Сustomer experience is one of the main areas of competition in most markets today. Providing a superior CX is the key to success and staying ahead of the competition. But to do this effectively, businesses need to understand their customers better than ever before. In a data-driven world, relying on subjective perceptions of your clients is no longer a way to make any kind of decision. However, there is so much data available from a variety of sources that it can be difficult to get meaningful information. This is where Optimizely’s Data Platform comes in, giving companies the tools they need to harness the power of customer data and turn it into a competitive advantage. Using ODP, companies can create a single resource to store their data, analyze it, make forecasts, and conduct data-driven decisions.
What is an Optimizely’s Data Platform?
Optimizely Data Platform or ODP is a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that enables businesses to collect, manage, and activate their customer data across all channels and touchpoints.
The platform is designed to create a complete and accurate view of customers by consolidating data from online and offline interactions, customer relationship management systems, and third-party data providers.
ODP harmonizes customer data, which leads to a deeper understanding of clients’ behaviors in real time. It helps marketing and service teams accelerate customer revenue and loyalty through highly personalized, multichannel campaigns that meet customer expectations.
Want to learn more about Optimizely DXP? Check out our comprehensive overview of the Optimizely product suit and its capabilities: What is Optimizely and Why Do You Need It?
The tool leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to derive insights from customer data. AI algorithms can be used to identify patterns that may not be immediately apparent to human analysts. In addition, ODP can make predictions about customer behavior, such as which products they are most likely to purchase or which marketing channels they are most responsive to.
ODP is designed to be used in conjunction with other Optimizely products, such as Optimizely Web Experimentation and Optimizely Personalization. Data collected and consolidated within ODP can be used to inform web experiments and personalization campaigns.
Features of the Optimizely Data Platform
- Activation – ODP makes it much easier to create and manage omnichannel campaigns relevant to your customers at every touch point in your marketing, commerce, and service channels.
- Segmentation – leverage deep customer insights and predictive recommendations in your segmentation process. ODP provides businesses with proactive suggestions based on the data analysis model built into the platform and tuned to your specific business needs.
- Unify profiles – unify your shoppers’ data across different channels into one actionable customer profile.
- Predict customer behavior – create relevant messaging that is directly connected to your campaigns by anticipating the real-time intent of each customer.
- Uncover hidden opportunities – just understanding what is currently working is not enough; businesses require insight into the future to stay ahead of the competition. Identify promising opportunities that can enhance key metrics, boost revenue, and enable flexibility to deliver relevant and personalized experiences that delight customers.
The ODP Data Structure Explained
The core of ODP is Customers. Every customer has a record of Events that they have performed over time. Every event is classified by an Event Type (such as order, product, email) and Event Action (such as purchase, view, or open). Additional metadata is stored in Fields (such as, product_id).
Tracking the Types of Events
- Account events – Track your users actions for login, logout, registering, and updating.
- Pageview events – Track which pages your users visit and how long they stay there.
- Navigation events – Track what your users search for, and how they sort and filter results.
- Product events – Track actions related to your products – what your users add and remove from carts, what they list to wishlists and favorites, and for which product they explore details.
- Order events – Track purchases, refunds, and returns.
How does the Optimizely Data Platform work?
There are four concurrent processes included in the ODP or any other CDP tool.
1. Data Collection
The collection of the data is the key.
Customer data comes from all types of sources these days. Including your own privately owned channels (landing pages, social profiles, etc.). And contracted, third-party channels (open data, reports you purchased, etc.).
CDPs collect customer data from almost any program you use. Including email campaigns, payment systems, support tools, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
2. Data Governance
It is critical to optimize your data collection.
CDP tools help ensure that the data you collect is legal using common, open-source, and proprietary data standards.
You can set and create quality rules to block access to data that does not meet your standards. CDPs can correct and transform data that has been misnamed or misclassified.
The platform can also be configured to restrict access to certain data based on customer privacy rules.
Managing and evaluating the quality of collected data ensures that your team is making intelligent decisions based on the most accurate information.
3. Data Synthesis
CDP segments customer data into groups for easy access and evaluation by everyone in your company. Customer segmentation allows you to create and update customer profiles based on real-time data.
CDP always synthesizes data. It can identify existing customers in anonymous profiles by looking for different purchase patterns. The anonymous data can then be easily integrated with existing customer data, creating a more complete customer profile. This feature provides insight into lead generation and re-targeting.
4. Data Activation and Access
You will get the best of your CDP only when it is established as the central hub for all of your company’s customer-related software. This requires the CDP to connect to all software involved with customer communication, sales, and analysis, such as:
- CRMs
- Social media accounts
- Email campaigns
- Website and landing pages
- Online ad campaigns
- SMS and MMS
- Surveys
- Data analysis and visualization tools
The goal of a CDP is to organize all your data on one platform. Making it accessible to employees working on different teams and using different types of software.
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How Do You Integrate Data Between Multi-Channels and the ODP?
In the ODP application catalog, you can find many built-in options for integration with CRM systems, email services, SMS services, social media channels, trading systems, etc.
However, if you want to add another one, you can create your own integration. And then publish it to the ODP Application Catalog through the Optimizely Connect platform.
The Optimizely Connect Platform (OCP) allows partners to create powerful, easy-to-configure integrations that empower marketers by connecting services across their organization and consolidating their data into the ODP.
Integrating data to create customer insights and channels to deliver services requires many common tasks, such as:
- Data conversions
- Control schemes
- Pulling historical data
- Processing changes in real-time
- Security
- Dealing with failures
The Optimizely Connect Platform (OCP) is designed to handle all of these common tasks. And even host the code and infrastructure needed to accomplish them. You focus on your data and use cases, and the OCP will take care of the rest.
What Can You Do with Retrieved Customer Data via ODP’s GraphQL API?
ODP provides a strong GraphQL API to query customer data and all relevant information such as events, orders, products, customer observations and insights, product observations and insights, and more.
You can easily utilize that data for your business when needed, for example:
- Use ODP user segments as visitor groups in Optimizely CMS/E-Commerce for content personalization.
- Leverage ODP customer insights to display recommendations in Optimizely CMS/E-Commerce websites such as article recommendations, and product recommendations.
- Use ODP product insights to display upsell/cross-sell products on e-commerce websites.
Are You Ready to Put Your Customer Data into Action?
As an Optimizely Bronze Implementation partner, we at First Line Software are very experienced with the capabilities of Optimizely’s full suite of products.
We love to leverage our expertise in CMS, DXP, and E-commerce projects for our clients to help them build outstanding digital businesses and achieve their goals.
If you want to understand how the Optimizely Data Platform can suit your business environment and take your customer experience to the next level – talk to our experts. The first consultation is free and aimed to help you understand if you’re ready to go further with new tools and technologies.
Follow the First Line Software page on LinkedIn to get more information on Optimizely products, Web, and Application Development, and innovative technologies to help you stay ahead of the competition.
Binh Nguyen
Optimizely Developer at First Line Software
Binh is an expert in EpiServer/Optimizely framework passionate in programming in a wide range of frameworks, enjoing challenges, willing to learn new things and improve herself day by day. Working in a lot of ecommerce projects from small to big scope, Binh has experience in improving performance for big ecommerce system based on .NET stacks and using EpiServer/Optimizely to build them up. Binh runs her blog on Optimizely and participates in the OMVP (Optimizely Most Valuable Professionals) Program.
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