This chapter covers
- Core technology capabilities for first-party data platforms
- Comparing the major marketing technology solutions by category
- Considerations and recommendations based on recent marketing technology offerings
Marketing technology is no longer just a department; it’s the foundation for how businesses grow.
—Scott Brinker, “Godfather of Martech” and VP of Platform Ecosystems at Hubspot
Many of you reading this book may face a confusing set of options and time pressures to find the right first-party data solution for your organization. According to the CDP Institute (a vendor-neutral organization dedicated to helping companies manage customer data) in their 2024 member survey, “The industry faces old challenges in deploying customer data systems.” With statements like that, it’s natural to feel intimidated when parsing the myriad options. After all, “everyone says they do everything, but they don’t or don’t do it well,” as a marketer at a large accounting software firm stated as they navigated first-party data solutions.
This chapter aims to demystify first-party data solutions and focus on what matters most: how you and your team can use your organization’s strengths to prioritize and map capabilities to the right set of use cases. We aim to explain concepts like customer data platform (CDP), composable, and activation and use the learnings of others to avoid the most common pitfalls.