By 2020, marketers expect their use of data management platforms (DMPs) to increase by 64%. DMPs allow marketers to collect and manage customer data from various sources. They then use that data to specify audience segments and create personalized, targeted messaging.

Here at Salesforce, we use our DMP Audience Studio to organize audience data for our digital marketing efforts. Before implementing a DMP, most businesses face a number of common challenges and opportunities. Salesforce was no exception.

Back in 2017, our customer traffic from search engine marketing (SEM) and display advertising was on the rise, which was good. However, customer traffic had a low conversion rate and low spending pipeline. We determined that our overall SEM pipeline was inefficient, which meant it was time to start using a DMP.

In the two years, we’ve used Audience Studio, we’ve saved 5% on our digital media spend, and experienced a 53% increase in pipeline per click. Also, 99.5% of our display traffic is now classified as prospects, because we only target net-new users through display ads.

As you can see, we’ve learned a lot about how DMPs can optimize digital advertising campaigns. Here are three of the best ways to leverage the power of a DMP:

1. Personalize your marketing with data from every source

On average, most marketers use 15 different data sources — and this number has increased by 20% since 2017. However, only 47% of marketers say they have a unified view of all their customer data sources. This is where many marketing organizations run into trouble. Without a unified view of customers, it’s very likely that you’re pushing repetitive ads to prospects who’ve seen them a dozen times.

When you connect your databases with a DMP, you can clearly identify prospects and customers, and personalize content to each audience segment. You can even match known and unknown data from other sources by adding your DMP’s tag to emails.

Also, by suppressing ads to people who’ve seen them before, you can spend your advertising budget where it matters most. When we used Audience Studio to implement suppression for the first time in Australia and New Zealand, the quality of our website visitors improved significantly, almost overnight! As a result, we saved $108,000 on cost per click (CPC) per year and had a much more efficient pipeline. 

2. Grow your audience with AI-powered segmentation

Once your DMP identifies target audiences, it’s time to start segmenting. This works best if your DMP includes artificial intelligence (AI). Audience Studio is equipped with Einstein AI, which creates intelligent segments to target audiences with relevant and personalized marketing content.

For example, imagine you’re an outdoor gear retailer. Your general audience includes a wide range of outdoor enthusiasts, but with a DMP, you can see how audience segments interact with your marketing differently.

Maybe hikers engage more via mobile, while skiers are all about email. You can use this information to refine your approach to engaging these segments — creating more personalized experiences and saving on your marketing spend.

In the coming years, marketers anticipate that the top use cases for DMPs will be to extract audience insights and use them for discovery purposes. To stay ahead of the curve, savvy marketers are already using DMPs to do just that.

One of the best ways to discover new audiences is through lookalike targeting, which allows you to find new high-value prospects based on attributes they share with your best current customers. Audience Studio also features lookalike targeting powered by Einstein, which has helped us find hundreds of new customers.

3. Unify messaging across digital channels

Once you’ve connected all of your databases through a DMP, you can finally unlock the true power of first-party data. You’ll know exactly how all your different customers interact with your website and marketing content, as well as their previous purchasing patterns, and more.

With a DMP, you can easily see all of this data in one centralized location, and use it to create consistent, personalized, and relevant marketing across every digital channel.

Consistent omnichannel experiences are important to customers. High-performing marketers are 9.7x more likely than underperformers to be completely satisfied with their ability to personalize and deliver omnichannel experiences that customers connect with.

What do these omnichannel experiences really look like? Imagine again that you’re an outdoor gear retailer. With a DMP, you’ll be able to see the exact clicks and taps that make up every journey that individual hikers, skiers, kayakers, and bicyclists make across your digital channels.

These insights will help you market more effectively to each of your audiences — and create consistent experiences for them across every channel, so they never see offers repeated.

To learn more about how a DMP can optimize your digital advertising, try out a Trailhead course on the basics of Audience Studio.