The modern-day marketing space has become increasingly competitive, and marketers are focused on learning more about their consumer audience. When consumers can access all their necessities and desires with a few swipes on their smartphone screens in this day and age, they seek personalized experiences.

This is where a customer data platform (CDP) steps in to make it easier for marketers and businesses to make data-driven decisions. CDP software allows marketers and entrepreneurs to utilize multiple tools to extract data and create a consumer audience database. This consumer database can be segmented in numerous ways to make advertising campaigns and marketing offerings more personalized.

Before we get into a detailed explanation of customer data platforms (CDP), let's take a look at an everyday example. Think back to the time when you bought a new smartphone: did you turn to Google to find information on the best one to buy?

What were the keywords that you used, and how many pages did you visit in pursuit of smartphone reviews? Did you watch any unboxing videos to explore different smartphone designs and specifications?

It’s usual for consumers to explore various websites to compare prices, investment value, return policies, and more. Throughout their search, consumers interact with multiple brands through their website and social media platforms. Tools like Facebook and Google ads have allowed advertising to become more personalized and relevant. Consumers can easily interact with their brands through live chat, emails, and social media platforms.

This brings us to an important question: how can a business deliver a personalized and relevant marketing experience to its consumers?

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Understanding Customer Data Platforms (CDP)

A CDP software derives data from various tools to create comprehensive consumer data to allow brands greater insight into their customers' preferences and desires. They utilize multiple touchpoints, such as Facebook, their website, email, and other platforms, to derive data and consumer information.

The CDP will gather and unify all the data to create insightful and simplified consumer profiles as opposed to manual databases. These consumer profiles can then be aligned with other platforms and tools, such as Facebook and Instagram ads. This entire process makes it increasingly easier for marketers and entrepreneurs to create consumer segments and offer personalized advertising campaigns to attract consumers from each segment.

The CDP will gather user history across various platforms and channels to create detailed consumer profiles for each website or social media user. The data derived from these tools and platforms are further synthesized to highlight each consumer's traits and preferences. Finally, the CDP allows marketers to utilize these profiles in orchestrating personalized adverts and conduct real-time outbound messaging to target the consumers at the right time.

Top 7 Customer Data Platforms for 2023

1 Segment

Segment has gained immense popularity as one of the most reliable and uncluttered CDP software that supports real-time decision-making with data-driven analytics and tools. It offers clean and elaborately segmented customer databases that every team can access by working on a particular product or marketing campaign. It provides an extensive range of analytics and tools to accelerate growth and boost sales by allowing a highly personalized consumer experience.

The primary objective behind the Segment's design is to allow marketers to achieve seamless and simplified integration across various platforms. This dynamic platform is incredibly easy to use, making it an ideal choice for small businesses that cannot afford to maintain extensive marketing departments. It offers a vast network of partners and makes it increasingly easy to incorporate new services and apps into advertising campaigns and consumer analytics.

Brands can integrate their data storage solutions and marketing campaigns with new tools, channels, and services with a few simple clicks. The segment provides a robust and innovative digital infrastructure that allows businesses to reduce costs associated with acquiring and retaining talent to manage the hassle of compiling analytics and data.

In simpler words, Segment can be imagined as a warehouse for storing data obtained from multiple sources. It provides well-segmented and elaborately planned housing for each consumer profile. It then channels this data towards other platforms and marketing channels. It allows real-time monitoring and makes it easier for marketers and executives to interpret raw data and analytics.

Given its affordable rate, Segment may not offer the high-end features provided by most enterprise software, but it’s an ideal tool for small and medium-scale businesses. Brands can sign up for their free package or sign up for their $120 monthly subscription to explore more than 300 analytics, marketing, and data storage tools.

Today, Segment is being used by more than 20,000 brands across more than 70 countries. Industry big-wigs such as Levi's, Peloton, Bonobos, FOX, and Instacart, amongst others, rely on Segment to deliver personalized marketing campaigns to their consumers worldwide. Despite the advent of more sophisticated CDP software, Segment enjoys a dynamic industry presence because of its clean data presentation, superior reliability, and enhanced integration.

2 Arm Treasure Data

This is a remarkable CDP known for its superior customer support and constant flow of data across multiple databases. Arm Treasure Data is an exceptional platform. Do you require regularly refreshed data to power your email marketing campaigns? Arm Treasure Data will refresh your data every day and make it ready to be integrated with other platforms, such as Salesforce.

It offers a wide selection of useful segments that make data aggregation easier and simpler and an incredibly easy-to-use interface. It is an ideal solution for small-business owners who don’t have the capital for a marketing team and seek a CDP software that is easy to navigate. Indeed, it's customer support is its winning feature, alongside the various activations attached with each segment. It allows the distribution of data from the database to multiple platforms incredibly easy and more straightforward.

Segments can be created using multiple conditions and activations, which aids in saving time and allowing a smooth, uncomplicated flow of data. It aids small and medium-sized enterprises in making data-driven decisions and personalized marketing campaigns across various platforms.

The user-interface offers a simplified experience for entrepreneurs and marketers who are unfamiliar with technicalities and software jargon. If you are not well-versed in SQL, this is the right CDP to help you make data-driven decisions. This platform can be utilized across all marketing teams to enhance the consumer experience across all digital platforms.

Does your business operate multiple domains and platforms? Arms Treasure Data will help you integrate the cookies to identify user preferences and interests and utilize this data to deliver the most engaging content to your targeted audience. It allows easy integration with Google and its advertising tools. It unifies all user attributes and preferences into one canonical ID.

You can then channel this data throughout your network to enhance the content and campaigns delivered to your consumers. It may seem relatively expensive compared to other popular CDPs. Still, it is a remarkable goal to strive for as a small business.

3 Exponea

One of the most versatile, enterprise-grade CDP software, Exponea's effectiveness stems from its flexibility and a wide selection of immersive features. Do you seek a standalone CDP to unify all your customer data and profiles, and integrate it with your analytics and optimize marketing campaigns?

Exponea is a customer data and experience platform (CDXP); therefore, it delivers far more utility than most other platforms on this list. It can be used to design and direct all marketing initiatives and actions with its immersive analytics and campaign executive tools.

Designed to function as an enterprise-grade CDP, Exponea has gained immense popularity with world-class businesses, making it a true industry leader in terms of innovation and customer-centric designs. It offers a simplified and well-integrated platform that makes it easier to work on demanding marketing applications and tools.

A business's success is powered by speed, amongst other factors, and Exponea's data processing speed is ideal for handling large volumes of data that is changing at a rapid pace. It provides a superior in-memory framework that is highly scalable and efficient. Flexibility is another dynamic feature that makes Exponea an ideal platform for enterprise-class brands.

Its data aggregation tools offer a simplified onboarding process that makes it easier to integrate existing databases and profiles with Exponea. It boasts a robust API that allows uncomplicated and smooth integration with third-party platforms and channels. If you wish to continue working with the tools you've been using, Exponea does not require you to make any uncomfortable shifts. It provides superior security and privacy solutions, being the first GDPR-certified SaaS company across the world.

This dynamic CPD is driven by superior data gathering and handling tools, AI-powered personalization tools, and communication across all touchpoints, devices, and platforms. It will empower your marketing team by enhancing control over the processes of consumer acquisition, conversion, and retention across multiple channels.

Exponea offers a wide selection of competitively priced packages. Each will empower your business with analytic tools, campaign management features, AI-driven tools, and even machine learning specifications. Despite such innovations and high-tech features, this platform is incredibly easy to use!

4 Leadspace

Businesses who are struggling to exercise control over their marketing dashboards and sales information have much to gain with this B2B customer data platform. Leadspace will help you boost your revenues with its advanced data aggregator tools and tech-savvy data pipelines that will enrich your data and provide regular updates.

Leadspace offers one of the most robust and immersive, open B2B data graphs in the market that equips businesses with data-driven analytics and superior decision-making skills. It is an ideal solution for entrepreneurs who get overwhelmed with technicalities. It provides an increasingly simplistic and easy-to-use interface powered with artificial intelligence.

Businesses can utilize highly sophisticated AI-powered tools to gain superior insights and identify opportunities buried deep under mountains of complicated and unsorted data. It eliminates the clutter to provide enhanced data sets that can be used in active campaigns, sales, and marketing channels.

These tools allow brands to advance their ABM, inbound, and outbound marketing initiatives to ultimately boost their profitability and revenues. Leadspace is an ideal platform to make account-based marketing campaigns more successful and productive. It aids businesses in ensuring that they are targeting the right consumers at the right time with highly-personalized and data-driven campaigns.

It will help enhance the potential of your digital marketing dashboard by creating specific and highly detailed consumer profiles to boost consumer acquisition, conversion, and revenues. It also aids marketers to create specific buyer personas and identify influencer and buyer trends to make advertising campaigns more immersive and actionable.

With regular upgrades and advanced data aggregation tools, Leadspace delivers superior professionalism and powers executive decisions with accurate data-driven analytics. It's reliable and efficient customer support makes it easier to overcome kinks and challenges to ensure streamlined and undisturbed productivity.

5 CaliberMind

CaliberMind is designed to enhance the success of B2B marketing initiatives to boost revenues and utilize data-driven analytics and automation to maximize sales and profits. It is a cloud-based corporate intelligence solution that aids both small and large enterprises manage their data with superior data aggregation tools.

It's multifaceted intelligence tools, and API integrations allow enhancements across all major realms that enable a business to grow. These include profits, sales, marketing initiatives, data aggregation, data analysis, automation, and more. It offers a unified and streamlined database that makes internet marketing optimization easier and efficient.

This intelligent platform is powered with chain-based attribution, which determines the real-time value of all your marketing channels and their contribution to the experiences of your consumers. It aids in enhancing marketing initiatives and contributions to boost brand loyalty by improving each customer's journey.

Its data aggregation tools are designed to manage and update consumer accounts and data throughout their journey with a brand. What is data transformation, if not streamlining data and consumer profiles across elaborate segments that allow superior data-driven insights to assist decision-making?

CaliberMind empowers marketers and sales teams with data-driven analytics and specific insights that help them determine the effectiveness and performance of a marketing campaign. It allows AI-powered tools and sophisticated features to boost revenues and sales through data-driven advertising campaigns.

This corporate intelligence tool allows marketers and sales personnel to determine the results and productiveness of each channel and boost the results through personalized marketing experiences. CaliberMind's clients are spread across the world and include prominent industry big-wigs, including Everbridge, and Frontline Education.

Given its sophisticated features and high-end clientele, it comes as no surprise that CaliberMind is an expensive indulgence for most small businesses. Its pricing begins at $1,000 a month, which can be quite the stretch for a startup. However, suppose an entrepreneur chooses to make this investment. In that case, it can eliminate the need for hiring personnel for various data aggregation, analysis, and marketing positions.

6 Listrak

This customer data platform is designed for retailers who seek to boost revenues and profitability and reinvent their customer experiences with enhanced engagement. Listrak delivers superior results that aid in establishing brand loyalty and building stronger consumer relationships.

Listrak makes data aggregating simpler and more accessible by unifying all consumer data. It derives the data from multiple platforms and uses it to create one centralized database that can be easily integrated to boost marketing success. Its winning feature is indeed its ability to create immersive and insightful data visualizations, which make it easier to identify consumer preferences, interests, and buying patterns.

These visualizations allow greater insight into consumer behaviors and patterns, allowing marketers to design data-driven advertising campaigns. It empowers marketers with data-driven analytics and valuable insights to create hyper-personalized campaigns to acquire, convert, and retain new and existing customers.

Listrak is a power-packed customer data platform for retailers and e-commerce businesses, and its micro-segmented communications directly address the fundamental concerns and preferences of the targeted consumer audience. Its automation capabilities pave the way for superior digital marketing optimization, and cross-channel orchestration.

From driving email marketing and social media campaigns to simplifying mobile messaging and cross-channel advertising, Listrack powers marketing efforts with precise consumer insights. Listrack is trusted by more than 1000 prominent retailers and brands across the world to streamline their marketing initiatives and boost consumer loyalty.

Its clients include T-Mobile, Papyrus, Peet's Coffee & Tea, amongst others. With superior automation, highly supportive customer service, and versatility Listrak makes it easier to optimize marketing efforts to boost profit maximization.

7 Tealium

A highly praised and sophisticated corporate intelligence tool, Tealium is a dynamic customer data platform that allows streamlined and accessible consumer data. Suppose your goal is to enhance brand loyalty and establish stronger consumer relationships. In that case, Tealium will help you connect with your audience by providing accurate and precise insights into their preferences.

It allows both offline and online data to be easily accessible and more useful so that brands can stay connected with their consumers without any disruptions. It supports aggregation marketing processes by providing a centralized solution to integrate all digital marketing channels and tools.

Tealium simplifies data storage and makes accessibility more straightforward by providing a consistent view of all-new, existing, and potential consumers. Its most dynamic feature is indeed its ability to aggregate digital insights to the individual. In simpler words, this allows brands and marketers to deliver highly personalized marketing experiences to a highly targeted consumer population.

Businesses and marketers have often reported that the offloading and startup process can be time-taking, but the superior quality of data analytics certainly outshines this tiny hiccup. The time-delays in getting the platform up and running stem from the excellent quality data solutions provided by Tealium.

When working with Tealium, it is ideal for getting started with cleaner data sets and work your way towards more complicated data patterns and consumer profiles. Prepare yourself to allow the system to take the time it needs to implement its solutions. Once the process completes, it can really empower your marketing and sales teams with sophisticated tools.

Tealium can gather fragmented data from a wide range of sources and platforms to create a unified database. This database will empower your business with superior data aggregation, interpretation, analysis, and actionable tools to refine your consumer information and profiles. It features robust security and privacy measures to safeguard sensitive consumer details and marketing initiatives.

Conclusion

If you're still contemplating the need for data transformation and digital marketing optimization, it means that your business is still functioning through manual and traditional data analytics processes. First, you need to embrace the customer data platform as the right tool to support personalized marketing experiences and boost engagement with your consumer audience.

Once you, as an entrepreneur, are willing and ready to make this transition, you will have to choose the right vendor for your business. You need to be able to choose someone who can target your consumer audience well and employ the best marketing strategies. Given the wide selection of vendors in the market, it can be increasingly overwhelming to make such the right decision to support your revenues and sales.

Naturally, each company has its own unique data aggregating and data pipelining requirements. However, many spheres of the buying process and consumer retention are similar for most companies.

First and foremost, you need to understand the processes that you need to enhance in order to boost your marketing success and revenues. How do you intend to use a customer data platform?

Does your business require multiple execution layers, AI-powered tools, and data-driven insights to optimize marketing with hyper-personalization? Or do you simply need a platform that makes customer segmentation and data-driven analytics more straightforward and easy to incorporate into your marketing decisions?

Understanding your requirements will help you compare various vendors and shortlist the right platforms that compliment your business processes and consumer segments. Once you've shortlisted the platforms, it's time to evaluate their performance and solutions to make the right choice.

It is natural for businesses to explore multiple CDPs before finding the right fit for their needs. We sincerely hope our detailed reviews prove insightful in assisting an informed decision for your business.