I escaped from my cave this week to present at two conferences: the first-ever “Customer Data Platform Summit” hosted by AgilOne in Los Angeles, preceding Shop.org, and the Technology for Marketing conference in London, where BlueVenn sponsored me. MORE
I ran a four hour workshop on Customer Data Platforms this week at the MarTech Conference in San Diego.* The attendees were a mix of marketers and technologists from brands, agencies, and vendor companies. MORE
It feels like forever since I first wrote about Journey Orchestration Engines (JOEs) , although it is just one year. Orchestration was already a hot term when I started, so I take neither credit nor blame for its continued popularity. MORE
The Customer Data Platform Institute (which is run by Raab Associates) on Monday published results of a survey we conducted in cooperation with MarTech Advisor. MORE
Like many people in the marketing technology industry, I was tickled in 2011 when Gartner predicted that CMOs would soon have bigger tech budgets than CIOs , and even more tickled when Gartner said in 2016 that it had happened. MORE
A recent Forrester study found that most marketers expect artificial intelligence to take over the more routine parts of their jobs, allowing them to focus on creative and strategic work. That’s been my attitude as well. MORE
"A CDP by any other name still stores unified customer data." Adobe on Tuesday announced the Experience Cloud Profile, which it described as a “complete, real-time view of customers” including data from outside of Adobe Cloud systems. MORE
The Customer Data Platform Institute will be launching its European branch later this month with a series of presentations in London, Amsterdam and Hamburg. MORE
Last week’s passenger-dragging incident at United Airlines left many marketers (and other humans) aghast that any company could purposely assault its own customer. As it happens, airline technology vendor Sabre published a survey of airline executives just before the event. MORE
Thomas Wieberneit argues in a thoughtful blog post that companies need one platform for consolidated customer data, but that Customer Data Platform isn’t it because the CDP is “marketer-controlled” by definition, and thus doesn’t support other departments. This hits a nerve. MORE
I spend a lot of time with vendors trying to decide whether they are, or should be, a Customer Data Platform. I also spend a lot of time with marketers trying to decide which CDPs might be right for them. MORE
Political situations come and go but trust is the foundation of civilization itself. So I was genuinely shaken to see a report from the Edelman PR agency that trust in U.S. MORE
I was asked the other day about the distinction between Customer Data Platforms and Journey Orchestration Engines. My immediate answer was “Some CDPs are JOEs and some JOEs are CDPs. A CDP is a JOE if has journey orchestration. A JOE is a CDP if its data is accessible to other systems. MORE
I gave my presentation on Self-Driving Marketing Campaigns at the MarTech conference last week. Most of the content followed the arguments I made here a couple of weeks ago, about the challenges of coordinating multiple specialist AI systems. MORE
John Wanamaker, patron saint of marketing measurement. If you’ve been following my slow progress towards a set of screening questions for Customer Data Platforms , you may recall that “incremental attribution” was on the list. MORE
Should marketers pay consumers directly to access their personal data? MORE
Some of the most impressive marketing systems I’ve seen have been developed for mobile phone marketing, especially for companies that sell prepaid phones. I don’t know why: probably some combination of intense competition, easy switching when customers have no subscription, location as a clear indicator of varying needs, immediately measurable financial impact, and lack of legacy constraints in a new industry. MORE
I’ve been working for months to find a way to help marketers understand the differences between Customer Data Platform vendors. After several trial balloons and with considerable help from industry friends, I recently published a set of criteria that I think will do the job. You can see the full explanation on the CDP Institute blog. But, since this blog has its own readership I figured I’d post the basics here as well. MORE
I’m currently drafting a paper on use of Customer Data Platforms by B2B SaaS marketers. The topic is more intriguing than it sounds because it raises the dual questions of why CDPs haven’t previously been used much by B2B SaaS companies and what's changed. MORE
I’ve sensed a certain weariness in recent discussions of marketing technology, as marketers realize their business problems remain even after massive investments in new systems. MORE
Over the past several months, I’ve been conspiring with MarTech Advisor ’s Chitra Iyer and Amit Varshneya and industry expert Anand Thaker to produce a podcast devoted to martech news of the week. MORE
The Customer Data Platform Institute (CDPI) recently surveyed its members about their customer-facing systems and CDP deployment plans. Click here to download the full report.) MORE
I’ve had at four conversations in the past twenty four hours with vendors who build a unified customer database and use it to guide customer treatments. MORE
Yesterday brought news that Acxiom had agreed to sell its marketing services business to Interpublic Group , a major ad holding company, for $2.3 billion. Acxiom will retain LiveRamp and do business under that name. Acxiom had restructured itself in March into the Market Services and LiveRamp groups and announced it was looking at strategic options, so the deal wasn’t especially surprising. But it’s still a milestone in the on-going evolution of the marketing industry. MORE
Customer Data Platform vendor Treasure Data today confirmed earlier reports that it is being purchased by Arm Limited , which licenses semi-conductor technologies and is itself a subsidiary of the giant tech holding company SoftBank. The price was not announced but was said to be around $600 million. The deal was the second big purchase of a Customer Data Platform vendor in a month, following the Salesforce ’s Datorama acquisition. MORE
News that Salesforce had purchased Datorama crossed the wire just as I was starting on two weeks of travel, so I haven’t been able to comment until now. This was purchase was noteworthy as the first big CDP acquisition by a marketing cloud vendor. That the buyer was Salesforce was even more intriguing, given that they had purchased Mulesoft in March for $6.5 MORE
If one picture’s worth a thousand words, why is everyone rushing to replace graphical interfaces with voice-activated systems? The question has an answer, which we’ll get to below. But even though the phrasing is a bit silly, it truly is worth asking. MORE
Blockchain is the sort of cool technology that should excite me, but for some reason it does not. MORE
Readers of this blog and the CDP Institute newsletter know that I’ve been fussing for years about privacy-related issues with Facebook , Google , and others. With the issue now attracting much broader public attention, I’ve backed off my own coverage. MORE
It’s nearly a year since Gartner placed Customer Data Platforms at the top of its “hype cycle” for digital marketing technologies. The hype cycle shouldn’t be taken too literally but it does capture the growing interest in CDPs and reminds us to expect this attention to attract critics. MORE
The Customer Data Platform industry is doing very well, thank you, with new reports out recently from both Gartner and Forrester and the CDP Institute launching its European branch. But the great question hovering over the industry has been why the giant marketing cloud vendors haven’t brought out their own products and what will happen when they do. MORE
The World Health Organization has just declared that video addiction is a real disease but they've missed something even more insidious: the dangers of newsletter publishing. The CDP Institute Web site has been down for two days now (hopefully it will be back up by the time you read this and test that link), which means I haven't been able to publish the Institute's daily newsletter. Yikes -- was my authorship a secret?) MORE
Some people have feared (or hoped) that the European Unions’ General Data Protection Regulation would force major change in the the marketing and advertising ecosystems by shutting off vital data flows. MORE
Trust has been chasing me like a hungry mosquito. It seems that everyone has suddenly decided that creating trust is the key to success, whether it’s in the context of data sharing, artificial intelligence, or customer retention. MORE
My wife is working on a Ph.D. in education and recently took a course on strategic planning for academic institutions. Her final project included creating a game to help illustrate the course lessons. MORE
Like an imminent hanging, the looming execution of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has concentrated business leaders’ minds on their customer data. MORE
Customer Experience Matrix
JULY 27, 2018
It’s nearly a year since Gartner placed Customer Data Platforms at the top of its “hype cycle” for digital marketing technologies. The hype cycle shouldn’t be taken too literally but it does capture the growing interest in CDPs and reminds us to expect this attention to attract critics.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 4, 2018
The Customer Data Platform Institute will be launching its European branch later this month with a series of presentations in London, Amsterdam and Hamburg.
Customer Experience Matrix
FEBRUARY 18, 2018
Like an imminent hanging, the looming execution of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has concentrated business leaders’ minds on their customer data.
Customer Experience Matrix
MAY 1, 2018
Readers of this blog and the CDP Institute newsletter know that I’ve been fussing for years about privacy-related issues with Facebook , Google , and others. With the issue now attracting much broader public attention, I’ve backed off my own coverage.
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Customer Experience Matrix
AUGUST 1, 2018
News that Salesforce had purchased Datorama crossed the wire just as I was starting on two weeks of travel, so I haven’t been able to comment until now. This was purchase was noteworthy as the first big CDP acquisition by a marketing cloud vendor. That the buyer was Salesforce was even more intriguing, given that they had purchased Mulesoft in March for $6.5
Customer Experience Matrix
JANUARY 12, 2018
If one picture’s worth a thousand words, why is everyone rushing to replace graphical interfaces with voice-activated systems? The question has an answer, which we’ll get to below. But even though the phrasing is a bit silly, it truly is worth asking.
Customer Experience Matrix
JUNE 2, 2018
Blockchain is the sort of cool technology that should excite me, but for some reason it does not.
Customer Experience Matrix
MAY 29, 2018
Over the past several months, I’ve been conspiring with MarTech Advisor ’s Chitra Iyer and Amit Varshneya and industry expert Anand Thaker to produce a podcast devoted to martech news of the week.
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Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
I’m currently drafting a paper on use of Customer Data Platforms by B2B SaaS marketers. The topic is more intriguing than it sounds because it raises the dual questions of why CDPs haven’t previously been used much by B2B SaaS companies and what's changed.
Customer Experience Matrix
JANUARY 27, 2018
Political situations come and go but trust is the foundation of civilization itself. So I was genuinely shaken to see a report from the Edelman PR agency that trust in U.S.
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 8, 2016
I’ve had at four conversations in the past twenty four hours with vendors who build a unified customer database and use it to guide customer treatments.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 14, 2017
It feels like forever since I first wrote about Journey Orchestration Engines (JOEs) , although it is just one year. Orchestration was already a hot term when I started, so I take neither credit nor blame for its continued popularity.
Customer Experience Matrix
APRIL 13, 2018
Trust has been chasing me like a hungry mosquito. It seems that everyone has suddenly decided that creating trust is the key to success, whether it’s in the context of data sharing, artificial intelligence, or customer retention.
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Competition has increased to new levels of intensity and organizations have begun to look for new ways to acquire customers. Discounted pricing is a strategic tool, which when used correctly can drive a variety of business goals, from marketing through to sales strategy
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 7, 2017
I gave my presentation on Self-Driving Marketing Campaigns at the MarTech conference last week. Most of the content followed the arguments I made here a couple of weeks ago, about the challenges of coordinating multiple specialist AI systems.
Customer Experience Matrix
AUGUST 25, 2017
A recent Forrester study found that most marketers expect artificial intelligence to take over the more routine parts of their jobs, allowing them to focus on creative and strategic work. That’s been my attitude as well.
Customer Experience Matrix
APRIL 19, 2017
Last week’s passenger-dragging incident at United Airlines left many marketers (and other humans) aghast that any company could purposely assault its own customer. As it happens, airline technology vendor Sabre published a survey of airline executives just before the event.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 28, 2018
"A CDP by any other name still stores unified customer data." Adobe on Tuesday announced the Experience Cloud Profile, which it described as a “complete, real-time view of customers” including data from outside of Adobe Cloud systems.
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Customer Experience Matrix
JULY 3, 2018
Yesterday brought news that Acxiom had agreed to sell its marketing services business to Interpublic Group , a major ad holding company, for $2.3 billion. Acxiom will retain LiveRamp and do business under that name. Acxiom had restructured itself in March into the Market Services and LiveRamp groups and announced it was looking at strategic options, so the deal wasn’t especially surprising. But it’s still a milestone in the on-going evolution of the marketing industry.
Customer Experience Matrix
NOVEMBER 22, 2017
I spend a lot of time with vendors trying to decide whether they are, or should be, a Customer Data Platform. I also spend a lot of time with marketers trying to decide which CDPs might be right for them.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 13, 2018
Should marketers pay consumers directly to access their personal data?
Customer Experience Matrix
FEBRUARY 24, 2017
I’ve sensed a certain weariness in recent discussions of marketing technology, as marketers realize their business problems remain even after massive investments in new systems.
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In the sphere of sales, it helps to get your definitions down. You might have thought sales operations and sales enablement are the same thing - but there are important differences. Both have the objective of improving sales performance, and although there is some overlap, they do this in different ways.
Customer Experience Matrix
OCTOBER 29, 2017
Some of the most impressive marketing systems I’ve seen have been developed for mobile phone marketing, especially for companies that sell prepaid phones. I don’t know why: probably some combination of intense competition, easy switching when customers have no subscription, location as a clear indicator of varying needs, immediately measurable financial impact, and lack of legacy constraints in a new industry.
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 19, 2017
The Customer Data Platform Institute (CDPI) recently surveyed its members about their customer-facing systems and CDP deployment plans. Click here to download the full report.)
Customer Experience Matrix
FEBRUARY 19, 2018
John Wanamaker, patron saint of marketing measurement. If you’ve been following my slow progress towards a set of screening questions for Customer Data Platforms , you may recall that “incremental attribution” was on the list.
Customer Experience Matrix
JUNE 20, 2018
The World Health Organization has just declared that video addiction is a real disease but they've missed something even more insidious: the dangers of newsletter publishing. The CDP Institute Web site has been down for two days now (hopefully it will be back up by the time you read this and test that link), which means I haven't been able to publish the Institute's daily newsletter. Yikes -- was my authorship a secret?)
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Customer Experience Matrix
NOVEMBER 30, 2016
The Customer Data Platform Institute (which is run by Raab Associates) on Monday published results of a survey we conducted in cooperation with MarTech Advisor.
Customer Experience Matrix
DECEMBER 6, 2017
My wife is working on a Ph.D. in education and recently took a course on strategic planning for academic institutions. Her final project included creating a game to help illustrate the course lessons.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 29, 2017
Like many people in the marketing technology industry, I was tickled in 2011 when Gartner predicted that CMOs would soon have bigger tech budgets than CIOs , and even more tickled when Gartner said in 2016 that it had happened.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 12, 2017
Thomas Wieberneit argues in a thoughtful blog post that companies need one platform for consolidated customer data, but that Customer Data Platform isn’t it because the CDP is “marketer-controlled” by definition, and thus doesn’t support other departments. This hits a nerve.
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Account-Based Marketing is a strategy, not a solution.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 23, 2017
I was asked the other day about the distinction between Customer Data Platforms and Journey Orchestration Engines. My immediate answer was “Some CDPs are JOEs and some JOEs are CDPs. A CDP is a JOE if has journey orchestration. A JOE is a CDP if its data is accessible to other systems.
Customer Experience Matrix
MARCH 20, 2018
The Customer Data Platform industry is doing very well, thank you, with new reports out recently from both Gartner and Forrester and the CDP Institute launching its European branch. But the great question hovering over the industry has been why the giant marketing cloud vendors haven’t brought out their own products and what will happen when they do.
Customer Experience Matrix
JANUARY 24, 2018
I’ve been working for months to find a way to help marketers understand the differences between Customer Data Platform vendors. After several trial balloons and with considerable help from industry friends, I recently published a set of criteria that I think will do the job. You can see the full explanation on the CDP Institute blog. But, since this blog has its own readership I figured I’d post the basics here as well.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 28, 2017
I escaped from my cave this week to present at two conferences: the first-ever “Customer Data Platform Summit” hosted by AgilOne in Los Angeles, preceding Shop.org, and the Technology for Marketing conference in London, where BlueVenn sponsored me.
Speaker: Jeff Davis, Founder, jd2 Consulting Group
Jeff Davis is here to help you think differently about how Sales and Marketing should interact. With increased scrutiny for marketing to prove ROI on their activities and it becoming increasingly hard for B2B salespeople to even get in front of customers, the old way of doing business is no longer an option. This webinar will use evidence-based research and empirical knowledge to propose real-world strategies that work.
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