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If you ask any marketer what they need most to complete their job, it always comes back to data. Customers expect companies to remember who they are and anticipate their needs across the various channels and businesses want to keep the customer happy. But to make the company and the customer happy, you need data. A lot of data.

Customer data is crucial when it comes to running and marketing a business. Companies can directly improve the overall customer experience by understanding how users behave online and building customer profiles with the information received.

Streamlining your customer data through a customer data platform can help you connect with your users in more meaningful ways. If your data tracking has hit a standstill and you are looking to understand your user behaviors on a deeper level, it may be time to implement Optimizely Data Platform.

What is a customer data platform?

A customer data platform (CDP) is a tool that captures and organizes customer data and creates unified profiles across various touchpoints. CDPs give companies a comprehensive look into what customers are doing on their website, apps, and other platforms in one central location.

The CDP Institute defines a customer data platform as a packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems. CDPs apply specialized technology and processes to organize the data and provide a faster and more efficient solution to marketing data needs.

Why go with ODP over other analytics tools and services?

Optimizely Data Platform (ODP) was built with B2B and B2C in mind. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to collecting data, but ODP adapts to the specific needs of each company. Optimizely has taken companies who have untraditional commerce scenarios such as tickets or memberships into consideration with their data platform.

The omnichannel capabilities of ODP allow marketers to track their audience across multiple devices, channels, and touchpoints to ensure no information gets lost in the mix. ODP is easy to use without having to involve developers. For example, segmenting customers and events into multiple reports can be accomplished without an extensive technical background.

For Optimizely users, the best part about ODP is the native integration it offers with other Optimizely products. For Content Cloud customers, web content views, form fills, and search events can easily be tracked. Commerce Cloud customers can import contacts, products, and orders from Commerce Cloud into ODP, while also tracking common commerce events such as product views, add/removes from shopping carts, and completed checkouts.

Non-Optimizely customers have a growing ecosystem of easy-to-use integrations such as Mailchimp, Facebook, Google, HubSpot, and more.

Optimizely Data Platform is a great tool for marketers

How does ODP work?

There are two key concepts for ODP: customers who perform events.

Customer data and profiles can either be passively collected over time, but if you are looking to implement the platform and gather data immediately, ODP can be synced with an existing customer database such as a CRM. You can gather insights immediately without having to dig to find the answers.

ODP comes with a number of simple events out-of-the-box, such as page views, logins, and logouts. However, when you are implementing ODP you should work with a vendor to map out the most meaningful events for your company to ensure you are tracking all of your customer touchpoints and events.

Is ODP right for your company?

If you have worked with customer data platforms before but found they fell flat for your company’s specific needs, ODP might be the right option for you. ODP is best for organizations that know their audience and have clear ideas about the behaviors they would like to track, as well as companies that have the capacity to analyze and act on the data that is provided.

ODP also works for organizations that have sophisticated marketing needs and a wide range of data that would like to run multi-channel, personalized campaigns for their users.

If you are looking to add value to your marketing and customer relationships, Optimizely Data Platform could be the right option for you, and as a Premium Partner, we have had years of experience with Opti implementations. Reach out to Adage to get started on your ODP implementation today.