is trying to build trust in the CDP for a national retail brand that had both a brick-and-mortar and an e-commerce experience. When they initially implemented their CDP we were having a really hard time building trust within the organization. People were skeptical that the CDP was improving the customer experience just because they were having a hard time finding a parody between their CDP and their lifecycle marketing tool. What we found in the end, was that the CDP was working off event-based rules and the lifecycle marketing was working off time-based rules.
So, we had to work with the organization to make sure that the audiences were getting updated to stay in parody and that those communications to the audiences in the CDP and the lifecycle marketing tool were unified. Once we came in and helped them at that intersection of where the CDP connected with the lifecycle marketing tool, we were able to get them to have trust in the technology. I would say that’s a perfect example where the organization needed alignment across multiple teams and decision-makers to find success. The failure they were having was understanding the specifics of all of the tools within their technology stack and unifying those key points of intersection to make sure that everything was working and aligned within the tech stack.
How do you define a unified strategy for your CDP? I would love to hear what you think about the cost of data without a strategy and your recommendations.
At Zion & Zion we have a Center of Excellence specific to our CDP practice. We’ve built this practice and we’ve created several frameworks that help guide us and our clients to use structured thinking when it comes to what is the strategic objective that we want to achieve and the components that we need to meet that objective. Within one specific framework, we have eight components across several different teams that all need to be factored in and considered when launching a use case. A good example of that is we’ll be thinking about the customer… What are the attributes that we can take for a customer to build an audience for that customer? Where are they in your customer journey? What are the touch points they’re receiving from your brand? What is the context that they are currently in for this decision-making process? Once we establish that, then we can make sure that we’re thinking about the right activations.
Next, within that same framework, we need to think about what can we do to test and measure to make sure what we’re implementing is successful. I think an experience we’ve all had… When we launch something and we think it’s great. But we go back and we report on it and somebody inevitably says, “Can you break up that reporting to show me how X reported against Y?” And we say, “Well, we didn’t put that into consideration when we launched the campaign so if you want the answer we have to do it again and this time we set up the proper taxonomy to make sure we can measure on that result for you.” Nine times out of ten, that’s just because marketing and analytics weren’t aligned before something deployed but if they were then we would have all of the answers and get to those proof points of success so much faster.
We have a philosophy here fail fast and iterate, so as soon as we realize that something’s not going the way we want it to we want to iterate very quickly. I think the benefit of working with a partner like us is we’ve seen some of those fails so we can help prevent some of them so that you don’t have to live through the same pains. The environment is always evolving and what was true yesterday is not true today.
How do you set the people within the organization up for CDP success? Can you provide an example?
Yes, we worked with a global brand that wanted to use its CDP as an avenue to monetize ads. They collect a ton of customer data so they were in a position where they could monetize on some of that. The marketing team and another team said, “Okay we think the CDP
is the route to do this.” They went through the procurement process and brought a technology on board and then when we drilled down to the solutions architecture and how data would flow within their existing systems and through the CDP, we found was the organization had several robust systems. However, some systems that they had built themselves didn’t lean towards a tool that has a ton of built-in integrations for that quick connectivity and ability to ingest data.
Furthermore, we discovered that for the next three to four quarters their sprints were planned. So they did not have a dedicated resource that could go back to this project and say, “Let’s look at these systems and how we can get this set up as quickly as possible.” So a combination of lack of alignment before investing in the tool and building the strategy to make the best of use it. That organization had to take a step back and say, “If monetizing ad revenue is a priority for us, then we’re going to need to build and dedicate a team that can focus on this project for us to meet the deadlines that we need to.” Building the timeline within everything else the organization had going on would have made this project go on for many years.
You cannot do this in your spare time. When we are meeting with new customers, the first question we ask them is, “Are you having dedicated people on this?” While the CDP can do a lot of things, it doesn’t solve the problem by itself and you need the people to support it.
How do you overcome organizational silos to get CDP buy-in?
We’ve experienced this often. Typically, there will be a CDP champion who’s identified within the organization and they are going to sit on one team but it takes more than one team to facilitate the change management required for the CDP implementation. If they can’t tap into the team members across the organization to work together against those rigid silos, it will cause problems. For example, we worked with an organization whose champion had done a lot of work to get the CDP implemented, and get some initial use cases up and running. Then, the baton was passed to marketing to say, “We invested in this amazing tool for you! Now you can do all of these use cases and activate all of this data exactly how you want to on your marketing channels.” But it isn’t a pass of the baton. It’s a constant coordination back and forth… Anytime they had a question or they wanted to ingest a new data source or they wanted new fields ingested they would have to go back to it and say, “Okay now I need this and now I need that.” They were not planned for that coordination across teams.
I have to say, you just can’t throw your sandbag over the wall and think that you’re done. You’ve got to keep that constant communication back and forth. If you’re going to reach success, you need to get everyone involved.
How do you create an organized strategy for your CDP?
I would say having a framework that defines what are your strategic objectives and then how are you going to achieve those strategic objectives. I think we’re always talking about abandoned carts or suppression but they’re examples that are very easy for organizations to
comprehend and understand. So when you’re doing an abandoned cart use case and that customer finally makes the purchase that you want them to make, that means you need to stop any abandoned cart messaging across your website, your social media, your site, and your email. Those are three different technologies that often different people are managing within the organization. So just in the instance of that one use case, it shows the importance of bringing those teams together. Make sure you have a coordinated effort of what is the objective and how can you achieve it.
