Why CDPs, ESPs, and Marketing Automation Fail on Their Own
Just like any effective team, your martech stack can’t be a one-man show. Can you imagine resting the entire operation of a marketing department on one employee’s shoulders? The ensuing chaos wouldn’t be pretty. Likewise, it’s unrealistic for marketing technology buyers to assume there’s one platform that can solve all your challenges. CDPs, ESPs, and marketing automation tools have proven they can’t run a standalone show and grow your business successfully.
Simple ESPs can’t handle the heat
Our Chief Growth Officer, Josh Francia, learned the hard way that ESPs can’t cope with high volumes and expanding use cases. During his time at an online travel giant, Josh’s team ended up breaking three ESPs. Ultimately, this was because the marketing team was piping in more data than ESPs on the market were built for. Unfortunately, these traditional systems couldn’t keep pace and broke. Imagine the revenue impact this had. Consumers are generating more data than ever before. Therefore, playing a game of musical chairs with ESP providers isn’t a viable solution.
Automated, but not intelligent
Piggy-backing off of single channel solutions like ESPs, marketing automation promises to streamline a marketer’s day to day by mapping out the customer journey and executing upon that plan, hands-off. But if your marketing automation platform is being fed siloed data, how is it supposed to execute a true cross channel journey? Additionally, basic automation systems also require that data scientists pull lists for marketers, which becomes a time drag, and often offers little to no intelligence feedback. So, marketers have an easier job of scheduling messaging but have no control over customer data, list building, and intelligent predictions.
My data is finally in one place… now what?
The last solution that has been promoted as a bandaid for data-powered marketing is the Customer Data Platform. This platform promises to unify siloed data systems into one unified customer view, eliminating the need for additional engineering support and resources. But, no immediate actions can be taken without the aid of other platforms. Traditional CDPs, fundamentally, cannot stand alone. CDPs need additional marketing automation to function.
CDPs, ESPs, and marketing automation may fail on their own. But a well constructed stack that uses a combination of these three platforms will transform your business. A solid foundation is laid by the CDP, AI-powered marketing automation gives it action, and finally, a channel app delivers that action.
Our Customer Data Activation Platform is bridging the gap to seamlessly execute all three of these components. Want to see it in action? Contact our team.
