Tracking the Top CDP Acquisitions of 2019: Implications for Marketers

Last Updated: December 16, 2021

Martech product companies are looking to build out complete platforms to provide comprehensive solutions. Customer data platforms (CDPs) are becoming an important piece of these marketing clouds. What are the recent acquisitions in the CDP space and how do they impact marketers?

In the martech world, the solution that probably got everyone the most excited in the past year is customer data platforms or CDPsOpens a new window . We are still right in the thick of the action – large players, with strong products in allied spaces, are launching their own CDP offerings, or acquiring niche players, and investors are betting their money on companies that have CDP products.

2019 saw plenty of new launches as well as acquisitions in the CDP space.

What Was the Significance of These CDP Deals?

Let’s first consider why CDPs are so important now.

The answer has to do with the ever-increasing expectations of customers who want marketers to have a detailed understanding of their preferences, deliver personalized experiences and fast service. Let’s take our own behavior as buyers. If we are on a video streaming platform, we expect to find movie or show recommendations that match our taste, or we want e-commerce platforms to suggest books or products that we will want.

In order to achieve this level of personalization, marketers have applied a host of technology solutions, but the difficulty has always been that information about customers resides in many different information systems. Customer data platforms solve this challenge, and collate data from multiple sources to build a unified and complete picture of the customer.

Increasingly stringent data privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA also drive the need for a unified view of each customer and an ability to manage their data, such as complying with requests to erase if needed. CDPs make this possible in ways that standard CRM systems cannot. It’s no wonder that investors and martech product companies believe that it’s important to incorporate CDPs into their portfolios.

Learn More: The Customer Data Platform (CDP) Emerges as the Unlikely Champion of Consumer Data PrivacyOpens a new window

CDP Acquisitions: What’s Happening and Why

A glance at a few recent acquisitions in the CDP space provides insights into the strategies, priorities, and product roadmaps of martech companies.

CDP Startup AgilOne Acquired by Acquia for Customer Behavior Prediction 
 

Acquia, the SaaS company that builds enterprise solutions based on the open-source content management platformOpens a new window , Drupal, acquired AgilOneOpens a new window on Dec. 12, 2019. AgilOne is a customer data platform that supports machine learning models that intelligently segment customers and predict customer behaviors. 

In his blog postOpens a new window about the rationale for this acquisition, Dries Buytaert gives an example of the value that AgilOne delivers to the popular workout apparel brand Lululemon. AgilOne helped to integrate systems that collected data across a variety of online and offline customer experiences such as in-store events, website visits, e-commerce purchases, and email, and created unified customer data profiles.

This process helped to unlock data that was previously dispersed and unutilized. Lululemon achieved a far better understanding of customer behavior, which translated into real business benefits. They could significantly increase attendance to events by 25%, revenue from digital marketing campaigns by 10 to 15%, and site visits by 50%. 

Amperity’s Acquisition of Custora: Towards a Machine Learning (ML) Platform
 

AI-powered customer data management platform Amperity acquired CustoraOpens a new window , an analytics platform focused on consumer brands. They counted J.Crew, Tiffany & Co, Uniqlo, Kenneth Cole, e.l.f. Cosmetics, and Crocs as their clients. Once again, the ability to predict customer behavior was a key driver for this deal. This acquisition is a step towards the development of an ML platform for customer data management. For Amperity, a clear goal of the acquisition is to connect all sources of data to generate a complete, accurate, and up to date 360-degree view of the customer.

For customer brands, this translates to the ability to quickly identify customers and trends, and then apply deeper insights. Many brands use the capability to deepen engagement with high value and loyal customers. Amperity defines Customer 360 as including capabilities for predictive customer insights, campaign planning, cross-channel campaign deployment, A/B testing, and customer retention optimization.

HubSpot Buys PieSync to Transform Into All-on-One Platform
 

The ink is just drying on HubSpot’s acquisition of PieSyncOpens a new window , an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) specializing in customer data.Opens a new window Although PieSync is not exactly a CDP, it enables the synchronization of customer data bidirectionally across software platforms. HubSpot’s co-founder and CEO, Brian Halligan, said that this acquisitionOpens a new window would help HubSpot to move from an all-in-one suite to an ‘all-on-one platform’.

The Marketing Cloud Landscape

Let’s look at the CDP roadmap of the established marketing clouds – Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle. Salesforce recently announced that the next generation of its Customer 360 platform would include a CDP. Adobe brought together its Experience Platform with its Audience Manager to deliver CDP-like benefits. Oracle launched CX Unity and collaborated with Accenture and Capgemini to consult.

These product launches and acquisitions demonstrate that martech players are keen on evolving into integrated marketing cloud solutions, and see the CDP piece as a vital component of that solution. They would like to keep customers within their platforms, rather than extracting customer data to use with a niche CDP solution. 

Learn More: 5 Big Martech Themes for 2020 | 64 Opens a new window

What Do These Developments in the CDP Market Mean for Marketers?

The time is right for marketers to review how they store, handle and analyze customer data. Here are the key takeaways for marketers from the rapid changes in the CDP market:

1. Are you equipped to generate a consistent and unified view of each customer? As CDP solutions become more and more powerful, marketers who adopt them will set the standards, and customers will expect even more personalization and higher standards of service. The ability to collate data across all customer touchpoints will be critical. This is the time to plan for a CDP suited to your business.

2. Consider the CDPs on offer and whether they integrate with your current CRM or customer database. Ideally, you could evaluate one that’s built on the same platform if possible, for ease of implementation.

3. How can you leverage ML or AI for more effective sales and to deliver a better customer experience? More and more CDP systems will be powered by ML and Artificial Intelligence (AI). You need to look at these technologies now and improve predictive abilities to optimize marketing efforts.

4. Selecting a CDP is best done by the sales and marketing folks. While the selection of a data warehouse may be primarily the responsibility of IT, when it comes to CDP, you can take center stage and get what works best for you. 

Learn More: What Is A Customer Data Platform (CDP)? With Top 10 CDP Software for 2020Opens a new window

Get the Early Adopter Advantage

Identifying and effectively adopting the right CDP can give you a strategic benefit over competition and increase customer loyalty. You can be a winner in getting the benefits of customer data platforms, so do get an early start. 

Have you evaluated how a customer data platform will work for you? Or implemented one already? Do share your experiences on FacebookOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window or TwitterOpens a new window .

Suhasini Kirloskar
Suhasini Kirloskar

Contributor, Ziff Davis B2B

Suhasini is an entrepreneur and co-founder of MarketAxis Consulting, which provides Strategic Marketing, execution support and training to B2B brands. Until December 2015, Suhasini worked as Chief of Marketing at GS Lab, an IT product development company. Prior to this, she was with the UK Trade & Investment as Director, British Trade Office, Pune, part of the British High Commission in India, where her primary focus was to attract high-quality inward investment into the UK.  Suhasini has been involved as a mentor and marketing consultant to high tech startups for over 15 years. She is a prolific writer and speaker, and has conducted workshops on Digital Marketing across India. She is an abstract artist and is also the author of the first-ever story to unfold entirely as Facebook posts - 'It's Complicated'.
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