Martech, explained · Platforms side by side · 2:15
What is a CEP?
What a customer engagement platform keeps once profiles, segments and scores move into the warehouse
The short answer
A CEP, or customer engagement platform, runs the conversation with each customer across email, push, SMS and in-app. It holds each journey, applies the rules on consent, quiet hours and frequency, and gets the message delivered. Profiles, segments and scores are moving into the warehouse: the warehouse decides who, the CEP decides when, and how.
Questions this answers
What does a CEP stand for, and what does it do?
Customer engagement platform. It runs the conversation with each customer across email, push, SMS and in-app: a cart left at nine in the evening, a reminder at ten, a push the next morning, and the reminders stop when she buys.
What is moving out of the CEP?
Its own copy of the customer. For years a CEP kept profiles, segments and scores alongside the messages. More teams now build those in the warehouse, or in a CDP that reads from it. The warehouse decides who; the CEP decides when, and how.
What stays in the CEP?
Orchestration and delivery. It holds each journey, where every person is, what they got and what comes next; it applies consent, quiet hours and how many messages one person gets in a week; and it gets the message delivered on the right channel.
Why do events still go straight to the CEP?
Most warehouses refresh every few hours, and a cart reminder cannot wait that long. The events that start a journey go straight to the CEP; the slower facts, like a score, come from the warehouse.
What should you ask a CEP before you buy?
Can it use segments from your warehouse directly, without another copy? Does it react to an event in seconds? And can marketing change a journey without a ticket? If segments live in the warehouse, a CEP that also sells its own profiles and segments is charging twice. Journeys and send history stay in the vendor.
Transcript
Every chapter as text. Click a time to play the film from there.
0:00 A customer at the cart
A customer leaves a cart at nine in the evening. At ten, she gets a reminder. The next morning, a push. She buys, and the reminders stop.
Something decided all of that, one person at a time. That's a CEP.
0:18 What a CEP is
CEP stands for customer engagement platform. It runs the conversation with each customer, across email, push, SMS and in-app.
0:29 What's moving to the warehouse
For years, a CEP did two things at once. It kept its own copy of the customer, with profiles, segments and scores. And it ran the messages.
The first part is moving out. More teams now build the profile, the segments and the scores in the warehouse, or in a CDP that reads from it.
The warehouse decides who. The CEP decides when, and how.
0:55 What stays: orchestration and delivery
What stays in the CEP is orchestration and delivery.
It holds each journey: where every person is, what they got, and what comes next.
It applies the rules: consent, quiet hours, and how many messages one person gets in a week.
And it gets the message delivered, on the right channel.
1:17 Why events still go straight to the CEP
There's one catch. Most warehouses refresh every few hours, and a cart reminder can't wait that long.
So the events that start a journey, like the cart, still go straight to the CEP. The slower facts, like a score, come from the warehouse.
1:34 Paying twice, and what's hard to move
That changes what you pay for. If segments live in the warehouse, a CEP that also sells you its own profiles and segments is charging twice for the same thing.
And one part doesn't move as easily: the journeys and the history of what each person got stay in the vendor.
1:52 Three questions to ask a CEP
So when you look at a CEP, ask three things.
Can it use segments from your warehouse directly, without another copy?
Does it react to an event in seconds?
And can marketing change a journey without a ticket?
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