Why I Built OceanaCDP After 14 Years in Digital Marketing

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Most ecommerce founders today struggle to find a marketing tool actually built by someone who understands how ecommerce works in real life. After 14 years in digital marketing, working with Shopify brands of all sizes, I kept seeing the same unsolved problem: store owners were drowning in data but starving for clarity. That’s exactly why I built a customer data platform shaped by real pain points, not theory - OceanaCDP.

 

The Real Story Behind OceanaCDP

How a decade of patterns, failures, and breakthroughs turned into an ecommerce data tool.

Before building anything, I spent years watching clients fight the same battle: tons of tools, tons of dashboards (Tableau, PowerBI, Looker, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics), yet no actual insight into who their best customers were, or how their actions impacted revenue.

This is what marketing technology landscape looked in 2011:

Courtesy of https://chiefmartec.com

And this is what it looks like in 2025:

Courtesy of https://chiefmartec.com

 

My First Shopify Client and the Moment I Realized the Data Gap

 

More than a decade ago, I took on my first Shopify client, expecting a straightforward SEO engagement. Instead, I discovered something bigger: the brand knew how to sell but didn’t know to whom they were selling. Their customer data was scattered across apps, spreadsheets, and gut feeling. They knew how to sell but lacked deep insight about their customers. The key idea that resonated with me from marketing conferences and books was the absolute necessity of understanding the true needs of your customer and creating a detailed customer avatar.

It was the first time I witnessed the expensive truth:

• Most ecommerce stores don’t know their best customer segment
• Marketing becomes guesswork without segmentation
• Revenue plateaus not because of traffic, but because the wrong people are being targeted

 

This experience planted the first seed of what would eventually become OceanaCDP.

 

Lessons Learned From Building the First MVP

 

My early MVP was embarrassingly simple - just a Python script that pulled order data and grouped customers by spending patterns. But when I added the first feature that allowed to reach out to lapsed customers, tried it, and it generated a sale, I realized I had something powerful.

From the MVP phase, I learned:

• Store owners don’t need more dashboards, but answers
• Simple insights outperform complex reporting
• Data has to speak the language of revenue, not analytics

This was the second major turning point.

For years, I ran digital marketing campaigns, optimized funnels, and built SEO strategies. But over time, the same frustration kept surfacing: without precise customer insights, even the best campaigns couldn’t reach their maximum ROI. I realized I could help far more brands by building one transformative product rather than optimizing one website at a time. Leaving agency life wasn’t easy, but it was necessary.

 

The Bigger Picture: Why Ecommerce Needed OceanaCDP

 

The gap no tool was filling, until now.

The ecommerce world has dozens of dashboards but very few actionable intelligence tools. Store owners needed a platform designed not by software engineers alone, but by someone who spent years in the trenches, who tested campaigns, analyzed purchasing patterns, and who understands what moves the needle.

Here’s the core customer problem OceanaCDP solves:

Ecommerce founders struggle to find a marketing tool built by someone who actually understands customers.

With 14 years of lived experience across SEO, analytics, consumer psychology, and Shopify operations, I built OceanaCDP to be the tool I wished my clients had all those years.

What Makes OceanaCDP Different

 

OceanaCDP is built from 14 years of direct ecommerce experience and it shows real revenue insights, not vanity metrics. It's been designed for founders, not analysts and turns messy customer data into clean customer segments. And lastly, it helps you make fast decisions that impact revenue immediately.

OceanaCDP is the result of 14 years of watching ecommerce founders waste time, money, and opportunity because they lacked the right insights. Every feature comes from real experience, real clients, and real problems that needed solving.

This is why I built OceanaCDP and why it’s designed to finally give Shopify brands the clarity they’ve been missing.

Start your journey with OceanaCDP