Best Customer Data Platforms (CDP) 2024: Top 7 Picks & Reviews
Reviewed by Kristina Knight, Journalist , BA
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Most businesses need a customer data platform (CDP) to concisely store their customer information and updates. There are so many CDPs out there to choose from, and as your business grows to include more customers, you’ll need to be sure that you have the best possible CDP for your company. We’ve rounded up the 7 best CDPs currently on the market, and we’d love to help you decide which one is right for you.
7 Best Best Customer Data Platforms (CDP) 2024
- Segment: Best Overall
- Emarsys: Most Affordable
- Optimove: Best for Beginners
- Oracle CX Marketing: Best Updates
- BlueConic: Best Privacy Policy
- FirstHive: Best Access
- Exponea: Best for Pros
What is Customer Data Platform (CDP)?
A customer data platform is a place to virtually store all of your client information in an accessible but secure way. If you have more than 10 customers, you’ll probably want to shop for and subscribe to a CDP to store all of your customers’ information.
What Do Customer Data Platforms Do?
A Customer Data Platform allows you, as the business owner or employee, to store and access your customer information in an organized way. Depending on your needs, a CDP might simplify sales funnels, remind you of invoices, contact customers for you, or just keep pertinent information secure.
Top 7 Best Customer Data Platforms (CDP) April 2024
Segment
Segment is known for their marketing integrations. They offer 400+ integrations with common marketing tools to make life easier for their customers. This customer data platform is widely known as easy to use, available for any budget, and extremely helpful for streamlining your marketing applications in one place.
- Real-time marketing analysis of your apps and sites
- Integration with 400+ marketing tools
- “Twilio Engage” customizes each customer’s experience based on their historical data
- Different tiers and pricing for different budgets
- API for developers, sales insights for marketers
- Free service is available for smaller companies
- Customer service doesn’t have incredible reviews
On top of their easy plugins, Segment offers a personalized customer journey catered to each consumer’s behavior. Unified customer profiles are available for marketers, and API availability for developers to integrate any systems and programs they need. We will mention that some of the reviews for Segment include customers that are unhappy with the service they received.
Emarsys
Emarsys is known for their helpful marketing tools. They allow customer data management at a marketing level that makes campaigns seamless. Emarsys collects customer data that could be relevant for customer journeys and long term customer relationships.
- Geared towards marketers
- Use AI to personalize customer interactions based on their history
- Enact marketing campaigns
- API for developers
- System may be difficult to use
- Prices vary depending on your needs, they are not transparent
Using AI and API helps Emarsys stay relevant for marketers and developers alike, and they provide helpful tools to enact the entirety of campaigns from start to end, with any integrations you might need. The only downside we could find to this customer data platform is the complexity of their system (which might be a plus for some) and that their prices don’t seem very transparent.
Optimove
Optimove is another option among customer data platform companies, and they offer beginner friendly services that are hard to match. We especially love their simple integrations and user friendly platform that their customers love.
- AI used to interact with customers
- Personalized marketing services
- Excellent customer service data team
- Excellent integrations into other apps
- Easy to use platform
- Less real time data than other CDPs
On top of this simple system that keeps customers coming back, Optimove helps marketers get to the bottom of customer touchpoints with their system, in tandem with an awesome customer service team and AI capabilities. The only drawback we see here is that their updates aren’t always completely in real time, which can be difficult if you need updated information quickly.
Oracle CX Marketing
Oracle competes well with other CDPs, and they do include real-time updates to customer data. We like this feature the best because it’s not always offered by CDPs, and Oracle concisely provides audience segmentation as well as unified customer information in real time.
- Enact marketing plans and track their performance
- Real-time data in a consolidated view
- Use AI to track and predict customer preferences
- App integrations offered
- Users say the interface is not user-friendly
- Expensive pricing
Oracle has become known for being a bit pricier than other CDPs, and customer data platforms cost anywhere from nothing to thousands of dollars, depending on your business growth and reach. Their AI, integrations and ability to collect customer data in real time make them a highly recommended program, but some say the interface isn’t as user friendly as they’d like.
BlueConic
Our favorite feature offered by BlueConic is their data privacy capabilities that still allow for collected data to be used in an incredible way. Customer data privacy is key to staying in regulatory compliance with consent management in a tech world, and BlueConic certainly delivers in this arena.
- Ability to make detailed segments
- Privacy compliant nature
- Real-time customer data updates
- Predictive customer data
- Excellent testing available for marketing strategies
- Built for large enterprises
- More expensive pricing
Real-time updates, compliant data insights, and the ability to unify customer data help BlueConic compete as a tio customer data platform. We also appreciate their testing capabilities to predict the most profitable customer journey.
FirstHive
Our favorite capability offered by FirstHive is their online and offline updates. No matter where you are, you can access their program and get the information you need, while pushing relevant marketing content.
- Offline and online customer data integrations
- Audience segmentation and single view customer data platform
- Create personalized marketing plans
- Integrate and stack apps or use their native capabilities
- Free trial available
- Customer service team isn’t always available or helpful
FirstHive offers personalized campaigns, comprehensive customer profiles, and best practices for an excellent customer experience. We love that they also offer a free trial, and they segment customer data in a relevant way. The only drawback to FirstHive that we can find is the lack of excellent care provided by their customer service team, in some cases.
Exponea
Now known as Bloomreach, this cross channel marketing platform provides marketing automation to the max. Their best feature is the complex options they offer for marketers to pose different campaigns based on the historical data of their customers’ behavior. This provides endless options for new campaigns, testing, and overall marketing success.
- Use AI to activate customer data into a relevant personalized customer experience
- Best practice marketing channels and campaigns available
- Marketing automation and customer analytics available
- Complex options available for more seasoned marketers and developers
- Excellent customer service
- There’s a learning curve for new users
On top of their robust data analytics, valuable insights and endless helpful data application, Exponea has excellent customer support and marketing campaign templates available if you don’t know where to start. On the other hand, some customers say there is a bit of a learning curve when you’re getting started, and sometimes the complex data collection and marketing options can be overwhelming.
Different Types of Customer Data Platforms
When you start shopping for a customer data platform, you need to make sure you understand the differentiations out there. There are a few functions offered by different types of CDPs, and we’ve broken them down below.
Marketing Clouds
As the word “cloud” indicates, this type of marketing tool can store and file away information. With a marketing cloud, professionals can organize their sales funnel or marketing lifecycle in a concise place, and store their customer information at the same time. Most of the CDPs we’ve indicated here are classified as marketing clouds, or they can integrate with a pre-existing marketing cloud.
Smart Hubs
Smart hubs are a form of data aggregation that collect and segment data from multiple sources to find trends or subtypes. They are integral to the data points collected by CDPs on the regular. You might say smart hubs are data silos used to congregate similar customer information to better serve consumers.
Marketing Data Integration CDPs
The integration abilities of a CDP are crucial to a business’s marketing process. A company might hold several apps that collect data from different data sources, and the collected data can be held in different locations. The integration process unified customer data from these different sources in a concise way. Some CDPs have more ability to integrate different marketing applications than others, so make sure you check on each CDP’s integration capabilities.
How Much Does a Customer Data Platform Cost?
CDPs can cost anywhere from no money to thousands of dollars a month, depending on your company’s needs and the totality of your customer movements and the behavioral data collected. You might expect to be charged based on the customer touchpoints you hope to transform into actionable customer data.
What Features Should You Consider When Choosing The Best CDP?
In the case that you’re interested in purchasing a CDP service, you might consider these key features before pulling the trigger.
Price
Each data management platform has a different price, and some are more cost friendly than others. Be sure to consider your company’s budget for a CDP service, and then decide which features are non-negotiables for you to make an excellent customer experience and grow your reach.
Ease of Use
Ease of use is a huge factor when considering learning a new CDP. You’ll want to be sure you can easily learn to navigate your interface as the CDP collects data. If you’re new to the CDP world, it can definitely be difficult to learn how to read multiple channels of data and identify deep customer analytics that might be helpful for your business. Make sure the CDP you choose provides relevant and predictive analytics in an easy to understand way.
Customer Profiles
A CDP that unifies customer data is key when searching for a helpful platform. Each customer interaction is aggregated to provide a full picture customer profile that helps marketers make the best decisions they can.
Marketing Features
Other marketing features such as campaign templates, customer loyalty measurements, and cross channel management can be tools to look out for when searching for a CDP.
The Range of Features
In the end, the true test of a helpful CDP is their full range of features. Do they offer integrations? Marketing capabilities? AI and predictive analytics? These are things to look out for.
Real-Time Data
Real-time collection of first party customer data is one of the most helpful features provided by some CDPs. Is your current campaign reaching its intended audience? You’ll know in real time if you have a CDP with this capability.
Data Analytics and Insights
Data insight using AI is a common feature offered by most CDPs. This predictive analysis of past customer behavior can help prevent future mistakes and turn your marketing efforts in the right direction.
Customer Supports
The customer support team within your new CDP is essential for understanding their applications and navigating your system. Make sure you research the support team to be sure they’ll give you top notch help.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews can be so helpful in understanding if the CDP you’re considering is worth the price you’ll pay. Part of getting a new CDP might include data migration, so you want to be sure it’s completely worth it to make the switch or start with a CDP for the first time.
Final Thoughts
If you’re in the market for a platform to track customer behavior, predict customer behavior, and truly enhance the customer’s journey, a CDP might be right for you. Online customer interactions can be difficult to track and hard to turn into profit, but a CDP can help with cross channel campaign management and ultimately turning your campaigns into profit.
Consider all of the benefits and risks to each of these CDPs before deciding which one might be best for you and your company.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
First party data is data collected from your direct customers, since by doing business with you they agree to willingly give their information.
Customer lifetime value is the average amount of profit a company expects to gain over the lifetime of a customer’s business.
You might notice that each platform is better for a different type of company. The best customer data platform might be different for each business.
Customer health scores are measurements used to tell how loyal a customer might be to your brand using first and third party data.
Treasure Data is another CDP used to mine customer data and use it on multiple channels to enact marketing planning and enhance customer journeys.
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- Segment | Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI). Segment. Published 2013. Accessed January 31, 2023. https://segment.com/
- Omnichannel Customer Engagement Platform | Emarsys. Emarsys. Published April 7, 2021. Accessed January 31, 2023. https://emarsys.com/
- Optimove | CRM Journeys, Mapped by AI. Optimove. Accessed January 31, 2023. https://www.optimove.com/