Unified customer data means combining every signal a business holds about a customer (purchases, email and SMS engagement, website behavior and device activity) into one profile. A marketing platform that uses unified customer data can personalize messages, trigger campaigns from real-time behavior and reduce churn, instead of only collecting and reporting data in separate silos.
Key Takeaways
- A unified customer profile joins data from many channels and devices so every message is based on the full picture of one customer.
- The five capabilities to compare are data collection and profiles, cross-device identification, anonymous visitor tracking, behavioral triggers and subscriber acquisition.
- Collecting customer data carries legal duties: the EU GDPR has applied since 25 May 2018 and California’s CCPA since 1 January 2020.
- Platform pricing changes often; as of October 2026, Adobe Marketo Engage, Oracle Eloqua and Listrak quote prices individually, while HubSpot and Omnisend publish them.
And eight marketing platforms worth comparing, with pricing notes reviewed in October 2026.
Does your marketing platform provide you with the customer insights and data you need to create highly personalized and targeted marketing campaigns? Or are you finding that as hard as you try, your campaigns just don’t seem to resonate with your audiences?
If you’re unsure about whether your current marketing platform is helping you make the most out of your customer data – it may be time to switch.
You need a tool that goes beyond just collecting and reporting on customer data. You need a marketing platform that leverages unified customer data and helps you to predict and react to customer interactions in real-time.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how your marketing platform should help you improve your customer interactions through unified customer data and provide you with a list of platforms to checkout.
Here’s a quick look at what we’ll cover:
- Five ways your marketing platform should leverage unified customer data.
- Eight marketing platforms that can help you better leverage your customer data.
5 Ways Your Marketing Platform Should Leverage Unified Customer Data
If you’ve been stuck with the same mediocre marketing platform for a while, you may not even be aware of the capabilities that are available today.
There have been many advancements in the world of marketing platforms in the last few years, thanks to technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and predictive analytics.
These tools have made it much easier to analyze customer data and quickly react with the best possible scenario.
Meaning if you have the right tool in place, it can do most of the work for you. From sending emails to identifying subscribers who are at risk of churning, today’s marketing platforms can help you reach and exceed your goals.
In this section, we’ll take a look at a few different ways the right marketing platform can help you leverage your customer data for the best results. These are things you’ll want to consider when comparing platforms and choosing the one that is right for your needs.
Customer Data Collection and Profiles
Personalization is something you need to be including in your marketing efforts. Your customers want to be receiving personalized content from the brands they engage with. But without the right tool, this can be a challenging task.
Personalized experiences are no longer an excellent addition to your marketing. Your customers expect you to learn what they like, and they are rewarding the brands they love that are already providing them with personalized interactions.
To successfully connect with your customers through personalized experiences throughout their entire purchasing journey, you need the correct data.
Your marketing platform should provide you with the tools you need to collect, analyze, and act on this data. It should have the ability to continuously collect customer data and signals across various sources and create a singular, unified profile for each customer.
The type of data you collect should include things like:
- Their preferred products or services.
- Why they purchase certain products.
- If they’re a repeat customer.
- What channels they’re engaging on.
- How they are shopping on your website.
- Where they are in their purchasing journey.
The possibilities for data collection are endless, and with the right marketing platform, you can make the most out of this data.
As you collect more and more data, you can start to build customer profiles that help you to better understand and speak to your customers on a more personal level. These profiles help to ensure that you’re connecting with the right person, at the right time, on the right channel.
Understanding how your customers are interacting with your content across all sources, channels, and devices will enable you to create these successful personalized experiences. Having the right tools in place can help make this process easier and more efficient.
Connect With Customers Across Devices
11 is the average number of connected devices in U.S. households, according to Deloitte’s 2019 survey. Deloitte’s later Connectivity and Mobile Trends surveys put the average at 25 devices in 2021 and 21 in 2023, the newest published household count found as of October 2026. These include things like smartphones, tablets, computers, and other connected devices.
Gone are the days of customers only logging on to a home desktop to do their online shopping. Today, people are using various devices to browse the web and make online purchases and you need to consider this when developing your marketing strategies.
What does this mean for you?
You need a marketing platform that can help you to easily engage with audiences across various devices. Without a tool that can do this, you’ll find that you’re missing chances to connect with your customers at the most opportune moments.
With cross-device identification capabilities, you’ll be able to listen to and retarget your customers on a personal level to provide the most relevant content.
By listening to the customer data you’re collecting, you can start to build more complex customer profiles. These profiles will bring together data from various platforms and devices to give you a full view of how your customers are interacting with your brand – no matter where or how they’re doing it.
As the number of connected devices that your customers are using grows, you need a marketing platform that can help you stay ahead of the trends.
Provide Anonymous User Tracking
What if you could start building a profile on a new customer before they’ve provided you with their name and email or made a purchase?
Having this insight would allow you to create more personalized, targeted experiences from the start – and it’s something that is completely possible with the right marketing platform.
It’s called anonymous user tracking and it allows you to collect data and start creating a profile for prospective customers who haven’t yet filled out a form or signed up for your SMS messages.
This capability tracks signals and interactions from anonymous identities and starts to build a customized profile. Once that user converts, the platform can use machine learning to link the earlier anonymous activity to the newly identified profile.
Having these early insights is important because they can help you keep new subscribers engaged and interested. Knowing that it can be costly to acquire a new customer, doing everything you can to keep them around is vital.
The cost to acquire a new customer can vary greatly across industries, but one thing remains the same – finding and acquiring customers isn’t free. Having early insights into their interests and behaviors will help you stay ahead of their needs and keep them engaged from the start.
Since you won’t have to waste time collecting all of this customer data, you will be able to connect with this new subscriber on a more personalized level immediately. This allows you to make the most out of every single interaction from the moment of acquisition.
These insights can help you to create a more effective acquisition strategy. Knowing what the customer is interested in and having the ability to serve them the most relevant content from the start will leave a lasting impression.
Customer Response and Behavior Tracking
With all of the customer data you have at your fingertips, you can react and respond to your customers in a timely fashion and start to predict future behaviors.
Behavioral tracking allows you to use real-time customer behaviors to share relevant content.
Understanding how your customers are interacting and engaging with your content allows you to use behavioral triggers in your marketing. Each interaction is meaningful and can help you to drive a customer closer to making a purchase or becoming more loyal.
For example, if a customer has recently spent time browsing a specific product or category on your website, this should be an indicator that they may be ready to purchase soon.
By sending them a browse abandonment message reminding them of the products they were recently interested in – you might be able to bring them back to complete the sale.
On the other hand, having access to all of this customer data can start to identify trends. These trends can then help you begin to predict what the next step your customer will take is and proactively engage with them.
An example of this would be looking at products your customers have recently purchased and identifying other relevant products they may need next. Maybe they need a new belt to go with the jeans they just bought or an additional charger for a laptop.
All of these insights allow you to stay ahead of the customer’s needs and when looking at marketing platforms are things you’ll want to consider.
Many marketing platforms available today leverage the power of AI and machine learning to provide you with these tools. But keep in mind that with all of the different channels and devices your customers are using, it’s important that you have a marketing platform that can look at all of the data holistically.
Improve Subscriber Acquisition
Continuing to grow your subscriber base is vital to the success of your marketing efforts.
Every business will experience some level of subscriber churn over time and your business isn’t immune from this. Depending on what industry you’re in, the median churn rate was right around 7% in the MarketingCharts data cited when this article was first published in 2022. Churn varies widely by industry and year, so treat that figure as a rough historical benchmark rather than a current one.
Churn rates can vary drastically from one industry to the next, so you can’t always compare yours to another business type. Subscriber churn is an inevitable part of the cycle, you just need to find ways to acquire and retain more users than you lose.
You need to continuously be working to attract new subscribers to keep your list healthy. By actively working to grow your subscriber list, you can continue to add new audiences who may be more engaged and will replace those who have churned.
There are a variety of different strategies that work with subscriber acquisition, such as:
- On-site popups.
- SMS keyword campaigns.
- Social lead ads.
- Cross-channel promotions.
When looking into marketing platforms, this is something you’ll want to consider. You need a platform that makes it easy to continue growing your subscriber base and integrating these different strategies into your marketing mix.
But it doesn’t end once someone has subscribed. You need a tool that can automatically enroll these audiences into welcome and nurturing campaigns to keep them engaged and interested over time.
We’ve already talked about the cost of acquiring a new customer. So keep in mind that it’s not a successful acquisition strategy if the vast majority of your new subscribers quickly add to your churn rate statistic.
You need to actively engage new audiences to ensure they stay active and move along on their journey towards making a purchase.
8 Marketing Platforms That Can Help You Better Leverage Your Customer Data
Now that you know more about how a marketing platform can help you leverage your customer data to do more, it’s time to start sitting down and doing your research.
There are tons of different marketing platforms available today, and many will provide you with the tools you need to make the most out of your customer data – but it’s important to look around to find the perfect partner for your needs.
Some platforms will allow you to do it all, while others may be focused on one or two specific marketing channels. It’s important to consider all of this in addition to how they can help you leverage your customer data.
Looking at it holistically will allow you to find the tool that is best for your needs. This list will help you get started and provide you with a variety of different platforms, from all-in-one to singular channel-focused.
Listrak
Listrak is a cross-channel marketing platform that offers customer insight tools and campaign automation to help businesses understand customers individually and build personalized campaigns.
The platform includes customer insights tools as well as reporting and analytics.
The Listrak platform allows you to understand your audiences from prospect to repeat customers. Having the right insights allows you to create more relevant and personalized experiences to drive higher engagement.
Platform highlights:
- Collect and analyze customer data to create 360° profiles that make developing personalized experiences simple.
- Use behavioral triggers to identify key opportunities to connect with your audiences and turn customer signals into actionable touchpoints.
- Never miss an opportunity to connect with your audiences across various devices and channels with cross-device identification.
- Get to know prospects before they convert to create a highly effective and personalized acquisition strategy.
What makes this platform stand out: The Listrak platform has everything you need to create highly engaging, successful marketing campaigns. This platform has you covered from the advanced customer data and insights tools to the Growth Xcelerator tool and use of AI and machine learning.
Pricing: Pricing is customized based on business needs. You’ll need to connect with a Listrak representative to learn more.
Marketo
Marketo (sold as Adobe Marketo Engage since Adobe agreed to buy Marketo in September 2018) is a marketing automation platform that will allow you to collect customer data and use that to connect with your audiences more strategically and on a more personalized level. With Marketo, you’ll be able to reach your customers across various channels with the right message based on their individual journey.
The Marketo platform provides you with all the tools you need to connect with your customers and create highly engaging experiences. With everything you need in one central location, using a platform like Marketo can help you achieve your goals.
From experience automation to cross-channel engagement, Marketo has all the tools you need to understand and connect with your customers.
Platform highlights:
- Use behavioral data and tracking to engage with the right customers, at the right time, on the right channel and device.
- Identify, target, and communicate with customers based on where they’re at in the purchasing journey.
- Get a 360° view of your customers and understand how they are interacting with your brand across the web, email, social, and mobile.
- Better understand how your marketing efforts are performing with reporting and analytics that tell you what’s working and what’s not.
What makes this platform stand out: Marketo has been identified as a B2B marketing automation leader and will provide you with the tools you need to achieve your marketing goals.
Pricing: When this article was first published in 2022, pricing was reported to start at $1,195 per month. As of October 2026, Adobe sells Marketo Engage in four packages (Growth, Select, Prime and Ultimate) with customized pricing, so speaking with an Adobe representative is the way to get a current quote.
Omnisend
Omnisend is an eCommerce marketing platform that allows you to manage and automate your email and SMS marketing channels. This platform provides you with the tools you need to better understand and segment your audiences while also making it easier to connect with them in real-time.
Omnisend helps you put your customer data to work. By using real insights, you can easily react to customer interactions and behaviors to provide them with the most relevant experience possible.
Omnisend is a great marketing platform for businesses that are looking to focus specifically on growing their business through email and SMS marketing.
Platform highlights:
- Leverage your customer data and use segmentation to create more personalized content, improve targeting, and increase conversions.
- Convert new subscribers easily through popups, landing pages, signup boxes, and more to continue growing your audience base.
- Make email and SMS marketing simple with the easy to use tools that help you create, send, and manage emails.
- Track campaign success with advanced reporting and analytics that are presented in simple dashboards for quick access.
What makes this platform stand out: This platform is created specifically with eCommerce businesses in mind and makes it simple to drive your customers towards completing a purchase.
Pricing: Pricing is based on the number of contacts you have. As of October 2026, Omnisend lists a Free plan for up to 250 contacts, a Standard plan at $16 per month for up to 500 contacts and a Pro plan at $59 per month for up to 2,500 contacts, with a 30% discount for paying three months upfront.
Hubspot
Hubspot is a leading marketing automation platform that can help you to collect customer data and gain better insights into their wants and needs. With the help of this tool, you can easily create customized workflows that move people through a targeted and thorough journey based on their interactions.
With simple workflow tools, you can quickly develop customized journeys for each of your customers. Each step of the way, the customer will receive the most relevant content based on their real-time interactions, creating a more personalized experience.
The HubSpot platform allows you to connect with your audiences via email and social media while creating customized landing pages and blog posts that help drive more engagement.
Platform highlights:
- Tap into advanced segmentation to determine what customers are enrolled in what campaigns based on their real-time data.
- Have access to each contact’s information and understand how they are interacting with your content to create hyper-targeted campaigns.
- Easily automate your marketing efforts with simple, visual workflows that move customers through their purchasing journey.
- Get the insights you need through analytics to determine what campaigns are working and where you may need to make some adjustments.
What makes this platform stand out: This platform makes it simple for you to create highly relevant content through your blog and landing pages, while also connecting with your audiences through various marketing channels.
Pricing: Pricing is based on seats and marketing contacts. As of October 2026, HubSpot lists Marketing Hub Starter from $7 per seat per month (with 1,000 marketing contacts), Professional from $800 per month on an annual commitment plus a one-time $3,000 onboarding fee, and Enterprise from $3,600 per month plus a one-time $7,000 onboarding fee. Free tools are available for up to two users.
Drip
Drip is an email and SMS marketing platform that is designed for eCommerce businesses looking to use customer insights to engage and run multi-channel campaigns. With this tool, you’ll have everything you need to create highly targeted and personalized customer experiences.
The more you know about your customers, the more personalized the experience can be for them. By leveraging previous data and interactions, you can create campaigns that are engaging and more likely to convert.
This platform is a good option if you’re looking for a tool that helps you focus better on understanding your customer to grow your email and SMS campaigns.
Platform highlights:
- Easily integrate other platforms to bring all of your customer data together into one central location and leverage it to create more personalized campaigns.
- Target your audiences and create campaigns that use segmentation to automatically identify customers that will be interested in the content.
- Create campaigns that reach your audiences across various channels, based on where they’re most active.
- Use one of the many pre-built playbooks that allow you to connect with audiences at specific times such as welcome series and abandoned cart messaging.
What makes this platform stand out: The ease of creating campaigns and the ability to integrate other platforms to leverage those insights to develop more relevant content.
Pricing: Pricing is based on the number of contacts you have. In 2022, plans started at $19 per month for the Email plan and $22 per month for the Email + SMS plan; these 2022 prices may no longer apply, so check Drip’s pricing page for current rates.
Eloqua
Eloqua (marketed as Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation) is an enterprise marketing automation platform designed with larger B2B businesses in mind. It allows you to create cross-channel experiences that use real-time customer insights to create highly targeted experiences.
For large, B2B businesses creating personalized experiences can be a challenge but with Eloqua it doesn’t have to be. This platform gives you the segmentation tools you need to be able to easily reach all of your customers with relevant content.
This platform will provide your business with the tools you need to collect, manage, and act on customer data across the board.
Platform highlights:
- Create marketing campaigns that can quickly respond and adapt to changing customer needs by listening and reacting to shifts in customer data.
- Build customer segments based on behavioral and firmographic data to make it easier to connect with and target your customers at scale.
- Automate lead scoring capabilities that adjust based on real-time customer interactions to keep the most relevant content available for your teams.
- Tap into AI capabilities that can help you to determine who the right customers to target are when the right time is to reach them, and more.
What makes this platform stand out: Eloqua is an excellent tool for B2B businesses looking for a platform that can provide you with the customer data you need and help bring together sales and marketing.
Pricing: Pricing is customized based on business needs. You’ll need to connect with an Eloqua representative to learn more.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is a marketing platform that is designed with small businesses in mind. It has all the tools you need to send emails, create social ads, and sell products online from one central platform.
Connect with your audiences automatically and keep the conversation going. Creating automated email campaigns will allow you to stay top-of-mind and learn more about how your new customers engage with your content.
This platform focuses specifically on email and social media posting, so it’s a great tool if those are your main marketing channels.
Platform highlights:
- Segment your contact list to ensure you’re sending your message to the right people based on their previous data and interactions.
- Develop drip campaigns that engage with your customers based on how they interacted with your previous emails.
- Welcome new contacts and begin to nurture them to build a relationship and start collecting more data on their interests.
- Continue to grow your subscriber list with custom landing pages, social ads, SMS, and more.
What makes this platform stand out: The focus on helping small businesses and nonprofits makes this an excellent choice for businesses that are looking to continue to grow and expand their reach.
Pricing: Pricing is based on the number of contacts you have. In 2022, plans started at $20 per month for the Email plan and $45 per month for the Email Plus plan; these 2022 plan names and prices may no longer apply, so check Constant Contact’s pricing page for current rates.
Ontraport
Ontraport is a sales and marketing platform that is designed to help businesses continue to grow by automating and scaling their vision. With Ontraport, you’ll have all the tools to create automated, personalized experiences that engage your audiences at the right time.
Quickly and easily see stats on how well your contact list or campaigns are performing. These insights will allow you to make the most out of every interaction and keep your end-goal in mind.
This platform will allow you to connect with your audiences through a variety of channels including email, SMS, and Facebook.
Platform highlights:
- Easily segment your audience groups to create more relevant and effective messages and then automatically send those messages.
- Use the campaign builder tool to create sophisticated automation that moves customers through their purchasing journey based on their real-time interactions.
- Create targeted, personalized campaigns across various marketing channels to keep your customer engaged wherever they’re most active.
- Leverage lead scoring tracking to understand who your audiences are and determine the customers who are most likely to convert.
What makes this platform stand out: Ontraport provides businesses with a reasonably priced platform that has powerful marketing automation and customer insights tools.
Pricing: In 2022, there were four plan options: the Basic plan cost $79 per month, the Plus plan $147 per month, the Pro plan $297 per month and the Enterprise plan $497 per month. These 2022 prices may no longer apply, so check Ontraport’s pricing page for current rates.
Make the Most Out of Your Customer Data With the Right Marketing Platform
Choosing the right marketing platform for your needs is the first step towards making the most out of your customer data. By taking a close look at how each platform helps you collect, analyze, and react to customer data you can weed out the tools that aren’t right for your business.
Personalization and hyper-targeting campaigns result in higher engagement and lead to more conversions. Make sure you have a platform that allows you to easily create these kinds of campaigns to keep your marketing efforts effective over time.
What Is Unified Customer Data?
Unified customer data is a single, continuously updated profile for each customer, built by merging records from email, SMS, the website, apps, point-of-sale and support systems. The software category built for this job is the customer data platform (CDP), which Wikipedia describes as a system that aggregates and organizes customer data from various touchpoints to build a unified customer profile. Many marketing platforms now include CDP-style features, and a CRM system often supplies part of the data.
How Do the Eight Platforms Compare?
| Platform | Main focus | Pricing status (October 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Listrak | Cross-channel marketing | Custom quote |
| Adobe Marketo Engage | B2B marketing automation | Custom quote; four packages |
| Omnisend | Ecommerce email and SMS | Free plan; Standard $16/month; Pro $59/month |
| HubSpot Marketing Hub | All-in-one inbound marketing | Free tools; Starter from $7/seat/month; Professional from $800/month |
| Drip | Ecommerce email | Check vendor; 2022 prices may be outdated |
| Oracle Eloqua | Enterprise B2B automation | Custom quote |
| Constant Contact | Small businesses and nonprofits | Check vendor; 2022 prices may be outdated |
| Ontraport | Sales and marketing automation | Check vendor; 2022 prices may be outdated |
What Privacy Rules Apply to Customer Data?
Unifying customer data, and especially tracking anonymous visitors, must follow data protection law. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has applied since 25 May 2018, and its most serious breaches can draw fines of up to 20 million euros or 4% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is greater. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) took effect on 1 January 2020 and gives California residents rights to know what data is collected, access it, have it deleted and opt out of its sale; California voters expanded it through the California Privacy Rights Act in November 2020.
In practice, collect consent where the law requires it, record where each data point came from, and follow best practices for handling customer data. This is general information, not legal advice; check the rules that apply in your markets.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a unified customer profile?
A unified customer profile is one record per customer that combines purchases, channel engagement, website behavior and device data. Marketers use it to send messages based on the full history of that customer rather than on a single channel.
Is anonymous visitor tracking legal?
Anonymous visitor tracking can be legal, but it depends on the law where the visitor is. Under rules such as the GDPR, many tracking technologies require consent, so check the requirements for each market you serve.
How many connected devices does a US household have?
According to Deloitte, US households had an average of 21 connected devices in 2023, down from 25 in 2021 and up from 11 in 2019. The 2023 figure is the newest published household count found as of October 2026.
Which marketing platform is best for small businesses?
No single platform is best for every small business. Constant Contact is built around small businesses and nonprofits, and HubSpot and Omnisend offer free plans, so compare channels, contact limits and current prices before choosing. For more ideas, see these email marketing strategies.
