Gartner defines customer data platforms (CDPs) as software applications that support marketing and customer experience use cases by unifying a company’s customer data from marketing and other channels. CDPs optimize the timing and targeting of messages, offers and customer engagement activities, and enable the analysis of individual-level customer behavior over time.
Gartner defines multichannel marketing hubs (MMHs) as software applications, primarily delivered as SaaS, that orchestrate personalized campaigns and event-driven customer journeys across marketing channels. These applications leverage customer data, predictive models and real-time insights to optimize the timing, channel and content of interactions. MMHs apply advanced analytics, AI and prescriptive intelligence to help marketing and technical teams manage the end-to-end life cycle of customer journeys. Although MMHs overlap with customer data platforms (CDPs) and personalization engines, their primary focus is enabling marketing users to manage large-scale consumer interactions, particularly in owned media channels such as email and app push. Multichannel marketing hubs empower marketers to deliver personalized media and orchestrate customer journeys, thus driving revenue, engagement and loyalty. These SaaS applications unify customer data, predictive insights and real-time decision making to optimize interactions across digital channels. MMHs enable multidisciplinary teams to manage campaigns and event-driven journeys via advanced analytics, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and prescriptive intelligence.
Gartner uses the following market definitions: Web analytics tools — Specialized analytics tools used to understand and improve the digital CX, attract and retain users, and analyze operations and actions taken across responsive websites and mobile apps. Product analytics tools — Tools and processes used to understand the behavior of users across products or services to inform decisions about how to improve the product experience and increase product engagement. Digital experience analytics tools — Tools that provide diagnostic insights into visitor activity and the CX on responsive web and mobile apps, enabled by advanced analytics and machine learning, session replay and heat map technology.