CDP Series Part 2 -
Deep Dive into CDPs: Exploring Acquia, Optimizely, and Sitecore Solutions
In Part 1 of our series, we explored the basics of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), their benefits, and an overview of different types and vendors. In this second part, we will take a look at the CDP solutions offered by Acquia, Optimizely, and Sitecore. DXP vendors have previously acquired these CDP solutions to broaden their capabilities and fit within their overall product strategies.
Acquia CDP
Acquia CDP stands out for its comprehensive approach to understanding the full journey of a customer across multiple channels. Acquia’s rule-based approach for segmentation is intuitive and it’s easy to select data and attributes to send to outbound engagement channels. The platform’s use of transaction details for targeting purposes provides a deeper understanding of customers at a macro level. The platform is marketer friendly but also allows data scientists to delve deeper using SQL.
Beyond the rule-based approach, marketers can leverage machine learning models, such as propensity models to predict the likelihood of a customer making a purchase, clustering models for grouping customers, and predictive models. Campaign scheduling is straightforward with models continuously learning to improve performance. The seamless access to their Personalize and Campaign Factory tools from the same UI is a major plus for users.
Acquia CDP boasts extensive API support and pre-built data connectors for integration, making it an option to connect to a range of CMS and commerce solutions including WordPress, AEM, Contentful, Commercetools, and BigCommerce, among others. It can leverage existing data warehouses for enhanced data storage and processing, making it versatile in different data environments. It is a cloud-based solution hosted on AWS. Acquia CDP utilizes machine learning models for predictive analytics, including customer behavior predictions and propensity modeling.
Contact Us for a Complimentary One hour Consultation
If you’re interested in learning more about how CDPs and DXPs can fuel your growth, we’re here to help. Schedule your consultation today!
Optimizely Data Platform (ODP)
Optimizely Data Platform (ODP) offers a powerful solution for managing customer and product data. It excels in unifying data from various touchpoints, with real-time data processing ensuring up-to-date customer profiles. This capability allows businesses to understand customer preferences as well as optimize product offerings effectively.
What stood out about Optimizely Data Platform is its seamless integration and flexibility in handling diverse data types. The one-click integrations with Optimizely Connect Platform (OCP) are impressive, enabling seamless connections with systems like their Commerce Cloud to immediately bring in order history and other data. The schema structure is easy to use, allowing the extension of objects and fields effortlessly.
The breakdown of profiles versus reachable profiles and the view across channels is useful for marketers. Building segments and activating them across channels such as ad platforms and email platforms is fairly trivial. The platform’s natural language interface for creating segments is marketer-friendly, instilling confidence in the users when they are creating and activating segments. The easy synchronization of data to outbound channels and the simple creation of campaigns, whether one-time, behavioral, or web-based, makes it very user friendly. Furthermore, while using GraphQL to query data maybe be less marketer-friendly, it is a powerful feature for developers seeking to to deliver highly personalized experiences.
Optimizely Data Platform activates data in various ways including through omnichannel campaigns, and data-science-backed recommendations. These capabilities ensure a cohesive customer experience and personalized interactions based on data insights.
The platform’s one-click integrations with the OCP simplify the connection with all the leading non-Optimizely CMS and commerce solutions. It’s a cloud-based solution hosted on Azure. Machine learning capabilities in Optimizely Data Platform include predictive analytics for customer behavior predictions and advanced personalization algorithms.
Sitecore CDP
Sitecore CDP positions itself in the market as a smart hub by integrating its decisioning engine to deliver personalized experiences. This discussion focuses on the CDP aspects from the Boxever acquisition, while noting that Sitecore Personalize handles decisioning and AI, testing and optimization, and personalization. It’s important to note that Sitecore CDP and Personalize are separately licensed products.
Sitecore CDP stands out for its seamless data ingestion through various APIs, including Stream and Batch. The Batch API is ideal for one-time data loads, such as when initializing a new CDP instance or adding an integration point to import historical data. The Stream API captures real-time events like searches and product or page views. There’s another REST API that provides CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations for data management. For integrations like a CMS, Sitecore CDP integrates via a Javascript library, requiring configuration like a client key, Stream API target endpoint, and point of sale name.
The platform’s dashboard reports for customer analytics are impressive, particularly the summary and segment reports. While core CDP functions include data collection, profile unification, segmentation, analytics, and activation, Personalize utilizes this data for real-time decisioning and delivering personalized experiences. The decision capabilities, where logic is defined in a decision table or graph, are advanced and can incorporate machine learning recommenders.
Sitecore CDP distinguishes itself with its robust decisioning capabilities and extension API integration. The platform supports real-time data collection and processing to ensure timely and accurate customer profiles. It integrates with multiple CMS and commerce products, including non-Sitecore platforms. Sitecore CDP’s flexibility allows it to integration with other personalization and experimentation tools, fitting into their composable strategy. Sitecore CDP is a cloud-based solution hosted on AWS. The platform’s machine learning capabilities include predictive analytics and customer behavior modeling, with advanced algorithms for real-time personalization and decisioning.
An important point for healthcare organizations is that Sitecore CDP and Personalize will be HIPPA compliant in the coming months.
Conclusion
There are many CDP vendors out there, including some best-of-breed solutions like Tealium and Treasure Data, as discussed in our CDP Series Part 1. In this post, we’ve focused on DXP-based CDP solutions from Acquia, Optimizely, and Sitecore, providing a high-level view of some of the functionalities and differentiators present in these solutions.
Choosing the right CDP solution depends on many factors including your business needs and the level of integration required with your existing systems and customer data infrastructure. Check out our post on Selecting the Right Technology to learn more about our evaluation methodology.
How DXP Catalyst Consulting Can Help
At DXP Catalyst Consulting, we offer comprehensive CDP assessments and recommendations tailored to your business needs. Our services include evaluating your current customer data infrastructure, recommending the best CDP solutions, and providing detailed solution architecture and roadmaps.
Our expertise extends beyond CDP itself. We provide strategic guidance across the broader Acquia, Optimizely, and Sitecore product ecosystems. Our holistic approach to strategy & roadmapping helps you make the most of your digital investments, whether it’s integrating with existing systems, enhancing personalization strategies, or adopting new technologies for improved customer engagement.
Interested in learning more? Click here to schedule a free consultation.