Best Examples for Marketing Optimization You Will Actually Use

For effective marketing optimization, B2B research firm Ascend2 reports that personalization is every marketer’s top priority (43%), especially for email campaigns. Data quality ranks second (39%), followed by design (34%), messaging (33%), and content type (28%).

As personalization becomes increasingly indispensable to many brands, customer data platforms (CDP) are becoming the marketer’s secret weapon for optimization. Here, we will look at examples of marketing optimization you can leverage using a CDP.

What Is A CDP?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a unified customer database that builds rich customer profiles using data collected from systems across the company.

Marketers can use it to personalize website experiences, send targeted emails, offer relevant recommendations, implement retargeting, and much more.

A customer data platform centralizes customer information by connecting to a wide range of sources and systems. It builds a customer data foundation using all types of data from real-time interactions, mobile transactions, campaigns, customer support, point-of-sale systems, marketing, purchase history, and more.

CDPs then create unified customer profiles, which become the single source of truth for all internal departments—especially marketing, service, and support teams. This empowers teams to orchestrate the customer journey and ensure consistent experiences, from the first touchpoint to the last.

Best-in-breed CDPs implement a high level of personalization across individual customer journeys at scale. Other marketing optimization actions include:

• AI-powered recommendations
• Continuous A/B testing
• Retargeting audiences
• Activation of audience segments
• Real-time optimization across display, search, social, and other channels

Let’s take a look at some top CDP providers and their marketing optimization capabilities.

CDP Examples

The following CDP players are among the top-rated brands at review sites G2 and TrustRadius.

CDP Marketing Optimization Examples

How can brands use CDPs to optimize marketing initiatives such as customer outreach, communication, and personalization? Here are several examples.

Example #1: Lead-Nurturing Through Email Campaigns

Lead-nurturing is an important strategy, especially for B2B brands that cater to smaller audiences in comparison to consumer-facing brands. This strategy is also used by companies with growing client bases to develop new leads. Marketers often use one or more of the following email campaign types to nurture leads:

• Auto-responder: consumers receive welcome emails, birthday greetings, and other programmed scripts
• Drip campaign: consumers receive a series of emails about the brand or product/service
• Closed-loop campaign: consumers receive emails based on their response to previous marketing/sales initiatives

A customer data platform can be used to create and activate a marketing calendar around email campaigns. Marketers can first use CDPs to distinguish new customers from loyal buyers. These are then nurtured through educational email content, such as brand philosophy, instead of untimely loyalty program offers. By personalizing content based on a lead’s stage in the funnel, marketers can increase brand awareness and onboard new leads in an intentional cycle.

Example #2: Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is another way to optimize marketing based on customer preferences. A CDP’s capabilities allow marketers to fine-tune messaging, frequency, and use of communication channels according to audience levels of interest and commitment.

For example, companies expanding their product lines to cater to different sub-markets can use CDP to segment audiences. Marketers can then derive insights from audience segment analyses, and use them to handpick relevant content for people using product A. Another form of content can be prepared and sent to users of product B, product C, and so on.

The same is true for communicating with brand ambassadors who consume extensive (and often exclusive) content. Once a brand builds a community of loyal users at a global scale, messaging needs to be timely and relevant to each ambassador. Marketers can use CDPs to build segments and then activate specific campaigns with a click instead of using blanket messaging for each one.

Example #3: Omnichannel Communication

Reaching customers on every possible channel is vital to marketing success. In addition, customers no longer see one touchpoint as a separate experience from another; instead, they perceive the brand as a single entity communicating with them through different channels. Therefore, marketers need to ensure messaging is consistent across all touchpoints.

CDP helps make this a possibility by empowering marketers to deliver the right message in the right way at every consumer-brand interface. Marketers can leverage enterprise CDPs with advanced technology such as natural language processing, behavioral analysis, and others to further calibrate omnichannel communication.

For example, if a brand wants to capture new audiences on an innovative touchpoint like voice search, marketers can use a CDP’s Machine-Learning capabilities to deliver relevant results. First, the CDP analyzes data from previous voice searches to determine the most popular conversational keywords. These are then used to optimize search results in anticipation of voice shoppers’ needs. A CDP also uses insight from behavioral analytics to shape website content, display relevant ads, and personalize experiences at this emergent touchpoint to ensure a smooth customer journey.

With consumers connecting to more devices than ever, a CDP helps brands prepare their omnichannel communications strategy to meet customers across any and every channel.

Example #4: Customer Feedback Via Surveys

It may surprise some marketers to find that customers themselves can be their best allies when it comes to marketing optimization. Customers are the ones who receive marketing messages, experience events, interact with campaigns, and consume content. Marketing teams can tap into the wealth of firsthand insights from customers through feedback tools such as surveys and questionnaires. CDPs can help build these tools and integrate them into marketing events for a seamless experience.

While some people may freely share their opinions, the average consumer does not typically see the value of sitting down and completing a survey. Marketers can encourage feedback by incentivizing surveys through relevant offers and rewards. Again, insights derived from CDP audience analysis can guide marketers to identify consumer preferences in exchange for valuable feedback. A CDP also enables brands to push survey invitations onto popular interfaces such as mobile apps and social media so customers don’t think it a burdensome task.

Marketing teams can use valuable feedback to improve content, design, and other aspects of communications to serve customers. Feedback can also inform interventional strategies to reduce churn and increase conversion.

Example #5: Personalization And Next-Best-Action Decisioning

Enterprise CDPs like Treasure Data use deep analytics and audience insights to personalize customers’ journeys. Real-time personalization occurs in 3 steps:

• Audience Management: Treasure Data CDP collects all types of data and unifies profiles to build a customer data foundation
• Journey Orchestration: Treasure Data CDP fine-tunes campaigns to move customers toward conversion
• Omnichannel Messaging: Treasure Data CDP orchestrates messaging across email, social, digital, and display channels to target specific audience segments

Treasure Data CDP uses Profiles API Token to hyper-personalize content based on granular customer information. This API also returns real-time customer data to update audience segments. Marketers can combine Treasure Data’s personalization feature with A/B Testing tools for greater optimization.

In addition, Treasure Data CDP’s AI and Machine Learning capabilities provide marketers with the ultimate marketing optimization tool: Next-Best-Action (NBA) decisioning.

Treasure Data’s NBA strategy uses data-driven insights and big data analytics to forecast precisely what customers want, when they want it. It also uses insights and patterns uncovered by analyses to recommend the Next-Best-Action calculated to move the customer closer to conversion.

NBA decisioning is more than just optimization: it’s the closest thing to marketing omniscience.

Powered by rich customer behavioral data and insights, NBA uses a real-time feedback loop of engagement and predictive analytics—capabilities found in Treasure Data’s enterprise CDP.

To illustrate, consider a customer in the market for a new car. One of their first steps is an online search for local dealers. Treasure Data creates a unified profile from enriched first-party information and scores the customer on their propensity to buy certain car models. The marketing team then uses Treasure Data’s CDP to activate a highly personalized campaign across devices, social media, and channels based on the customer’s actions.

Treasure Data uses NBA decisioning to choose between sending an educational email, relevant ads on highly used channels, or information on local dealerships to meet the customer’s needs. Once the customer buys the car, Treasure Data can again use insights-driven decisioning to build loyalty and offer upsell/cross-sell opportunities at relevant points in the customer journey.

Your Best Marketing Optimization Tool: Treasure Data Enterprise CDP

Treasure Data enterprise CDP is a best-of-breed CDP that helps companies solve complex data problems. More than 400 brands trust us to optimize marketing actions and create the best journey for customers. Our client list includes the following global names:

Watch this Treasure Data Enterprise Customer Data Platform Demo video to learn more:

For more CDP marketing optimization examples, consult an expert today. Want to learn more? Request a demo, call +1.866.899.5386, or contact us for more information.