Vendors Are To Blame for CDP Confusion: MessageGears Survey

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MessageGears, the customer marketing software company, announces the results of a survey on Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). The big takeaway from the survey, which was managed by independent research firm PureSpectrum, is that marketers believe there is confusion in the marketplace about CDPs – and most feel that vendors are to blame for the confusion.

Despite the expected growth of the market, marketers remain confused about CDPs, with a plurality (31 per cent) of survey respondents saying that vendors have done a poor job explaining what they are and why they’re needed. Another 30 per cent of respondents said they believe their companies already have a solution that does what CDPs do.

While most marketers surveyed by PureSpectrum said the primary purpose of these systems is to manage customer marketing activities, 22 per cent said the main value was to keep track of customer information, a task more commonly associated with the use of CRMs. Another 18 per cent said CDPs were designed to predict customer-focused decisions.

“This confusion is clearly a challenge for the CDP market, and marketers should be purposeful in ensuring they seek out martech solutions they understand before investing significant budget in them,” said Will Devlin, VP, Marketing at MessageGears. “The right solution can trigger rapid benefits in the form of happier customers and increased revenue, while the wrong investment can hamstring a company for years to come.”

Also Read: Can CDPs Break Data Silos? 

Nevertheless, B2C marketers are aggressively adopting CDPs given their ability to increase customer satisfaction, revenue per customer and customer retention. 61 per cent of marketers said CDPs are very important relative to other systems marketers use, and 56 per cent said they’d invest in a CDP if the decision was theirs.

Among marketers who are using CDPs already, 45 per cent said one of the most important features is the ability to make customer data available for immediate use across all marketing channels. The second most important feature among CDP users (34 per cent of respondents) is the ability to consolidate various types of data (transactional, etc.).

Meanwhile, 28 per cent of survey respondents said the primary drawback of CDPs is that they’re too expensive, and 27 per cent said the biggest issue is a lack of integration to other systems.