You are running an e-commerce business, but the rate of customers abandoning shopping carts is much higher than the rate of customers purchasing the products. So here comes the biggest question.
What are your clients not purchasing from you? Why are they making extensive lists of products in their carts but not clicking the purchase button?
The marketing team constantly explores how to reduce this situation. Is adopting a CRM or AI solution for this?
In recent decades, e-commerce has transformed incredibly. The market size was about 4 trillion in 2020, which is expected to increase even in upcoming years. But with the growth of business, there are huge conflicts arising about privacy and consent.
In this case, managing your customers’ data becomes important. How can you achieve it?
Through a Customer Data Platform. That can aggregate information, analyze and manage it efficiently. But what about e-commerce businesses? How is it beneficial for them?
In this article, we’ll briefly discuss what CDP is and why e-commerce businesses need it.
So, let’s dive in.
What Is A CDP?
Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a centralized software system that aggregates and organizes customer data from various sources into a unified customer profile. Unlike traditional data management systems, CDPs are designed to create a comprehensive and real-time view of individual customers:
- Enabling businesses to deliver personalized experiences
- Targeted marketing campaigns
- Data-driven decision-making
This data is accessible to all the team members of a business. But what is this data about?
It includes their behavior, interaction, geographical location, browsing history, product usage, feedback from people, reviews, etc.
How do we utilize this data?
The primary goal of a CDP is to break down customer data silos. It gives marketers and other stakeholders a deeper understanding of customer behavior, preferences, and interactions across different channels.
How CDP Can Benefit Your E-commerce Business?
Customer data platforms have various advantages. Their significance doesn’t end at unifying all customer data. They also increase customer loyalty and trust. All these factors will eventually lead to high revenue for your e-commerce business. Here are ten common reasons why your business needs a CDP.
1. Now Data Integration a Click Away
There is a lot of customer data scattered everywhere. It can be data from your CRM, website, emails, and ads.
How can you bring all this data to one platform without hiring a developer to do excessive coding?
It’s usually difficult for companies to combine large amounts of data, and finding the right data when needed can be a huge struggle. But with CDP, you can do all this in just a few clicks.
2. Building a 360-Degree Journey Map Of Your Customer
You need a comprehensive understanding of your customer’s psychology to excel in your e-commerce business. Suppose you have a clothing brand selling t-shirts and hoodies. Here’s what you must know:
- Why is a customer purchasing from your shop?
- Why is a customer not purchasing and just adding the product to the cart?
If you don’t know these crucial customer insights, then you don’t fully understand your customers. So you must understand what your customer wants to purchase and show it to them. There is no point in selling a hoodie to someone looking for t-shirts.
It is crucial to create a customer journey by getting a complete picture of the customer. This lets you strategically plan to promote your product to the customer at the best time using effective strategies either through offline channels or digital channel.
3. Multiply Opportunities With Audience Segments
According to statistics, around 80% of customers purchase from brands that include personalization in their approaches. Remember, the future belongs to businesses that quickly adapt and personalize according to their customers’ needs.
Personalized content = Happy customers
It makes customers feel connected, as if you understand them. It is as if your brand knows customer needs, problems, and issues. That’s why they will happily purchase the solution you have to offer.
For this, what should you do?
You should give them a personalized user experience. That’s why marketers must have access to authentic and comprehensive customer data. Here’s how it goes:
Collect customer data → Segregate users into different segments → Divide based on funnel stage, market trends, locations, or anything relevant → Personalize accordingly.
4. Anticipate Customer Needs Ahead of Time
Now that marketers have data, it can be used to do wonders. Yes, plenty of ways exist to use this data best.
Here are some things you can do with the data:
- Draw patterns from the actions of users
- Personalized product recommendations
- Outline future outcomes
It makes the experience even better. Let’s understand it better with this example.
A customer named Sarah consistently browses dresses on the website. She often adds items but never purchases them.
The CDP, utilizing past data, identifies customer patterns and predicts that Sarah is likely interested in specific styles or brands. Based on this insight, the retailer’s website adjusts the homepage for Sarah.
Thus, the website showcases personalized recommendations for dresses that align with her preferences. So, the next time Sarah opens the website, she sees a personalized site with her favorite item. She can’t resist it and finally purchases the item. That’s the perfect use case for CDPs AI modeling.
5. Role of Data Unification in Modern Marketing
Because of unified data collected from different channels, marketers can use action words and relevant triggers according to the segmented audience. They can distribute these effective campaigns and triggers on several platforms, such as:
- CRMs
- Google Analytics
The best part is you can also get real-time data from your website. Send this data to the marketers automatically through an automation tool and trigger ads that yield maximum results.
6. Track, Analyze With Your Progress Report
One of the most important things for every marketer is having complete information regarding analytics. It helps them ensure and measure the success of all their marketing efforts.
You can generate reports with detailed metrics. These metrics help you make strategic informed decisions or determine the number of converted leads.
In short, it ensures that your money is spent on the right thing, and you can use it as a basis to optimize your future campaigns.
7. Every Team Member Has Access To Real Data
Implementing CDP means all your team employees have data, which means you can provided a seamless customer experience. Let’s understand it better with this example.
Suppose an e-commerce company implements a Customer Data Platform as its unique source of truth for customer data. So a customer, let’s call her Emily, faces an issue with a recent purchase. She immediately reaches out to customer support.
But how can a team have access to all the data? How does the customer service team know what issue Emily is facing?
The team can access the CDP for real-time, comprehensive information about Emily’s interactions, past purchases, and preferences. With this information, customer support can answer all of Emily’s concerns. Meanwhile, the marketing department leverages the same source to fine-tune email automation.
8. Find Why Customers Don’t Buy
A customer loved your product. They even enquired about it. But then, there was no response.
The customer ghosts you. But why? What did you do wrong?
There are different reasons why a potential customer may abandon the cart or not proceed with the purchase. You have to find the issue. It can be:
- Additional costs
- Lengthy checkout process
According to stats, more than 70% of customers just read the items in the shop and then leave the website. After data collection, you can use CDP to identify your customers’ pain points. Once you know what’s stopping them, work on it and remove the hindrance.
9. Increase Your Business Revenue
The collection and unification of data are two things. However, knowing how to use it can increase your revenue and boost online sales. CDPs allow you to utilize data better. Moreover, knowing what your audience wants is the key to successful marketing, and CDPs can help. Online shopping is no longer how it used to be ten years ago. That is why the usage of a unified customer database has become more necessary than ever.
10. Get Competitive Advantage
You might wonder when is the best time to use CDPs.
Is it the start of 2024?
Or maybe after six months of business launch?
The best time to use CDPs is today. Because through this you can get a competitive edge. It can make data collection, analysis, and similar tasks easier. The sooner you understand this technology, the quicker you’ll be able to grow and eventually scale your ecommerce company.
Ending Thoughts
Customers are highly conscious about their purchase decisions. They know that the same product might be available anywhere else. What does that mean?
It means they know that e-commerce is extremely competitive. That’s why they expect something unique and special from businesses.
As a customer, they want personalized experiences.
So, to stand out in a competitive market, you must adopt the latest technologies. Work towards adopting innovations in your business. Use CDP and extract customers’ data using various channels.
Once a customer interacts with your store, converting them into paying customers is up to you. But that’s only possible if you have the right customer information. Use automation tools to boost your store’s sales. That’s how you can stand out from the crowd.