A CDP Council is necessary to harness the full potential of your Customer Data Platform. This council can significantly mitigate risks, enhance data quality, and align CDP utilization with overarching business goals.
Customer Data Platforms (CDP) are a team sport.
Every team within an organization contributes to its success and every stakeholder derives value from it. For example, well-managed CDPs can:
Save engineers time and effort
Help marketers send more personalized content
Encourage product managers to build better products with an optimized user experience
Fuel sales & support teams with insights and growth opportunities
Ensure data scientists influence business strategies with stronger, more accurate data
While many teams can benefit from a CDP, the success of a CDP implementation is not solely dependent on the technology itself, but also on how it is adopted and used within the company.
Establishing governance early on can help overcome challenges as you scale adoption across your company. Breaking down organizational silos, which often create inconsistent and duplicative data, is critical to achieving the transformational benefits of everyone using the same high quality, reliable customer data.
In addition to data silos, complexity grows exponentially as more teams get involved with your CDP. The more users you have, the more data quality and consistency varies when customer data is aggregated.
Consider the 10/90 rule, coined by Avinash Kaushik. It explains that for every $10 you spend on technology, you should be spending $90 on the people and processes to ensure that technology is actually successful.
One proven strategy to ensure the widespread adoption and optimal use of a CDP is the formation of a CDP Council.
Teams that are willing to invest the time into active management of their CDP can ensure they are working with higher quality data, establish guidelines to better tackle business challenges, and see more consistent business alignment.
In this blog, we will share the value of a CDP Council and how to set one up, including different sub-committees to consider.
A CDP Council serves as a governing body or “board of directors” that oversees the implementation, management, and use of a CDP within an organization. It ensures the CDP strategy aligns with the company's overall business objectives and data governance policies.
Without these checks and balances, your company leaves value on the table by not scaling the use of clean, consistent customer data, and adds on adoption risk.
Imagine a company where data engineers work off of “dirty data” because there is duplicate information or typos. Their findings would be untrustworthy to the rest of the organization. Add in a marketing team who sends emails to customers off of this bad data, inviting a customer in Columbia, Missouri to an event in Bogota. Customers would lose trust in the company.
The CDP Council can reduce those risks because they facilitate cross-departmental collaboration, and ensure that all stakeholders have a voice in how the CDP is used and evolves over time. This collaborative approach helps in maximizing the return on investment from the CDP by ensuring it meets the diverse needs of the organization.
Implementing a CDP encourages stakeholders to think of the entire customer journey by breaking down organizational and data silos, and provides an opportunity for knowledge sharing across business units.
To manage and leverage a CDP effectively, a CDP Council should consist of a core group along with several sub-committees, each focusing on a specific aspect of CDP utilization.
Since the full CDP Council develops and evolves specific governance models for different aspects of the CDP program, we have four areas we recommend setting up as sub-committees:
Data committee
Engagement committee
Audit committee
CDP Value committee
Each sub-committee should be composed of different team members, and they all have distinct goals. Below is a diagram of the typical CDP Council and sub-committee stakeholder composition.
The data committee focuses on the management, quality, and governance of customer data within the CDP and is often chaired by data engineering teams. It ensures that data is accurate, consistent, and collected in compliance with privacy laws and regulations.
Responsibilities:
Oversee the collection, storage, and processing of customer data to ensure quality and accuracy.
Develop and enforce data governance policies and standards.
Ensure compliance with data privacy laws (ex. GDPR, CCPA) and ethical data use.
Facilitate data integration and interoperability across different systems and platforms.
Address data-related issues and discrepancies.
Provide a centralized event framework to the individual business units
Approve the Events that will be added/removed/updated to specific BU tracking for business validation.
Manage shared libraries and tracking plans, and vet and approve new data requests.
Example: A retail company
In a large retail company, the data committee oversees the integration of customer data from various sources, including both online and in-store purchases, and loyalty programs. This committee ensures that all customer data is accurately captured, deduplicated, and stored securely in compliance with data protection regulations. They work closely with IT to implement data quality tools that automatically clean and standardize data as it enters the CDP. This committee plays a crucial role in enabling a unified view of the customer, which supports personalized marketing and improves customer experience.
Tip: The data committee would benefit from the Segment product Connections, which allows the collection of data from various sources and sending it to multiple destinations, ensuring comprehensive data coverage. Protocols & Tracking Plans help the data committee define & manage related tracking plans to help with standardization and transformations when data is coming into Segment.
The engagement committee is responsible for understanding the various customer groups that interact with the organization. Usually chaired by Marketing, this committee leverages data insights to create targeted audiences for personalized marketing and engagement strategies. This committee also considers the way marketers personalize experiences with the right campaigns and messages.
As they define and enforce audience-related standards, the engagement committee provides a natural forum for information exchange across the organization, including shared audiences, platform improvements, and key actions.
Responsibilities:
Develop and maintain audience creation standards, naming conventions, separation of audiences across different platforms & onboarding guides.
Manage shared audiences and vet and approve new folder requests.
Define the audience naming and organization framework, providing centralized guidance to individual audience teams, and approving audiences to be added/removed/updated to specific BU tracking for validation.
Collaborate across marketing and sales teams to understand their audience needs and preferences.
Monitor and evaluate the performance of different audience segments in marketing campaigns.
Provide recommendations for audience engagement and personalization strategies.
Ensure that audience segmentation respects customer privacy and preferences.
Example: A streaming service provider
For a streaming service provider, the engagement committee divides the vast user base into distinct groups based on viewing habits, subscription levels, and content preferences. By analyzing data within the CDP, this committee identifies key audiences, such as "binge watchers," "weekend viewers," and "Saturday sports fans." These insights allow the marketing team to tailor content recommendations and promotional offers, significantly enhancing user engagement and retention rates.
Tip: The engagement committee will like Twilio Engage because it enables the creation of dynamic segmentation based on customer data, facilitating personalized engagement across marketing channels.
The audit committee plays a critical role in ensuring the integrity, security, and compliance of the CDP operations. Often chaired by engineering or analytics, it conducts regular audits to assess the effectiveness of data management practices and compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.
Responsibilities:
Conduct regular audits of data management practices, security measures, and compliance with regulations.
Identify risks and vulnerabilities within the CDP ecosystem and recommend corrective actions.
Review and assess the effectiveness of data security policies and procedures.
Ensure that audit findings are documented and communicated to relevant stakeholders.
Monitor the implementation of audit recommendations to improve CDP operations.
Example: A bank
Within the bank, the audit committee conducts regular audits on the CDP to ensure compliance with financial regulations and data privacy laws. This includes verifying that customer data is collected with consent, used ethically, and stored securely. The committee also reviews access controls and data sharing practices to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches. Their work is critical in maintaining customer trust and avoiding regulatory fines.
Tip: Protocols would be a great fit for the audit committee as it plays a crucial role in data governance by making sure that the data collected is compliant with predefined standards and formats, aiding in compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. The audit committee monitors Protocols violations and makes recommendations to update tracking plans.
The CDP value committee is tasked with maximizing the return on investment (ROI) of the CDP by identifying and implementing strategies that enhance its value to the organization. Often, this committee is led by the primary funding group with inputs from other stakeholders and it establishes the CDP policies for data retention, suppression, deletion, ID resolution, access management, and more.
Responsibilities:
Establish a set of metrics to measure: CDP-driven revenue, CDP-driven cost savings & CDP-enabled functionality/innovation.
Evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the CDP in achieving business objectives.
Identify opportunities to leverage the CDP for new use cases and business initiatives.
Monitor industry trends and best practices to recommend enhancements to the CDP strategy.
Collaborate with different departments to understand their needs and how the CDP can support them.
Measure and report on the ROI of the CDP to stakeholders.
Oversee platform improvements including beta participation, annual planning, and more.
Coordinates platform training for different stakeholders and roles, and develops and reports on program ROI.
Example: An e-commerce platform
An e-commerce platform relies on its CDP value committee to review the performance of personalized marketing campaigns, product recommendation engines, and customer service initiatives driven by CDP insights. They identify successful strategies that increase sales and customer satisfaction, as well as areas where the CDP could be better leveraged, such as inventory management and predictive analytics for demand forecasting. The committee's findings guide strategic decisions on further CDP utilization and investments.
Tip: The CDP value committee would derive value from Journey Analytics. It provides insights into customer journeys, helping to measure the impact of various touchpoints and the overall effectiveness of the CDP in driving conversions and engagement.
Given the dynamic nature of customer data management, we recommend that the committees meet on a regular basis to ensure alignment, address emerging challenges, and capitalize on new opportunities.
The full CDP Council, including members from the data, audience, audit, and CDP value committees, should meet annually to establish goals & objectives, strategic planning, and realize the benefits.
Additionally, quarterly joint sessions involving representatives from all committees should be held to ensure cross-functional alignment, share insights, and collaboratively assess the overall impact of the CDP on the organization's goals.
A monthly meeting schedule is recommended for each committee to review progress, discuss new data insights, and adjust strategies as necessary.
Note that the audit committee might benefit from a slightly more frequent cadence, such as bi-monthly, to stay ahead of ever-changing compliance regulations and data governance standards.
And consider the teams meeting daily/weekly to discuss operational activity by individual stakeholder teams.
This structured yet flexible approach allows for timely adjustments to strategies, ensuring the organization remains agile and responsive to both internal and external changes.
The establishment of a CDP Council within your organization is not just a strategic move—it's a necessary step towards harnessing the full potential of your Customer Data Platform.
By encouraging cross-departmental collaboration and ensuring that data maintenance is a shared responsibility, a CDP Council can significantly mitigate risks, enhance data quality, and align CDP utilization with overarching business goals.
By relying on committees within the council, you not only maximize the return on your CDP investment but also position your business to deliver personalized customer experiences at scale, driving growth and maintaining competitive edge.
If you want to learn more, talk with your Account team or check out the Segment Professional Services offerings.
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