Partner Spotlight: Are CDPs Replacing CRM & Penetrating Midmarket? Allant Expert Perspective

Whether helping to implement location-based marketing, multi-touch attribution, or providing data analysis and augmentation to get the best possible ROI on a new Treasure Data CDP, the Allant Group’s broad tech experience makes for a unique perspective on tech trends. Hint: CDPs are replacing CRM, and are also making inroads into midsized companies.

The Allant Group’s clients include forwarding-reaching brands across the B2C and B2B sectors in such verticals as automotive, insurance, financial services, retail, healthcare, travel and hospitality, gaming and entertainment, and telecom. The company delivers a range of marketing services that help its clients execute exceptional omnichannel engagement strategies—at scale, and at a profit.

Stephanie Meade, Allant’s SVP of sales and marketing, summarizes Allant’s technology-agnostic approach to strategic business problems: “You tell us your marketing or strategic problems, and we’ll identify the right data and the right solution. We let the business need drive the solution, and we stay as a trusted partner and advisor as they grow.”

Treasure Data recently spoke with Meade, who shared interesting insights about industry directions gained from many years of experience with personalization and data-driven marketing, both B2B and B2C.

Treasure Data: What does Allant do for its customers?

Stephanie Meade: Allant leverages leading data and identity solutions, best-of-breed CDP, campaign management, and AI/ML technology, and the talents of in-house data scientists and strategists to craft comprehensive solutions that solve even the most daunting marketing challenges.

Our data, insights, and technology services enable brands to identify and understand their customers, target them more precisely, and deliver the highly personalized and captivating experiences that underpin a cycle of profitable engagement, growth, and loyalty.

Treasure Data: How do you distinguish yourselves from your competitors?

Meade: We’re full-service, and we are agnostic when it comes to both data sources and technology type. We get our clients the data they need to solve their strategic business problems. We have our own data solution, but if a client needs a unique data asset, we have a team of experts who know how and where to get the missing pieces. We can also help them implement a CDP and related capabilities.They get what’s best to help grow their business, not just what’s on hand.

Treasure Data: Can you share the details of an Allant implementation, and talk about the new capabilities you were able to add?

Meade: Yes, a good example was a CDP solution for a large multi-brand, multi-location automotive dealership with more than 40 websites, a complex environment of advertising and direct-to-consumer marketing channels, and a rich trove of first-party customer and vehicle data. We looked at the problems they had—such as needing a better understanding of which customers had a strong propensity to buy very soon, and which dealerships are the most convenient for each customer. We’re able to integrate location data to tell where people were at different times of day. Understanding which dealership is most likely to be convenient is often a lot more difficult than just knowing where they live. Location-based data can give us clues about where they work or typically pass by each day, and those dealerships can then market to these prospects with targeted, segmented campaigns to get them into the dealership. Allant’s identity graph creates connections between website browsing and other marketing and advertising channel activity, and known consumers, helping the dealership discover precisely when the customer is in-market for maintenance, repairs, as well as new vehicle leases.

Treasure Data: How do you see CDPs playing a critical role in helping companies grow in the future?

Meade: We believe CDPs will eventually replace CRM (customer relationship management). Why do we believe this? First, because some CDPs, such as Treasure Data, excel not just at tracking customer interactions, but also in understanding that data through customer data analytics, and more importantly, in activating that data by personalizing the customer experience. Activation is a real CDP strength that CRMs can’t match today. CDPs also take data from many different sources, including CRM, so they can give a much more complete customer view, with browsing histories, social media feeds, ad response, and lots more.

The fact is that brands can’t cultivate their customers and generate incremental revenue unless they know them. CDPs help to create customer intimacy and drive effective one-to-one interactions by recognizing unique individuals across today’s complex digital marketing environment, consolidating disparate data into single customer views, and supporting an in-depth understanding of customers’ behaviors, motivations, and preferences.

And now that many brands and retailers are accelerating digital transformation, I think it’s important to remember that CDPs not only drive better marketing results, they allow brands to save money by retiring siloed, ineffectual, and outdated legacy systems not suited to the digital age.

We also see CDP use moving into more midsized companies, as they become easier to use, so they’re handling progressively more of the marketing and orchestration needs of this segment.

Treasure Data: How does the Treasure Data CDP fit alongside your company’s offerings?

Meade: Treasure Data has been a valued Allant partner for two years. We rely on Treasure Data’s leading CDP technology to help our clients unify their data and segment, target, engage and activate their customers though orchestrated customer journeys that produce goal-fulfilling revenue and ROI. We are proud to say we have implemented numerous Treasure Data CDPs that serve as the foundational data layer and source of truth for the analytics and strategic development capabilities we provide our clients.

Learn more about accelerating digital transformation, CDPs in the auto industry, and CDP-driven personalized marketing at www.treasuredata.com.