Acquia Customer Data Platform Delivers 589% ROI Says Forrester Total Economic Impact Study

You’ve likely heard the hype around customer data platforms (CDPs) and their ability to help businesses activate their customer data and better understand how to connect with their audiences. A CDP is often seen as a major commitment in terms of implementation costs and deployment; however the opportunities and value they generate are well worth the initial investment. But how do you know the true value a CDP will bring to your business? 

To help provide a framework for the benefits, risks and long-term results of investing in a CDP, we recently commissioned a Forrester Consulting study on “The Total Economic Impact Of Acquia CDP.” The research presented in the report is based on four in-depth interviews with current Acquia Customer Data Platform customers across multiple industries. In total, Forrester anticipated that these long-time CDP customers have seen an average of 589% ROI within a three-year span, with certain industries also displaying as much as 897% ROI from using Acquia CDP. We wanted to dive deeper into the results to demonstrate how businesses use CDPs to boost revenue and maximize customer lifetime value.

Improved Acquisition Rates and Increased Business Agility Powered by Machine Learning

Data is at the center of all business functions today, serving as the axel around which all customer experiences and interactions revolve. Without the ability to access this data and develop insights in real time, companies find themselves locked out from potential growth opportunities. 

Since a CDP standardizes data across multiple business functions, many actors must be considered with evaluating the true impact of a CDP. Rather than just reporting data, the predictive analytics and machine learning tools in Acquia CDP help organizations guide their future business direction and more confidently anticipate long-term outcomes. As one interviewed customer reported, “Acquia CDP enabled data accuracy, flexibility and resulted in more effective ad personalization. Targeted campaigns resulted in higher customer acquisitions, improved customer loyalty and retention.” The results speak for themselves. 

With data-driven insights, businesses can more frequently identify customers with higher lifetime values and target ads to the most appropriate customer segment, resulting in a 15% year-over-year increase in new customers. For customer service representatives, having real-time visibility into customer profiles, including data on things like region, product affinities and loyalty members, meant that call centers could provide more personalized customer communications. After implementing Acquia CDP, the combined improvements in sales conversion rates resulted in $306,906 in benefits over three years. 

Using the machine learning models and ML-generated recommendations within Acquia CDP to populate call center scripts and pull up relevant information on customers, representatives were also able to offer more personalized product suggestions for each customer, increasing things like the likelihood to purchase and overall conversions. Auto-populating these call scripts with customer data and making that data available on dashboards allowed these customer interactions to be resolved in less time with less frustration. When compiling the results from the four organizations surveyed in the report, Forrester analysts found that “real-time reporting, accurate analytics and efficiency gains from Acquia CDP, result[ed] in $786,941 in benefits over three years.” 

More Effective Email Campaigns and Ad Targeting Boosts Customer Loyalty and Retention 

By using Acquia CDP to create a single 360-degree view of their various customers, organizations were able to more strategically tailor their different messages to be more effective to various customer segments. The Forrester report found that the “incremental revenue from personalized email campaigns resulted in more than $2 million in benefits [for the surveyed organizations] over three years.” 

In addition to the increases in new customer acquisition noted above, the personalized recommendations generated by Acquia CDP’s machine learning models, also helped current customers stick around longer. By using machine learning to identify patterns and preferences in customer behavior, brands can prioritize their highest value customers and anticipate their next wants and needs. This leads to lower customer turnover and greater total revenue. According to the analysts, the benefits Acquia CDP had in terms of higher customer retention, customer satisfaction and loyalty led to nearly $4.5 million in benefits over three years. 

Self-Sufficiency and Data Democratization Across the Organization 

Acquia CDP unifies data across all channels and lines of business so that teams can work from a single source of truth and collaborate in real time based on a consistent data set. Marketers were able to work faster to build experiences without relying on external technical teams to pull data and reports on their behalf. By making data more accessible across the organization, organizations found that they were able to act on insights faster and get ahead of the competition. Overall, saving data analysts time and allowing marketers and CX professionals to focus on executing customer experiences from end to end improved overall resource efficiency by up to 50% at the end of three years, as found by the TEI report.  

Prior to using Acquia Customer Data Platform, piecing together reports from a variety of tools and teams was a time-consuming process and regularly resulted in inaccurate data and inconsistent experiences. By replacing their legacy systems and software licenses with Acquia CDP, the four profiled organizations reported a total cost savings of $212,988 in benefits over three years.

Overall, each of the four Acquia CDP customers received significant top-line impact by gaining control over their data and putting it to work. Choosing the right CDP helps organizations better evaluate how they’re using their time and resources and ensures that every team member is working smarter and more efficiently to engage customers and meet long-term business goals. 
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To get the entire report and see the impressive impact that Acquia CDP can have on your organization, download The Total Impact of Acquia CDP: Cost Savings and Business Benefits Enabled by Acquia CDP.