Communicating with customers is essential for building relationships and driving business outcomes, with email being arguably the best channel for personalized communication at scale. It's no surprise that various departments within your organization want to leverage email to boost their results. Merchandising teams aim to highlight specific products, while marketing focuses on driving total sales and margin. However, a critical question remains: how does the customer influence the messaging and content they receive?

Are Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) worth the investment? What are the business outcomes CDPs deliver? What is the Return on Investment (ROI)? These are the questions Marketing leaders must ask to prove the value of a CDP as an investment, just like a new product, new store, new capital equipment. And to do that, we need a business case. Like all business cases, our CDP business case should:

• Plan for the tangible, measurable, business benefits a CDP will deliver
• Demonstrate incremental value (that wouldn’t be there without the CDP)
• Deliver long-term profit while delivering a short-term payback 
• Align with business strategies and integrate into the existing MarTech stack

Technology leaders want a strong Marketing partner. They look to Marketing to be articulate, visionary; to build a consensus. They want Marketing leaders to define success and measure business outcomes. But are we- as Marketing leaders - up to the task?

There is a lot at stake. Without Marketing leadership, IT runs the risk of over scoping a solution or missing critical requirements (and under scoping). Either way that means trouble:

Everyone talks about email personalization. And Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) can finally make this a reality. But are brands willing to listen? Do brands have the courage to send fewer emails? What if CDPs could improve email experiences and produce more revenue? 

CDP readiness series - getting the most out of customer data

No surprise: brands are inundated with customer data from various touchpoints. That’s why a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is important - to help businesses make sense of customer data and provide important benefits...

Marketing leaders already know that Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) can provide a big step forward for brands. CDPs vastly improve the way brands recognize customers. CDPs can help personalize the customer experience seamlessly and across channels.

I was just featured on Northwestern University's thought leader series on digital marketing. The topic was how retailers are embracing digital as fast as possible to not only counter the Covid crisis, but improve the customer's UX in the process.

It’s easy to market to loyalty program members; their extensive history with your brand provides you and your marketing team with the necessary data to know what they love, what they hate, and what they’re probably in the market for next. That said, how do you extend that same level of customer service to your newest customers, or even those who haven’t made a purchase yet? In 2020, everyone is looking to AI for marketing help. Sure, a great marketing platform can help segment your database and schedule your content, but it can’t perform at its best if the customer data in your database is a little lackluster.

Marketer's Guide to Effective Email Part 1:

The most successful marketers leverage email to strengthen the bond with their best customers. Customers seek out brand emails in a cluttered inbox. Customers feel like they are having a conversation with the brand. We have spent years analyzing email strategies from the best marketers in the world to uncover five things that make them great: