A lot of marketers wrestle with figuring out what the right customer data set is when considering using a data
management platform. It can feel like a big sea between talking about “big data” and actually doing it. It’s a big question, full of particulars, ‘What data can I use and what can I do with it once I’ve selected a data management platform?’ The answer is just as big: [almost] everything.
It might seem excessive. Your company may have 6 years of online transactions and demographic data right down to lawn size. But the truth is: if it’s been important enough for your business to keep, it’s important enough to load it into your DMP. The last thing you want is to find yourself 6 months from now, having dreamt up the coolest campaign to date, but having to sit on your hands till your data team can get a data update over to your DMP.


The decision to load all your customer data – for both known and anonymous customers – into your DMP from the outset will make things easier down the line as your marketing efforts grow. A good DMP will be able to ma→intain, normalize, and grow all of this current and historical customer data and prepare it for actionable campaigns. A great DMP will make good use of your anonymous customer data by converting it to known customer data, providing a longer, richer data set on these customers and insights on how to find more like them.
Truly, there are only two types of customer data that should not be included in your DMP: extremely sensitive data and customer data that’s known to be bad, as in invalid. On the extremely sensitive side, we have data such as SSN and credit card numbers – these items won’t be used for segmentation and can increase your risks by creating another copy of them. Invalid data could be email addresses that have had a few bounces and are known to be bad. Everything else is fair game.
The uses of this data are beyond one or two dozen blog posts, as the short answer is: whatever you can think up. Anonymous data can be used for modeling your best customers. Email addresses can be leveraged in numerous ways on Facebook now. Current customers could be targeted with a combination of display banners and emails for upgrades or ancillary products. The list goes on and on…
Logically, this approach is fairly obvious. Part of the point of a DMP is to have all of your data available at your fingertips for segmentation and targeting. As long as the data is good (which a DMP can help verify), your best bet is to load it and make sure it’s available for the future. Only time will tell what the right use is for your business, and having it available immediately ensures you don’t miss a single opportunity.