Making the case for a customer data platform is complex
From addressing silos and unifying data across SaaS and cloud platforms, to enabling identity resolution, to helping maintain a privacy-first approach to first party data, it’s easy to understand the benefits a customer data platform (CDP) brings to an organization (read our more comprehensive list here).
Quantifying that impact to help in your evaluation process? Not so easy.
In order to determine whether a CDP makes financial sense for your organization, you’ve got to quantify and consider several things, including licensing and implementation investments, campaign and web performance improvements, reduced operational costs, and more efficient campaign spend.
At Search Discovery, we make the CDP decision more measurable with our CDP Digital Impact Calculator. This calculator helps you anticipate and articulate the impact a CDP can have on your website.
A CDP is an expensive investment for which ROI is difficult to anticipate. But our CDP digital impact calculator can give you an idea of the quantifiable upside involved with implementing a CDP, which can be helpful to know whether you are in the early stages of evaluation or you’ve chosen a vendor and just need help refining your business case.
How our calculator can quickly give you some direction
A foundation built on research and experience
With as few as four inputs (optional inputs are available for more tailored results), we’re able to provide an estimate of the revenue lift for your website.
So, how’d we do all this? Magic? No, although that would have been far easier!
Extensive research and experience with implementation and activation of CDPs—combined with years of business and industry experience—helped us develop a strong understanding of where and how CDPs can drive site performance.
Turns out, there are two key areas where a CDP can help site conversions: delivering cohesive, personalized omnichannel experiences and mitigating ITP impact. The calculator takes your inputs and cross-industry averages of those performance lifts into account.
Effective activation of customer data can help drive sizeable conversion lifts
Focusing first on ensuring a cohesive, personalized omnichannel experience, a CDP enables a centralized, real-time view of the customer across teams, ensuring that the right content is delivered at the right time and in the right channel. This more effective approach to campaign activation can help drive more engaged and qualified traffic and, ultimately, conversions, for your website.
To estimate the impact of delivering cohesive, personalized omnichannel experiences, we researched cross-industry statistics to identify a starting point for quantifying revenue impact. We also determined some key activities an organization must undertake in order to execute a best-in-class delivery.
To provide your individual calculation, we also take into account the number of channels your organization operates in compared against consumer trends. This helps you understand the extent to which you can potentially benefit from a CDP, holding current channels constant.
Durable identity mechanisms enable more effective retargeting efforts
The second way CDPs can help boost site conversions is by mitigating some of the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) impact you would otherwise experience. Currently, ITP limits cookie persistence, which, in turn, severely limits retargeting capabilities.
A CDP stitches together multiple IDs to create the customer profile. This allows for a longer timeframe within which an individual can qualify for retargeting. This is especially important when you consider that retargeting campaigns typically return a higher CTR (click-through-rate) and a much lower CPA (cost per acquisition) compared to other types of campaigns.
To determine the negative impact on retargeting driven by ITP, the calculator first determines the non-converting traffic—working off the assumption that traffic that successfully completed a purchase would not be retargeted.
From there, a user will input best-case and worst-case ITP scenarios. A user can get these scenarios from 1.) Their own ITP impact assessment, 2.) A free ITP Impact Assessment that Search Discovery can provide for the user, or 3.) Search Discovery can provide cross-industry averages as inputs.
The provided impact scenarios are used to identify the percent of retargetable traffic impacted by ITP. We then estimate the value of this traffic, using cross-industry CTR and the provided Average Conversion Value. Because we know that not all businesses have this information readily available, we’ve made these inputs optional.
Both estimates are then combined to provide the user a range for the impact of implementing a CDP. The results can even be further refined to account for people, processes, and technology in place to activate the data in the CDP once the implementation has been completed.
But how useful can this estimate be?
We recently worked with a retail client looking to implement a CDP. They needed assistance with building their business case for what value a CDP would provide to their digital channels, because the executive team wanted a clear understanding of the ROI before signing off.
Hence, we applied the CDP Digital Impact Calculator to the rescue!
The calculator proved to be useful in three ways.
- First, in little time and with easily accessible business inputs, we provided revenue lift estimates, which were a huge proponent in driving CDP adoption conversations further.
- Secondly, the lift in digital performance was significant enough to satiate stakeholders because the calculator’s estimated return was more than enough to cover the brand’s licensing fees.
- Finally, knowing the calculated impact saved their team countless hours because they no longer had to calculate the many other savings and lifts associated with CDP implementation.
TL;DR
Determining the impact a Customer Data Platform can have on your business is often complex, but it doesn’t have to be, thanks to our CDP Digital Impact Calculator.
Whether you are just starting to consider a CDP for your organization or you’ve already chosen a vendor, Search Discovery can not only estimate some of the benefits to your organization, but also assist with CDP selection based on your business needs, help you implement a CDP to ensure proper configuration and data ingestion, and support activation to make sure you get the most out of your investment.
How to Get Started with the CDP Digital Impact Calculator
To calculate the potential business impact of a customer data platform solution, you’ll need to have some top line traffic and conversion metrics handy.
We don’t yet have this tool publicly available due to the need to verify that your metrics align to input requirements, but the process is super easy and quick. Please reach out to ryan.shaw@searchdiscovery to get your digital impact assessment.
