What you need to know:

• CDP demand is soaring and NAB is the latest to move, picking a Tealium system.
• Shortlist also included Adobe and Salesforce, both incumbent martech providers.
• Meanwhile, the linked Alquemie and Mosaic groups, owners of retail brands including General Pants and Surf Stitch is closing in on its decision, as is experience and travel marketplace, Big Red Group.
• Privacy overhaul will likely fuel further demand.

NAB is investing significantly in its management of customer data, opting to purchase a customer data platform for the first time. But not with incumbent providers Adobe and Salesforce. It's gone for indie platform Tealium.

One source familiar with the decision described the move as "wanting to keep the incumbents honest." Another said the rationale was the bank's desire to implement "next generation marketing along with the usual issues of speed to market and cost ... NAB bought the dream."

According to NAB Executive Enablement & Transformation, Dylan Keath, "We are excited to be partnering with Tealium for the CDP component of our marketing technology stack. The CDP cloud solution will help NAB deliver a more integrated and personalised customer experience across our various touchpoints. 

He also noted, "NAB continues to partner with other providers, including Adobe, to deliver personalised communications to customers."

As the name suggests, a customer data platform is a tool designed to hold, organise and analyse customer data from multiple sources and channels. The idea is to provide a single view of the customer via the CDP, which plugs into the rest of the martech stack.

CDPs are designed to help brands gain insights into target audiences and their behaviour, e.g. the types of products or services they are interested in, when they are most likely to make a purchase, and which channels they prefer to use, enabling automation of personalised marketing campaigns. 

They are also an important resource in the context of the overhaul of privacy law, with the Attorney General last week outlining the likely legislative path ahead via a 300 page document.

For brands, the first party data managed via CDPs is now more important than ever as rules around data consent tighten and the government moves to a regime based on 'fair and reasonable' use of data – a benchmark that will ultimately be judged and set by the courts.

Plus, companies will have to delete the personal data they hold on customers if requested under the new regime. Which means having all of that data in one place is probably a good idea.

NAB shifts

Project insiders told Mi3 the bank had undertaken a root and branch assessment of what it needs to achieve in terms of using data to underpin customer experience – with ideal end-state and services and the capability, personnel and resource required to deliver them – before moving to tech vendor assessments. 

"The bank did a broad market scan. They looked seriously Adobe and Salesforce and really it came down to Adobe and Tealium," per a source.

"It's fiendishly complex area that we're working on, and the landscape is changing so quickly," they said. Plus, demand is rocketing. 

Another source familiar with the project said, "It seems like the entire economy is on a CDP bender."

The CDP initiative is the latest significant data play for the bank, which spent 2022 redesigning its data architecture with its Ada initiative, a five year project which media reports at the time said involved companies including Databricks, HVR Fivetran, PowerBI, AWS and Azure.

CDP surge

The CDP sector is indeed running hot – and not just in highly regulated markets like banking. Travel and experiences marketplace Big Red Group is at the pointy end of inking a CDP deal amid a major tech stack overhaul while retailers are also piling in.

Mosaic and Alquemie, owners of retail brands including Surf Stitch, General Pants, said both groups would definitely need a CDP to power growth as it expands and acquires more retailers – and seeks to join the dots.

"You get that single view of customer, single source of truth. You get to know everything about that customer across their customer journey, across all your brands," Richard Facioni, founder and CEO ACTA Capital and Executive Chairman Alquemie last year told Mi3.

"I think that's critical for us, especially as we start to bring on more brands, more licenses, acquire more businesses – how do we now leverage those high value customers across those new brands as well?”

Facioni yesterday told Mi3: "We haven’t made any decisions – we’re still in the latter stages of re-platforming to our new tech stack which will start in May. We’ll be done by July."

He confirmed the company is now starting to explore CDP options. "I do think a CDP is the way to go, especially us as a multiple brand business. We’ve done some research which shows a strong affinity with our customers shopping other brands in our portfolio – but we just don’t know that through our own data. A CDP will help us to understand high value customers and how they’re shopping across our brands."

For now the business is deciding whether to stick with the Salesforce CDP or opt for one of a clutch of others.

"We’re about to start that process. Tealium are blasting with me emails," Facioni  said.

Why CDP

Facioni told Mi3 it will allow the business to do more sophisticated analytics and implement lookalike campaigns. "We’ve done a lot of market research through Commbank iQ" – the Commbank/Quantium joint venture launched two years ago – which he said provides deep insight into customers and where else they are shopping.

"We know we are getting a good picture of them and it allows us to get down to an individual level: How do we maximise our share of wallet and if someone should be shopping across our brands?"

'Fragile' outlook

A deeper understanding of customers is crucial in a market Facioni acknowledges is softening.

"It turned just after Christmas and [continued to] gradually turn down. People ignored them right through to Christmas, but inflation and interest rates have definitely made a hit. Last week Roy Morgan said consumer sentiment was at its lowest level since lockdowns. It rebounded a little bit last week but its very, very fragile. It will be a pretty soft few months ahead until people see the end of the interest rate cycle."

According to Facioni: "We always thought it would be the case. While our comparable sales are up on last year, [going forward] we fully anticipate comparable sales will be under some new pressure.