Complete Guide to Salesforce Customer Data Platforms (CDP)

What is a Customer Data Platform? Yes, you are going the right way; it’s relevant to customer data. Let’s clear up the things. 

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is software that collects customer data across varied touchpoints, like transactional systems, CRM, social media activity, web forms, websites, etc., cleans, and combines it to create a centralized database. Other systems, software, and marketing approaches use this unified view of customer profiles to personalize customer experiences. Ultimately, this makes customers feel more valued, which boosts brand loyalty. 

Eyeing a report, we learned centralized customer data from CDP improves efficiency by 64% and makes businesses grow by around 57%. By 2027, the global CDP market is expected to be valued at $19.7 billion, at a CAGR of 32.4%, which reached $4.8 billion two years back in 2022. 

In the market, you will find numerous Customer Data Platforms from various giants, like Oracle, Adobe, Salesforce, and more. Among these, Salesforce is gaining much traction. An increasing number of organizations are adopting Salesforce CDP to eliminate data silos, get unified customer profiles, improve personalization, and modify marketing and customer services. 

About 56.8% of respondents from varied industries say their ROI will likely grow 5 to 10 times investing in CDP. 

In this article, we will study Salesforce CDP a bit deeper, including types, working, why businesses need it, features to include, tools, and more.   

What is Salesforce CDP? 

Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a technology that facilitates businesses to gather data from any system, channel, or data stream to create a unified customer profile. Such profiles usually hold customer databases and automation, besides management resources for real-time customer interactions, multichannel campaigns, and connected data. 

Companies can invest in Salesforce CDP to combine all their data in real-time to provide hyper-personalized customer experiences. 

Reports say about 62% of respondents have planned to invest $100,000 or more in their CDP. 

Let’s put some figures in the limelight to witness how the Customer Data Platform is doing wonders for companies. 

• According to 49% of companies (respondents), the top benefit of CDP is its capability to centralize customer data from multiple platforms and sources. 
• A report by 73% of organizations states that a CDP will be crucial to their customer experience efforts. 
• Per the CDP Report 2021, about 47% of respondents out of 4,684 customer data decision-makers will increase their CDP budget in the next five years by 25%.                                                                                                                        
• By 2026, the CDP market is predicted to grow and go beyond $5.7 billion. 

Statistics are indicating the unexpected and prolonged growth of the Customer Data Platform. Well, there’s more to learn about the Salesforce CDP. Let’s move ahead. 

Types Of Salesforce CDP

A Salesforce CRM aims to customer data management to witness relevant and productive experiences. A survey conducted by Salesforce showcased that marketers expect CDP to meet their chief requirements, and while analyzing them, the team emerged with two types of CDPs: Insight CDP and Engagement CDP. 

a.  Insight CDP

The first and foremost CDP type, Insights CDP, creates a sole view of the customers by accumulating data from varied sources, integrating it, performing data management, and finding a way to deep analytics and activation. It focuses on offering insights into customer preferences, behavior, and trends. 

So forth, businesses can convert raw data into actionable insights, enabling a 360-degree customer view. This makes data and marketing teams perform collaboratively to power up customer experiences and make data-driven decisions. 

b.  Engagement CDP

The Engagement CDP assists organizations in delivering targeted and personalized marketing campaigns, sales interactions, and customer services based on insights they get by accumulating and analyzing customer data. This way, businesses can increase customer engagement and make it more effective and personalized. 

Both insights and engagement CDP are the key for enterprises seeking to gather customer data and maximize its usage to personalize the digital experience. 

How Does Salesforce CDP Work?

Before starting with the working of CDP, let you know that the Customer Data Platform performs four jobs: data collecting, harmonizing it, activating, and getting insights from it. 

Let’s dig deeper into each task. 

1. Collecting Data

As we have read, CDP pulls data from distinctive channels, systems, and applications and puts it at a central hub; the question is how it accomplishes this. 

Here, CDP collects and merges data from your organization’s CRM platforms and different data streams for individual customer identification. Even your systems that never allow data sharing, like service software, e-commerce engines, and marketing platforms, participate in the procedure. 

2. Harmonize Data

As the term indicates, data harmonization is an effort that combines data from varied sources and offers a comparative view of data to users. So, after bringing together the organization’s data, CDP creates customer identities by linking the details, like contact numbers and email addresses, from the brand’s customers who were recorded with their anonymous data, such as cookies and device IDs, before becoming customers. 

The objective of identity resolution is to help companies have a clear image of their customers’ journeys. 

3. Experience Data

Next, CDP performs data activation, sending data to teams to reap the most out of it and personalize customer experiences in real time. 

Here, in your CDP, the customer data is connected to all your different technology platforms, including email send engines, demand-side platforms, CMS, etc., to attain personalization that helps increase customer engagement. 

4.  Pull Insights Data

Now, you can track the entire customer journey with the unified customer profiles holding data of every customer. Using the data; you can get your customer insights and divide them into groups having similar audiences and personas to reach new audiences. 

Why Do Business Need Salesforce CDP – Benefits of Salesforce CDP

Operationalizing the power of CDP, you can closely study how your customers interact with a brand and take it as an opportunity to increase cross-selling and personalization. 

With the increased use of digital channels, 73% of brands are significant for improving customer experience. 

This is not the end; CDP arrives with more than personalization, let’s check out more benefits of CDP:

1. Personalization

CDP lets the enterprise infuse personalization into customer interaction. By learning customer preferences, behavior, and past interactions, marketers can create custom experiences that go perfectly with individuals, resonating with them personally. 

2. Real-Time Data Usage

As we have read, CDP uses accumulated data and generates insights for real-time usage; it helps organizations to ensure better performance of their current marketing strategies, modify them if needed, and adapt to dynamic market trends and customer behaviors. 

3. Campaign Management

Salesforce Customer Data Platform offers an integrated environment to users that helps them execute marketing campaigns. This ensures a unified approach to campaign management that facilitates companies orchestrating and running campaigns seamlessly with the CDP interface. 

4. Real-Time Powered Communications

Timing plays a pivotal role when it comes to letting marketing messages lay their effectiveness. With CDPs, users can set up real-time powered communications, like emails, which ensures the customers get the messages at the right time when they are most receptive. This way, marketing initiatives become more impactful. 

5. Rapid Segmentation

A customer data platform (CDP) is also best at quickly and effectively categorizing businesses’ audiences based on various factors. This customer segmentation is crucial to personalize messages and targeting campaigns on time to ease their reach to the right audience at the right time. 

6. Open Ecosystem from CDP

CDP arrives with an open ecosystem that goes limitless ahead of conventional data management. Using CDP’s power of integration with other tools and apps,  companies can open the doors to new possibilities, aligning their CDP experience with unique objectives and requirements. 

7. Data Visualization

Data visualization is essential to make the most of it. Integrating CDPs with other robust data visualization tools can help organizations view data intuitively and comprehensively. This lets them enjoy deeper insights by reading simple visualizations of complex datasets that enable sound decision-making. 

8. Data Organization

CDP accumulates data from different sources, like systems, apps, and channels, centralizes it at a single hub, showcasing well-organized data of each customer, and activates data for personalizing and emerging with insights for better decision-making. 

Features Of Salesforce CDP

Salesforce CDP arrives with a rich feature set that allows companies to manage customer data effectively and use it to personalize marketing campaigns. 

Besides, with CDP, you can reap the benefits of the following features:

1. Data Integration Across Channels

Salesforce CDP pulls data from multiple channels, like emails, websites, mobile apps, and more. Do you know what’s helping the platform integrate data? The rescuers behind this are connectors, APIs, and data import wizards. Utilizing the power of such tools, organizations bring data together at a spot that offers a complete and precise view of customer details. 

2. Real-Time Synchronization 

Being connected with different channels and systems, Salesforce CDP syncs data in real-time, ensuring companies always get updated data. Analyzing and deeply studying integrated customer data can process valuable insights and take personalized marketing initiatives that finally make businesses succeed. 

3. Customer Segmentation

Salesforce Customer Data Platform holds the caliber to ease customer segmentation by facilitating organizations in creating dynamic customer segments based on varied parameters, like engagement levels, past purchases, demographics, and more. 

Aiming at customer preferences, companies can customize and improvize marketing campaigns and messages per the specific customers to boost their communication relevance and impact. 

4. Marketing Automation

A complete set of features that aid in streamlining marketing jobs and improving automation power comes equipped with CDP.

First, the platform centralizes customer data and then integrates with Salesforce Marketing Cloud to automate email messages and campaigns based on customer segmentation. 

Next, Journey Builder of Salesforce CDP lets organizations create tailored custome journey that helps automate suitable content delivery at every customer lifecycle phase. 

Ahead, the automation capabilities of CDP let the businesses trigger events and actions automatically, considering customer behavior and specific conditions that ensure targets are reached in time. 

5. Data Privacy and Security

Being committed to offering a secure platform,  Salesforce CDP paves the way for well-guarded customer data management. 

Following industry-standard encryption protocols, Salesforce CDP performs encryption, controls user permission and access, monitors and addresses any unauthorized and unusual access attempts, and offers routine data backups and varied options for data recovery. 

Salesforce CDP Tools

1. Data Cloud

As we have read, Customer Data Platform unite siloed data and creates a shared view. From here, Salesforce Data Cloud, one of the tools of CDP, takes the step ahead and funnels almost infinite dynamic data volume in real-time to Salesforce Customer 360. As a result, you get updated customer data faster, including new data from touchpoints. 

You can see and act on this unified data for any industry solution across the entire Salesforce product suite. 

2. Salesforce Genie

This tool assists businesses in offering improved customer support and care. Also, it holds the caliber to store real-time data across varied streams, systems, and channels and transfer it to an internal and external product collection. 

Genie performs efficient data management that allows real-time data processing. Also, for clear data understanding, Salesforce Genie harmonizes customer data into an easily readable customer graph. The tool paces up the support process whenever possible and allows users to access business apps and data anytime, anywhere, using any device. 

Steps To Implement Salesforce CDP

Salesforce CDP can be implemented easily by following the steps below. 

Step – 1. Connect Salesforce CDP to External Sources

You need to connect Salesforce CDP to each system from which you want to pull data.  In Salesforce, you can connect CDP to Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud (in Salesforce), websites, mobile apps, and other external platforms.  

When connecting data sources to Salesforce CDP, you will set up data streams where data will flow. 

Step – 2. Pull Data From Those Data Sources

After setting up the connection, data will flow from sources via data streams in raw and unfiltered form. Here, the trick is to tell CDP the specific areas from which you need data ingestion. 

From here, data will flow into a particular spot inside CDP, Data Lake Objects, where the magic happens. In other words, it’s a centralized repository that stores, processes, and safeguards large data volumes in structured, semi-structured, and unstructured forms. 

Step – 3. Data Mapping to Data Model Objects 

Further, accumulated data is mapped to Data Model Objects, which enables virtual data viewing and staying in a huge data lake. The raw data ingested from data sources is taken to the right data model objects: 

• Profile, 
• Engagement, and 
• Other. 

The profile holds the person’s characteristics; next, engagement includes customers’ behavior and the rest of the details. 

Step – 4. Data Unification

Here, all the accumulated data is compiled, and a single profile is formed for each individual. And this is exactly the role that CDP plays. This way, the companies can know about the customers and touchpoints and will not send repetitive messages from different links (the same personnel is connected). 

Step – 5. Insights Creation From Data

In Salesforce CDP, there are two types of insights:

Calculated Insights – It collects large data amount and gives answers to varied questions, like the amount the customers spend, how often, how they interact with your company, etc. 

Streaming Insights – The smaller data volume that comes in real-time is streaming insights. Also, they never arrive in bulk, like calculated insights, and create data actions. Such insights facilitate the usage of API to ingest data into CDP automatically. Immediate actions are possible in this as you will get real-time data that makes frequent data actions. 

For example, A customer is at the mall that lies close to a mobile store. Here, with CDP, you can convert this moment into an opportunity. You can trigger a notification on his phone with a discount, offer, or any sale that may entice him and make him go to that store. 

You are going right; Salesforce CDP holds more than this and can help your business grow. 

Step – 6. Data Segmentation

The process of grouping customers per the accumulated data and sending them specific messages suiting their preferences, behavior, etc. 

Of course! Personalizing messages hold more compared to any random, general ones. 

After segmenting data, you will have a number of people on your lists. You can save that and publish it in Salesforce CDP.

Step – 7. Data Activation

The last but crucial step of Salesforce CDP implementation is data activation. Here, the published segments are activated and sent back to the organizational data sources. Like, data you accumulated from Marketing Cloud or Commerce Cloud will get data back in place. 

This will help you create your customer’s journey using Journey Builder; from here, the tool takes care of sending suitable messages. Its ultimate goal is to make customers complete their checkout with a successful purchase order. 

How to Buy the Best CDP for Your Business: Things To Consider

After finding Salesforce CDP a great help for your business, you might be set to start your journey with the platform. 

A survey conducted among US marketing tech decision-makers stated that around 45% of respondents credit their CDP for their improved online sales, while another 44% said they witnessed some enhancement in the same. 

Below are the top five parameters you need to consider while selecting the best CDP for your business. 

1. Easy Implementation

Choose CDPs designed aiming at end-users with a UX design focused on business personas to accomplish. This way, any staff member can reap the benefits of a CDP you pick for them. 

2. Integrate With Other Data Sources

CDPs accumulate known and unknown data from different sources, which needs seamless integration with current marketing clouds, POS systems, CRMs, data management platforms, and a tag management infrastructure. 

For this, you will need a canonical data model aligning with your needs, which can be customized based on your current and future data. 

3. Handle Customer Identity

Your CDP should focus on people-based marketing, identifying people for B2C and B2B purposes. Ask your CDP vendor whether their platform can resolve the issue of false IDs to a person and different sorts of personally identifiable information (PII). 

4. Handle Privacy

Your CDP should be able to handle data rights; if you want to share your customer data with your partners that may confirm consumer rights safety, the platform should tell you the right way for that. 

So, ask your customer data platform vendor about how they stay compliant with existing and latest data legislation and the flexibility of their platform. 

5. Connect With Endpoints

After your customer data is accumulated, unified, and segmented, it’s your turn to make it available through activation. Your enterprise CDP does not limit its data activation to only a few channels. 

Look for a CDP that activates data on every channel and boosts customer interaction. Besides, as you need to provide your customers with real-time data that matches their speed, the CDP you pick should meet that. 

Your CDP must hold the caliber to activate data for SMS, email, and push campaigns and send data from programmatic media environments to large social media advertising platforms and other systems. 

While selecting a CDP for your organization, be sure you check all the factors to gear up with a good evaluation. 

Salesforce CDP Pricing 

The starting price for Salesforce CDP implementation is $108,000 per year for every organization when billed annually. The rates may vary depending on your specific project requirements and other factors. 

Data Services		Top Features
Batch Data Pipeline	Included	Data Ingestion	Included
Streaming Data Pipeline	Included	Data Mapping	Included
Batch Profile Unification	Included	Data Transforms	Included
Real-Time Profile API	Included	Identity Resolution and Management	Included
Batch Calculated Insights	Included	Unified Profiles	Included
Streaming Calculated Insights	Included	Calculated Insights	Included
Streaming Actions (including lookups)	Included	Segmentation	Pay Extra
Data Queries	Included	Activation	Pay Extra
Accelerated Data Queries	Included	Real-Time Responsiveness	Included
		Ads Activation	Pay Extra
		Analyse and Predict	Included
		Extend Your Data with an Open Ecosystem	Included

Note:
1. Segmentations & Activations
Purchase credits to create segments and send to activation targets†.
$1,000 USD/100,000 credits (billed annually)

2. Data Services
Expand or replenish data services credits in addition to that provided with the starter pack.
$1,000 USD/100,000 credits (billed annually)

*The base Data Cloud Starter does not include any Segmentation and Activation credits.

Real-Time Case Study: Industry Wise

We discussed the benefits of Salesforce CDP integration, and while being sure, we can say it will work up to your expectations. 

But words are not enough, so let’s check out some success stories of giants after choosing a CDP platform for their businesses. 

Case Study 1: Banking

Goal: Hyper-personalizing Customer Experience

Target Audience: Existing and new customers exploring the bank’s website and showing interest in specific products and services. 

Solution: The CDP solution provider connected the bank’s website and CRM system to the Salesforce CDP platform. The data accumulated from CRM and the site was fused to help the marketing team define audiences and map their customer journeys. 

Outcomes: Personalized customer experience and 10% and plus increment in CTR of recommended content. 

A survey carried out in 2023 among marketing tech decision-makers in the US unveiled that 40% of respondents acknowledged CDP as an ultimate savior for getting a unified customer data view from multiple platforms and sources, while the other 30% predicted to experience this ability soon. 

Case Study 2: Ecommerce

Goal 1: Build unified profiles; Goal 2: Enhance cross-channel segmentation while optimizing ad expenses. 

Target Audience: Tourists, travelers, and even local residents. 

Solution 1: Salesforce CDP implementation created unified customer profiles holding behaviors, demographics, and interest-based attributes. 

Outcome 1: Real-time access to customers’ profiles can help the ecommerce company deliver personalized experiences to the visitors coming to sites, which increases car bookings. 

Solution 2: CDP paved the way for rich customer profile data and passed it ahead to the brand’s email service provider and Google and Facebook Ads directly for ad send optimization. 

Outcome 2: The eCommerce brand witnessed ease in building a more effective and cost-efficient market strategy. Also, the platform facilitates the company’s identification of famous locations from channels and merges accumulated data with other parameters to segment customers into groups. 

Difference Between CDP Vs. CRM Vs. DMP 

In marketing, a business uses various tools for increased lead generation, customer interaction, 360-degree view of customer profiles, and better data. 

People usually get confused between marketing tools, like Customer Data Platforms, Customer Relationship Management, and Data Management Platforms. 

Let’s differentiate between these to know their purpose and uses. 

CRM vs. CDP vs. DMP

Parameters	CRM	CDP	DMP
Goal	Manage and nurture customers	Engage customers and personalize their experience	Help in prospecting
Best for	Revenue optimization, customer satisfaction, and loyalty	Customer modeling, message targeting, and time optimization	Advertising and customer segmentation
Data Source	Utilize first-, second-, and third-party data	Prefer first-, second- and third-party data	Choose third-party data
Internal Management	By marketing teams	By marketing teams	By sales teams
Security	Depends on extra external tools to track customer activity and showcase possible security gaps	Track customer activity without external tools	Reply on additional tools for customer activity tracking and address possible security issues

How Does a Salesforce Implementation Company Help You To Implement Salesforce CDP?

Obviously, it’s challenging to pick the right choice for a CDP for your business to improve your customer experience and make your marketing processes more efficient and agile. 

A Salesforce implementation company will help you with some specifications to consider while selecting a CDP and assist in smooth integration. 

While looking for a Salesforce Implementation Partner to make the most of the platform, you can turn to Emizentech. The company is trusted to offer exceptional experience by working collaboratively with clients to develop the right recommendation. Connect with the brand to get scalable, strategic solutions that best use the latest technologies. 

Note: You can avail of discounts for your Salesforce CDP implementation post discussing with the consultants of Emizentech. 

Key Highlights of Emizentech 

• Increase platform scalability
• Seamless implementation
• Manage platform effectively
• Reduce platform costs
• Create dynamic multi-cloud experiences
• Automate business processes
• Follow a structured approach for unique solution delivery

Wrapping Lines

Trust and personalization are the foundation of robust customer relationships. More and more customers expect their preferred brands to address and treat their needs in a personalized way. And the brands failing to provide this lose engagement from such brands. 

Salesforce CDP integration can help you get rid of such issues, and get assistance for improved personalization, invade data silos, enhance customer experiences, create a unified data view, increase revenue, etc. 

Hire a Salesforce CDP consultant who can guide you on the right way to seamless Salesforce CDP implementation without downtime or mitigating performance. 

Frequently Asked Questions on Salesforce CDP (FAQ)