Comparing Acquia CDP vs. Adobe CDP

It’s been barely a year since Adobe tossed their hat into the CDP ring with the release of their Real-Time Customer Data Platform and in that year, CDPs have continued to attract more attention from brands looking for better ways to manage and understand all their customer data.  Acquia is also celebrating our own milestones, as Acquia Customer Data Platform (formerly AgilOne) hits 15 years since its initial launch and one year of being part of the Acquia family. With these CDP-versaries on the horizon, we want to demonstrate the advantages of experience. Let’s look at the different capabilities of Acquia CDP vs. Adobe’s CDP to see how other vendors approach their solutions and where they have some maturing to do. 

1. Raw vs. Enriched Data

The success of a customer data platform depends on the accessibility and quality of your data. As data is collected and imported into the CDP from various systems, that data needs to be validated, cleansed and deduped to reap any valuable customer insights. Acquia CDP maintains a robust, enriched database by ingesting data from all first- and third-party systems and stitching it together in a standardized master record stored in a centralized data model. Persistent data enrichment makes it possible for marketers to more accurately target and personalize their campaigns based on a complete understanding of who their customers are. Contrastingly, Adobe CDP currently offers no data enrichment for raw data coming from third-party sources. This makes it impossible for marketers relying on Adobe to establish a comprehensive view of their customer that includes critical information such as a change of address or browsing history.

Acquia CDP also offers greater freedom when it comes to identity resolution. Acquia’s Identity Resolution Engine supports both fuzzy and exact matches and allows marketers and data scientists to combine several matching rules to account for potential duplicates, typos or other human error. Today, Adobe only supports exact matching identity resolution. This means that if two customers happen to share a home address or misspell some of their identifying information, their record may not be accurately recorded within the CDP.  

2. Configurable vs. Pre-Set Data Models 

No two brands' marketing strategy or customer needs are exactly alike, which is why brands need customizable insights that meet their unique needs on an individual level. Adobe’s CDP limits their data models to a set number of types and attributes, confining what insights customers can access to a pre-configured set of options and conclusions (unless a customer wants to go through the lengthy process of building their own data tables and developing a custom script). 

On the other hand, Acquia CDP provides enterprise flexibility right out of the box through a machine learning framework equipped with configurable machine learning models. Acquia’s configurable intelligence layer gives brands the ability to leverage custom attributes to inform their ongoing campaigns and segmentation efforts. Brands can create models for the attributes they want to analyze (such as product preference, geo-mapping or in-store purchase frequency). The ability to customize reporting and analysis at a granular level helps brands increase customer lifetime value and ROI for their marketing efforts. 

3. Open vs. Closed Integration Capabilities 

Finally, when it comes to the ability to play nice with other tools and systems, Adobe’s CDP is still behind the times. A true enterprise CDP is meant to offer a central and united source of truth for all customer data needs. However, Adobe’s CDP functionality is currently fractured across multiple services and tools, such as the Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics and others. The lack of a seamless integration between the entire Adobe portfolio may cause difficult data silos or eclipsed customer understanding — the exact issue a CDP should prevent. Not only can Adobe not integrate with all of its own offerings, but it doesn’t allow for integrations with other vendors or homegrown solutions, meaning companies who want to add a CDP to their existing marketing stack will struggle to make each system work together.

Acquia CDP allows for extensive freedom and flexibility by being completely open. The Acquia Marketing Cloud brings together the power of a customer data platform (CDP), cross-channel campaign management and website personalization through bidirectional, real-time, API-based integrations between Acquia CDP, Acquia Campaign Studio and Acquia Personalization. Even more so, our open technology means that brands can take a best-of-breed approach to optimizing their data and marketing stack. Acquia CDP integrates with any other bought or built system, including Adobe products! The integration between Acquia and the Adobe portfolio is done through exactly the same means as Adobe does it themselves—either via flat file SFTPtransfer or API connector. Instead of jumping from system to system,  customers can choose which tools they prefer without having to worry about incompatibility. 
While new arrivals to the CDP market, like Adobe CDP, are still adjusting to the growth curve, Acquia CDP continues to evolve and refine its capabilities based on the needs of our customers. We recently unveiled five CDP updates designed to deliver smarter, faster and more relevant experiences to customers in real time. Learn more about each of these innovative features and how they can help you connect with customers in our press release covering the new major updates to our Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP).