CDPs with Chris Marriott, Email-Connect

Richard: So Chris, before we kick off. How about a bit of an acronism bingo. So ESP?

Chris Marriott: Email Services Provider.

Richard: CDP.

Chris Marriott: Customer Data Platform.

Richard: RFP.

Chris Marriott: Request For Proposal.

Richard: ESCDP.

Chris Marriott: What it stands for is that that overlap of CDPs that look like ESPs and ESPs that look like CDPs.

Richard: Perfect. Let's get started. Hi folks. Thank you for joining me today for a special episode of the Wunderkind Podcast, Individuality Unleashed all about CDPs. And today I have Chris Marriott president and founder of Email Connect joining me. And we're going to do a deep dive on customer data platforms. How and why marketers use them, the limitations and how marketers can leverage their CDP in an optimal way to truly understand their customers on an individual level and drive growth. At Wunderkind, we often get a lot of questions around how Wunderkind and CDPs fit together and how Wunderkind can bring extra value to enhance the functionality of a CDP. So we're going to be jumping into that too, but first, Chris, thanks for joining.

Chris Marriott: Richard. It's great to be here today. I love the topic and the whole CDP marketplace or part of the industry, MarTech landscape has exploded in the last couple of years and has raised so many questions about where CDPs fit with ESPs. There's tremendous overlaps with them, where they fit with existing databases. And as you said today, where does Wunderkind fit? And I think it's a great topic and I know there's lots of questions out there. So looking forward to diving into it.

Richard: Awesome. Now let's kick off with some basics so we're all on the same page. Forrester defines a CDP as a platform that centralizes customer data from multiple sources and makes it available to systems of insight and engagement. Chris, can you walk us through what exactly a CDP does and what marketers generally use them for?

Chris Marriott: Sure. And part of the confusion, I think that in the CDP landscape is their dramatic differences between CDPs themselves, just like in the ESP landscape, where there are very large differences between the various ESPs, that are rarely recognized by the way, by brands when they're looking around, but CDPs as well, the definition you gave of Forrester, I think that's the basic CDP. And I like to use the CDP Institute's definitions of the CDP categories. When you break down the CDP landscape into sort of the distinct versions of CDPs, you have those that attract marketers to them. And you have those that attract the data people and the business analysts. So again, let's start with the definition you gave, Forrester's definition, that's sort of the base level CDP. And as you said, it's used to aggregate data from various different sources, connect that data around a unified view of the customer and make that data available activated on many, many different channels. That's the kind of CDP that your IT people and data analysts are looking for when they're out in the marketplace. On the other end of that spectrum, and we could talk about this in a whole different podcast, but I'll just touch on it. On the other end of the spectrum are what the CDP Institute calls deployment CDPs. And these are CDPs that actually look like ESPs. And in that, they do all of the things that base level did probably not as well, because they're more focused on the deployment of literally sending email out of the platform, using MTAs in the cloud, which is what all the next gen ESPs are already doing. And in between them, there are various degrees. You have orchestration added to some CDPs, you have analytics added to others. So it's not so easy to define a CDP other than, as you said, that sort of base level of what is expected. And that was sort of the original CDP.

Richard: Now Forrester says that 25% of B2C marketers are using CDPs and another 24% are planning to adopt them in the next year. So why do you think that the usage of CDPs is on the rise?

Chris Marriott: Yeah, well, part of it, forgive me is herd instinct. It's the shiny new object and CRM, I've been around long enough to know when CRM systems and I'm going way back. Everybody had to have one and the CEOs would tell the director of marketing, get a CRM. Neither of them knew what it was, but they knew they had to have it. And so they would go out and they'd get a CRM system. In some ways that's pushing the rise of the CDP marketplace, but also I think the real value and there is real value, particularly to the data teams and the analyst teams, to getting that data in one location for them controlling it. And control is a big thing internally at a lot of companies, the control and the ownership of that data is extremely important to those teams. And it's finally, they can have it in one place under lock and key, under their lock and key. What's interesting is we've done, as you know my business is managing RFPs for brands, looking for new ESPs and more recently CDPs again because of that overlap. But every RFP I've run in the past 18, every RFP, since the COVID lockdown ended, at this exact same time, the marketing team's looking for an ESP. The IT and data team is literally off doing an RFP for a CDP. And again, I could go on forever about how crazy that is. Those should be more unified efforts, but again, I think what's driving the rise of it is we got to have it. We want to have it. Everyone else has it. And if we don't get it, we're going to fall behind.

Richard: Now, Chris, do CDPs play a role in compliance for things like CCPA and GDPR in organizations?

Chris Marriott: Absolutely. Because one of the guidelines that you must follow or laws that you must follow, if somebody asks to be forgotten, that literally means there is no data about them anywhere in your organization. And when you have a centralized source of all of their data, like a CDP, it's very easy to A, get rid of it and B, proved that you've gotten rid of it.

Richard: Now, you talked about CDPs being a single source of truth that provides a sort of complete view of your customer data. Can you elaborate on how CDP can enable a company to achieve its personalization objectives? And then maybe talk a little bit about how Wunderkind can help enhance that personalization capability?

Chris Marriott: Yeah. Again, what a CDP, ideally stores is a complete view of that customer. Everything they've ever bought, everything they've ever looked at on your website, every customer service engagement, everything they've bought in store. So you have an enormous amount of first party data. And of course the only way you can personalize anything is by linking what first party data about that person, with the communication in the communication. And because CDPs activate that data to the deployment channels. They're sort of the engine. And in many ways they have AI as I think you touched on within them, not all of them, but some of the more advanced CDPs have AI where they can do some predictive modeling and this and that. So that's really where they become such a critical partner to these other channels when it comes to personalization, now, we talk about their ability to link customer data, and they certainly have that capability, but not every technology is perfect. You and I both know that and CDPs are no different. And by that I mean, what happens when you change your phone number? What happens when you change your email address? Suddenly the CDP is potentially or likely building two profiles around you or even more. And that can become very problematic. They're not perfect in understanding that this old email address and this new email address came from the same person. And that's really one of the things that I think is great about Wunderkind and really the only place where you can ensure that you have that information and can deliver that. I think that's one of the superpowers of Wunderkind in its array of things that it does really well. I think it's ability to do know that those are the same is something that can be... You talked up front about how does Wunderkind help CDPs? I think a critical area is just that. Understanding that people's information does change and you need to stay on top of that.

Richard: Yeah. I mean, integrating identity resolution into your CDP solution just makes it possible to connect all these separate touchpoints to the sort of real life living, hopefully breathing human being that connected with your brand and engaged with targeted email and text communications. And this is because the technology is based on an identity graph that contains millions of identities and billions of touchpoints, all connected to real people. Now, can you give us some more examples of when it makes sense to integrate Wunderkind into your CDP?

Chris Marriott: Well, another area that I think Wunderkind excels in is recognizing anonymous visitors, right? Again, a superpower of Wunderkind, and I don't really know of another platform that does what you do in that area and that you're sort of a unicorn in that area. And CDPs can recognize somebody when they're logged in, but they can't necessarily recognize an anonymous visitor particularly, or even begin tracking an anonymous visitor. And in the world of Wunderkind, there aren't that many anonymous visitors. You pretty much know who they are. And so when you're partnering or when that brand has Wunderkind, as part of its infrastructure, that CDP is much smarter than otherwise would be

Richard: Some sort of stats on that. The Wunderkind identity network observes about 890 million devices each month and Wunderkind clients process over a billion requests every day. So this is actually a huge advantage when it comes to scaling your email campaigns with that data intelligence from the identity network. Now let's say you're a marketer. You want to increase online revenue from your email channel. For most marketers, email is the highest converting channel, but on its own, it doesn't necessarily scale. There are limitations. Now Wunderkind's identity network basically identifies anonymous users on site that your CDP cannot recognize. Then you can automatically send triggered emails and texts to those newly identified customers, perhaps with a special welcome offer or an abandoned cart reminder. Now Wunderkind's ability to collect this data and drive revenue begins on day one. And I think that's really, really important. It immediately increases the scale of your triggered email and text messaging programs. Meanwhile, your CDP enables you to build segmented audiences for personalized follow ups, tracking onsite behavior, retargeting, existing customers, and building advocacy. Now, Chris, 90% of marketers say their CDP doesn't meet their business needs. And 86% of marketers say that a CDP can't truly give them a 360 degree view of their customers. Why do you think this is?

Chris Marriott: Well for some of the very reasons that you and I have just talked about. That CDPs, as you said, you're building that day one, it takes time for a CDP to really begin to link all of those. That doesn't just magically happen when you plug it in. And again, all new technologies, I think Gartner has their peak of inflated expectations and then their hype cycle, which I love and the trough of disillusionment. And I think we're coming over the top of that peak of inflated expectations. CDPs are a useful tool to have in your arsenal, but they aren't going to fix everything that is wrong. And there may not be a technology that will ever come along that will be perfect in every way, shape or form. And the point is getting the tool set of platforms into your program that make you incrementally better. And that's what we've been talking about here. How Wunderkind make a CDP incrementally better. And one of the areas we haven't talked about that, but you and I talk about all the time. And I think also is another one of Wunderkind's really strengths is first party data. We've talked about the collection of website and others, but as you said, you've got this identity network that is gathering all of this information on the people, on the known people in your identity network. And the future of email marketing is first party data. Now, if I've hijacked a question you were going to ask later, I apologize, but we all know third party cookies are going away. I probably just stole that line from you, but we all know they're going away though. It's been delayed a couple years, which just gives us more to time to prepare because they will go away. And first party data, there's not a whole lot of ways to get that at scale. A loyalty program, that'll help you get first party data at scale, but also Wunderkind is another great way to get first party data at scale. And that's not only going to make your CDP smarter, that's going to supercharge. If you don't have a loyalty program as a marketer, that's going to be the way you can quickly get some more data on your existing customers in your email database to improve the personalization and targeting of those and segmentation and targeting of your email campaigns.

Richard: No for sure. And lots of people are using Wunderkind very successfully to really build out that first party database with all abilities on email capture and phone detail capture. But before I talk about it a little bit, I just wanted to maybe talk about another area of confusion. We all know in technology, everyone says they can do everything when you read their marketing. And actually the truth is always somewhat, extremely different in many cases, but some CDPs say that they offer personalized email capabilities. What's your view on that?

Chris Marriott: Well, I talked earlier about the David Raab in the CDP Institute and their sort of view of the CDP landscape and the four types of CDPs. And I talked about the deployment CDPs, and I don't believe... The way I look at the market, and this is a result of the overlap of ESPs and CDPs. And there are some ESPs that are barely distinguishable from CDPs, and there's some CDPs that are barely distinguishable from ESPs. And so when I think about them, I think about them on a continuum. In other words, that on one end you have all CDP and on the other end, all ESP, and these, what I call ESCDPs, tend to cluster in the middle of that continuum. Now what differentiates them, deployment CDPs from ESPs that look like CDPs, we'll call them ESP pluses and ESP plus is much better at email and the things that email marketers want like personalization to your point, all of the really hardcore, even with built in AI and realtime at time of send, realtime personalization. On the other hand, the CDPs that are ESCDPs, getting back to your original question, their ability to personalize is much more limited because they're more CDP like than they are ESP like. So if you have a deployment CDP, you haven't solved all your problems and in any way, shape or form, there's still things that you're going to need to augment the effectiveness of what you're doing.

Richard: And as you say, some CDPs can actually send the basic triggered emails, but whether they're a CDP or a CDP slash ESP-

Chris Marriott: ESCDP.

Richard: Yeah. They're not built to recognize anonymous users on your site in real time because of that, they're going to have difficulty matching Wunderkind scale to do triggers, which is where I think we play an important part in the marketplace, partnering with CDPs and ESPs of all flavors. Now to sort of dig into that a little bit for some of the viewers, Wunderkind's identity resolution technology can recognize anonymous users down to that email address. So it greatly expands your send pool and we pair this with the behavioral technology and email capture strategies to gain new prospects, to add to your marketing database. So if you aren't in a client's database, then when you land on a site, we recognize that. And we ask for an email or the phone capture. If we have the email, but not a phone number we can ask for just what we don't have. This enables you to target previously mid funnel prospects that you wouldn't have been able to reach otherwise and drive net new revenue at scale from your email and text programs. Now Wunderkind offers a white glove service and years of testing have enabled us to fine tune our email marketing and text marketing strategies. Now, if you only have a CDP without Wunderkind, it will take months to see results, but together, I think they're a perfect pair. Well, I would because I'm working for Wunderkind. But let's go back to talking about cookies, I think that's an important thing. So brands have been relying on cookies for a long time to track users, to measure campaigns, to analyze marketing performance. So what do you think cookie deprecation means for CDPs long term?

Chris Marriott: I think it will make their identity resolution, I was going to say much more difficult, but I want to use something stronger, incredibly difficult because that's what stitching a lot of it together today. And particularly because without an email address for an individual or a phone number, the only other sort of way you recognize that person is through that third party cookie. So I think the identity resolution of a lot of CDPs, their capabilities in that area will suffer and brands are going to see a difference

Richard: For sure. And I think it's actually great in many ways for Wunderkind because we are well positioned to work with CDPs to solve those addressability issues in a cookieless world and help marketers collect data without relying on third party cookies and Wunderkind's identity network makes it possible to remember users, even after cookies expire and returning visitors to sites within the Wunderkind identity network reinforce our user data, basically letting it persist past cookie. So Chris, lets sum up. Wunderkind and CDP will help brands acquire and retain more customers, offering them a scalable source of revenue that improves user experience. This will be an even bigger competitive advantage once third party cookies are inevitably phased out. Right?

Chris Marriott: Absolutely. And the way I think about it, and I know this show is the program today is CDPs, but the way I sort of see Wunderkind at the intersection of ESP, CDP and commerce website, because really what we've been talking about today is your ability to improve the performance in all of these areas. And again, I think that's a unique offering in the marketplace

Richard: And I think people can be skeptical when they listen to things like this because in software as a service in technology, marketers for companies tend to talk about value in very generic ways and promise the earth. And then it's down to companies and the marketer and their internal teams to basically take this technology and deliver those amazing returns that have been promised in the sales cycle. And I think one thing that really excites me about Wunderkind is that we aren't software as a service. We are revenue as a service. Yes, we've got software and services that help you get there. But we back it up by guaranteed revenue in our contracts performance. And if we don't meet those guarantees, we work for free until we do. So it really is a kind of new commercial model if you like, to allow marketers to get outsized returns and what does it do? Well at the end of the day, deploying something like Wunderkind, we've got a track red record of undeniable performance for brands. So I'll throw out some stats. Pamela Love, 17.6% of digital revenue with email and text, bear in mind that most triggered email programs are about 0. 5% to one and a half percent of digital revenues in average customers. Notory, 14% of digital revenue with email and text. Casemate, 19% of digital revenue with email and text. G- Star, 23% of digital revenue and email text. I mean, I could go on and on, but it's all about delivering revenue as a service and putting your money where your mouth is. So throw that out there as the last piece. And Chris, I've got to thank you for getting stuck in with us today and sharing your insights and listeners thank you for tuning in to our special CDP episode. If you'd like to learn more about how Wunderkind and CDPs work together, get in touch today and our team will be happy to help and advise. I hope you found this interesting, and I look forward to seeing you next time on Individuality Unleashed.