Many organisations that have invested in customer data platforms (CDPs) face new challenges that demand innovative solutions.
As businesses strive to optimise their marketing efforts, they meet hurdles such as rising costs, limitations on channel integration, and the inability to empower marketers to deliver advanced segmentation. In conversations with customers, I've identified four primary challenges and detailed what many are looking for in a solution.
1. Keeping costs in check
Traditional CDPs often come with a price tag that includes data running, storage, and transfer charges. Over time, these accumulating expenses can grow into a substantial financial burden for organisations. In the quest for sustainable growth and efficient resource allocation, customers seek cost-effective solutions that seamlessly align with their budgetary constraints.
2. Navigating the multichannel maze
In our increasingly interconnected world, businesses need to engage customers across multiple channels seamlessly. However, some CDPs lack comprehensive channel integration capabilities, limiting the flexibility and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This challenge directly affects the ability to demonstrate a solution's time-to-value. Simplifying multichannel engagement is critical, as limitations can hinder customer experience. In fixing this problem, organizations are seeking CDP solutions that provide a robust and adaptable approach to channel integration.
3. Providing marketer-friendly tools for advanced segmentation
Effective segmentation is the cornerstone of successful marketing strategies. However, many CDPs struggle to offer marketers advanced segmentation capabilities that are easy to use and understand. Since most marketers and their teams lack technical expertise, this often results in slow-paced adoption. The desires of marketers are straightforward. They need segmentation tools that simplify data. This bridges the gap between sophisticated data-driven marketing and user-friendly accessibility.
4. Dealing with the lack of future-proofing
In addition to these challenges, the inability to scale and the absence of analytical capabilities are significant issues that have slowed marketers' digital-first journey. Many companies have invested in platforms that were once excellent but couldn't keep up as their businesses scaled. Another critical factor for any data-related tool is analytical capabilities, not just basic ones but the ability to leverage data insights in favour of marketers for a full understanding of business goals. To help, organizations demand comprehensive analytical capabilities from their data tools. The desire to future-proof an organization’s CDP is synonymous with a desire to be agile, scalable and analytically robust to align with evolving goals.
The solution for your CDP challenges
SAS® Customer Intelligence 360 Audiences has emerged as a flexible solution addressing these challenges. With features like data connectors, out-of-the-box channels, a user-friendly interface and advanced segmentation, it simplifies the management and activation of customer data. It also ensures data governance and regulatory compliance.
The platform roadmap includes comprehensive data federation and AI-powered journey capabilities, helping organisations access a unified view of customer data.
Ultimately, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Audiences complements the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 platform, offering agility without compromising quality. Understanding customers through data and omnichannel interaction insights and easily translating them into audiences gives organisations a powerful personalisation weapon to deliver the right experience to customers on their journeys.
