A system that collects and unifies customer data from multiple sources into persistent customer profiles.
A marketing technology foundation for segmentation, measurement, and personalization.
Short and sweet:
A system that collects and unifies customer data from multiple sources into persistent customer profiles.
A marketing technology foundation for segmentation, measurement, and personalization.
See also: First-Party Data, CRM, Personalization
A customer data platform, or CDP, unifies customer information collected from multiple sources, like a website, app, email platform, and point of sale, into a single, persistent profile for each individual rather than scattered records across disconnected systems. This unified view lets marketing teams personalize messaging and build segments based on a person’s complete history, not just their behavior within one channel. Unlike a standard CRM, a CDP is built specifically to ingest data at scale and make it usable for marketing activation in near real time.
Segment, now owned by Twilio, functions as a customer data platform for thousands of companies, stitching together website clicks, app events, and purchase history into one unified profile per person.
A retailer like Sephora uses this kind of platform to merge in-store purchase records with online browsing behavior, so a single customer profile follows a shopper whether they’re in an app or a physical location.
Tealium and Salesforce both offer enterprise versions of this technology, letting large brands combine data from email, advertising, and customer service tools into a single source of truth.
