Optimizely Data Platform (ODP): an intelligent customer data platform

Optimizely Data Platform (ODP): an intelligent customer data platform

Harmonise, understand and act on your digital data in a single platform to deliver outsized outcomes.

[Updated and republished blog from March 2022]

A customer data platform (CDP) collects and unifies customer data from a variety of touchpoints into individual unified customer profiles. This data is then activated, and available to connect to the systems and platforms you engage customers with, to deliver personalised customer experiences in real time.

In March 2021 Optimizely acquired Zaius, a CDP, and rebranded it as ODP further strengthening its digital experience platform (DXP) capabilities. Here’s how ODP can enable your business to deliver relevant experiences to your customers.

Customer data challenges

Data is essential to unlocking digital experiences but often the data is siloed and disconnected. While many organizations may already have a big data strategy, they face challenges in getting the right insights into the data and then efficiently activating the data.

Even if you can bring together all the disparate data silos, it’s difficult to get a unified view of customers. Without understanding your customers and their needs, you can’t deliver relevant experiences to them.

Unify your data and create relevant digital experiences for your customers

The Optimizely Data Platform (ODP) is a central hub to harmonise, analyse and act on your data. It serves as the connective tissue that unifies data from your entire digital ecosystem, bringing the ABCs of data (assets, behaviours and customers) into a centralised location and providing data science-driven insights through the lens of the customer.

The customer context can help your business to deliver the right experience at the right time through personalised messages, content, and product recommendations.

Harmonise customer data

ODP collects and stitches customer data (offline, online, historical and real-time) to give you a 360-degree view of your customers. There are over 50 pre-built connectors providing one-click integrations that enable you to bring together all your customer data.

If you have a system that doesn’t have a pre-built connector, ODP provides tools for seamless custom integration - historical customer data can be uploaded via files and ongoing data sync via REST APIs by tracking customer interactions (e.g. form submissions, orders, account registration etc.).

Understand your customers

Analytics enhanced by out-of-the-box artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-driven predictions provide complete visibility through the context of a customer profile that adapts to customer behaviour in real time. This enables marketers to get easily accessible and meaningful insights on end-to-end customer journeys to drive personalization strategies without manual or guesswork.

Features such as AI-driven reports and real-time segments allow for more dynamic personalisation of web experiences based on customers behaviours to drive more conversion, revenue and growth.

Data from ODP can be pushed to other BI tools (e.g. Power BI) or shared via Snowflake.

Personalise with real-time segments

Note*, this feature is currently available to Charter Program members only.*

ODP offers pre-built real-time segments allowing for segmentation of site visitors and delivery of relevant content based on their engagement with your site. The GraphQL Explorer, an interface available through your ODP account, allows for querying of real-time segment results.

Custom real-time segments can also be created using the real-time segments builder (currently in private beta).

Real-time segments can then be used in other Optimizely products (e.g. CMS and Web Experimentation) via integrations making it easier to do web personalisation and audience targeting in experiments.

Data Platform Lite

Optimizely has recognised the need to enhance its DXP with a unified data layer across its product suite. Data Platform Lite is a free service that is available to all Optimizely cloud customers (Content, Commerce, B2B or Experimentation).

The key limitations of Data Platform Lite compared to ODP are:

  • It harmonises data from Optimizely DXP products only and provides access to view-only analytics.

  • It doesn’t offer any data activation features.

  • While it is free, there is a usage limit of 250K monthly active users (MAUs)

Data Platform Lite provides Optimizely cloud customers with a pathway to ease into a CDP and start centralising and understanding their data. When the user base grows beyond the 250K limit or to access more powerful ODP features such as one-click integrations to bring data from their whole digital ecosystem together, segmentation and AI/ML-driven predictions and visualisations, customers can choose to upgrade to ODP.

In summary

ODP empowers organisations through unified insights and intelligent decision-making to deliver outsized outcomes.

Getting data together is just the first step, it’s what you do with it that creates value. Knowing your customer and anticipating their real-time intent can help you create relevance at every customer interaction driving customer loyalty, revenue and business growth.