Posts by James Meyers
Why Your CDP Vendor Must Bring Change Management Expertise
Prior to joining ActionIQ, I served as an analyst at a well-known industry research firm. I was privileged to advise over 200 clients on their CDP initiatives. On numerous occasions, I received a phone call that went something like this: Senior marketing executive at major brand: “We bought a CDP.” Me: “How’s it going?” Marketing…
Read MoreFour Takeaways From McKinsey’s Jason Heller on Achieving Personalization at Scale
In his keynote at ActionIQ’s inaugural DynamIQ Exchange conference in New York City, Jason Heller, partner and global lead of digital marketing operations at McKinsey, made a powerful case for personalization at scale and customer data platforms (CDPs) as the core solution to achieve it. The potential market value of personalization is huge, with $1.7-3…
Read MoreCDPs: A Cure for the Holiday Blues
Ah, the holidays! For marketers, it is the most stressful time of the year. As a former industry analyst, I advised hundreds of marketing organizations and realized how many of them feel overwhelmed at prepping for the tsunami of holiday demand. It only makes sense. The stakes are high since holiday results can make or…
Read MoreHow Acquia’s Acquisition of AgilOne Fits into the Future of CDPs
What does the acquisition mean? Another week, another acquisition in the CDP space. This time it’s AgilOne, which was acquired by Acquia, a company providing enterprise services and support around Drupal, an open-source CMS. Acquia itself was a recent acquisition by private equity (PE) firm, Vista Equity, back in September. Acquia has always had a…
Read MoreCDP Planning: Eight Tips to Assist Successful Outcomes
CDPs Solve Marketers’ Number One Issue With Existing Technology According to industry research, the most challenging barrier to marketing technology success is the need to integrate disparate systems. CDPs—and their prebuilt data connectors to hundreds of data systems—solve that need in a unique way. They render a single customer view including all historical interactions, along…
Read MoreWhat You Need to Know About the Salesforce CDP After Dreamforce ‘19
Marketers were on the edge of their seat this past Wednesday when Salesforce announced their customer data platform at Dreamforce ‘19 called Customer 360 Audiences. So how did it fare against expectations? Here’s a recap of what Salesforce promised along with ActionIQ’s take on the probable realities. What Salesforce Promised: CDP Vision “It’s the beating…
Read MoreFive Questions to Ask Salesforce as They Reveal a CDP Offering at Dreamforce 19
When Salesforce kicks off its annual Dreamforce conference on November 19, you can expect to hear lots of publicity about its plans for a customer data platform (CDP). After all, Adam Blitzer, the new CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (MC), called the CDP offering “the key pillar” of their MC solution. From predictive analytics to…
Read MoreSix Principles to Anchor Your Martech Stack Strategy
There’s No Such Thing As A Perfect Martech Stack Across All Brands, But… There is a perfect Martech stack for your organization alone. More specifically, your organization’s marketing maturity, technical maturity, personalization goals, and industry all play differentiating factors contributing to your organization’s ideal, ‘moment-in-time’ stack. Six Core Principles To Guide Your Martech Stack…
Read MoreMost CDP FAQ Answers Are Too Basic—We Bring Clarity to a Complex Space
In our experience, many CDP FAQ answers are too basic, especially given the complexities that CDPs are designed to solve. We believe you should be able to make a fully informed choice and have created FAQs that support accurate decisions. Guiding our CDP FAQ answers are these three principles: Detailed. FAQs are meant to be…
Read MoreHow Marketers Should Assess Marketing Clouds’ Upcoming Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)
It’s a fascinating time for data-driven marketing. Vendors have been heads-down, releasing ever-valuable features towards personalization, and marketing cloud vendors are revealing their much-anticipated customer data platforms (CDPs). Christmas may be coming early. There’s one problem though. If there’s anything bystanders observe about the CDP industry, it’s that building a CDP from scratch takes an…
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