Unlocking Growth with Optimizely ODP: The Power of Real-Time Data and Personalization

Data is the key to business growth in the modern era, helping brands better understand customers, drive more effective marketing strategies, and enhance digital experiences. But simply collecting customer data isn’t enough. Today’s brands must glean insights from massive data sets across disparate sources — a challenge for even the most savvy marketers.

That’s where customer data platforms (CDP) like Optimizely’s ODP come into play. With a projected CAGR of nearly 40% over the next four years, CDPs give brands a unified customer view, enhanced real-time personalization opportunities, and opportunities for product innovation and better customer experiences.

With Optimizely data platform (ODP), marketers can unify data, create data-backed segments, and build automated, personalized customer experiences across multiple channels. Here we’ll dive into the tool’s advantages, challenges, and best practices to help marketers make the most of ODP.

Harnessing ODP’s seamless integration and unified data

Perhaps ODP’s greatest strength lies in its seamless integration within the Optimizely ecosystem. If you’re already using Optimizely tools for content management, feature experimentation, personalization, and more, it makes sense to use ODP to create more targeted customer experiences.

But ODP’s value isn’t limited to its compatibility. It also stands out for its ability to collect, unify, and activate data across multiple channels, making it easy to get a holistic view of customer behavior.

ODP goes beyond capturing transactional customer data. It tracks behavior to highlight what customers are browsing, clicking, and engaging with across websites, apps, and other digital touchpoints.

For instance, ODP can ingest sales data from Salesforce, behavioral data from a website, and advertising metrics — and then synthesize all of this data into actionable customer profiles. From there, customer profiles can be segmented into groups based on shared characteristics or behaviors, enabling you to deliver highly personalized campaigns in just a few clicks.

Ultimately, ODP’s magic comes from its capacity to transform disparate data into actionable insights. Rather than relying on hunches or guessing games, you can leverage ODP to observe patterns, segment customers, and deliver tailored content that fosters meaningful engagement.

How ODP delivers instant, relevant content

ODP makes real-time personalization possible for any brand. Let’s say someone is searching for hotels in San Francisco, and we know from their site behavior they are traveling with children. ODP captures their web activity in real-time, processing the data instantly and categorizing the user into relevant segments. When personalization leveraging your real-time segments is set up, your website can immediately display San Francisco-specific offers or highlight family-friendly features of the hotels.

This dynamic, event-driven approach drives engagement and conversions. It ensures customers get relevant, tailored content that meets their immediate needs.

Stitching together customer data for smarter, cohesive interactions

Thanks to ODP’s omnichannel capabilities, you can stitch together data from various sources to create an invaluable, unified profile for every customer. Every interaction is connected, from point-of-sale systems and mobile apps to websites and chatbot conversations.

For example, a prospective customer might browse your website on their laptop without making a purchase, and later complete their purchase from their mobile device. This customer’s browsing behavior is tracked in the first session, and ODP can then unify this data with the customer’s email address and their purchase information from the second session, giving us a robust understanding of the customer across sessions and devices.

Likewise, a customer might call your travel company to get help with a large online purchase, but decide to continue browsing on their own. The information gathered from that call (such as their destination of interest, budget, and timing for the trip) can be integrated from the customer service software to ODP so the customer sees relevant personalized recommendations when they come back to your website.

In any circumstance, the result leads to consistent, seamless, and personalized experiences like never before.

Using predictive analytics to drive conversions

AI and machine learning supercharge ODP, allowing you to transform workflows and predict customer behavior based on historical patterns. Case in point: If a customer repeatedly abandons their online cart after adding products, ODP can predict the likelihood of future purchases. You can use that data to give the customer tailored discounts or incentives, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

You can also define specific metrics, like churn or page visits, and feed the necessary data into ODP. Here’s an example of why this feature is so valuable: if you want to target families, you need to identify customers who have children — a data point that must be collected through purchase history, booking searches, or external sources. By reverse-engineering the end goal, you can determine what data is critical for success.

Overcoming common challenges with ODP implementation

Achieving success with ODP requires you to have clear goals, high-quality data, and a commitment to continuous improvement.

Here are some common ODP challenges and solutions:

1. Conflating data lakes with CDPs: A data lake stores raw data and is great for historical analysis and research. But it’s no replacement for ODP, which connects data, creates unified customer profiles, and provides real-time, actionable insights.

2. Overloading data: Many organizations collect excessive data without a clear strategy, which creates confusion and clouds insights. Instead, remember that ODP is most effective when data collection is aligned with specific personalization goals.

3. Data quality issues: Poor-quality data leads to flawed customer profiles and inaccurate insights. Make sure data is clean and well-structured so ODP can stitch together customer profiles with accuracy and consistency. Think of ODP as a vast spreadsheet where each field (or column) represents a data point. Proper naming conventions bring clarity, making it easier to identify and filter data, analyze information, and get precise segmentation.

4. Compliance: A Salesforce survey found that 88% of consumers trust companies more when they ask permission before sharing personal information, meaning data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA aren’t just required – they’re a customer expectation. While ODP supports compliance, you still need to set clear boundaries and policies for data collection and usage.

Getting started with ODP

ODP holds the power to transform and optimize your marketing approach, yet success hinges on your initial strategy.

Here are some other best practices to maximize the benefits of ODP:

1. Define goals and data points: Start by identifying your desired outcomes, along with the data points you’ll need to achieve them. If you want to personalize for families, make sure you’re collecting relevant data such as age or family status.

2. Segment customers: Group customers into actionable segments based on shared behaviors or characteristics.

3. Integrate data sources: Integrate relevant systems and channels with ODP, such as CRM platforms, e-commerce websites, and mobile apps. Make sure data flows stay in line with your ultimate goals.

4. Monitor and optimize: Personalization is an ongoing process. Regularly analyze performance, experiment with new tactics, and refine your approach.

Partner with Rightpoint for ODP success

Optimizely ODP empowers you to deliver personalized, data-driven marketing at scale. From real-time personalization to predictive analytics, it gives you the tools to transform raw data into meaningful customer experiences. But strategically integrating ODP into your existing marketing strategy is often easier said than done.

Need help unlocking ODP’s full potential? Get in touch with Rightpoint today. Our team of experts can identify your most valuable data points, structure your data, and recommend real-time segments to get started on your personalization journey to ensure you’re getting maximum ROI from ODP.