Your CDP or Customer Data Platform is one central engine that powers connected omnichannel personalized experience. A big part of the engine is made up about the customer information and behavioral insights such as location, last purchases etc. They can be further enhanced or enriched by additional data sources that can add more context to the customer profile to drive even more relevance.

I have listed below these additional data source types along with some examples so that you can get started right away! They are Open Data sources, which means that they are available for anyone for access, use & sharing.

1. Weather Data Sources

Our habits and behaviors are primarily influenced by our environments primarily dictated by the weather. Many Marketing research have demonstrated the impacts of weather on consumer behavior. Here is an interesting study that segments consumers into weather-sensitive cohorts and found increase in purchase behavior caused by weather events.

You can use weather data in your CDP to add weather attribute by customers location and then driving messaging accordingly. For example, in this blogpost you can see personalized emails sent to customers only at certain postcodes where it is about to rain.

2. Demographics Data from Census

A census is every government’s procedure of systematically calculating, acquiring and recording information about the residents at a certain date & time. In this activity essential details like number of members of the household, income, age etc. are collected from every household. At the end of the census, the data is made available as insights for every postcode.

This data brings an opportunity to consider a single customer as a household instead and then be able to increase share of the spend pie. For example- if a food deliver provider now also delivering groceries, demographics data helps to determine the right messaging or offer so they appear relevant to the target audience

Demographics data would be updated once in 5 years or as and when census happens. They are readily available from the respective country’s digital channels.

3. Nearby Business Data

This pandemic saw rapid expansion of suburbs with purchase of existing properties or building of new ones. The businesses have not been able to ride the tide of city-folks moving to the suburbs. Making essential commodities and groceries a car drive away rather than a walk.

Post codes in low nearby business areas become high opportunity segments where the app wallas can fast the acquisition and/or adoption of grocery delivery services.

Usually this data is provider by governments worldwide. For example – https://api.census.gov/data/2018/zbp makes an API call to census.gov to gain local business details based on each code