What Is a Customer Data Platform?

A customer data platform (CDP) is a software system that creates unified customer profiles by collecting data from multiple sources and making those profiles available for customer engagement. CDPs help with personalization in a brand’s customer experience (CX) efforts.

Quick links:

What does a CDP do?

What are its benefits?

What are the best CDP platforms?

CDPs vs. other platforms

CDP adoption considerations

With this single comprehensive view of each customer, CDPs empower hyper-personalized messaging and experiences. These tailored engagements drive increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue growth.

If you’re interested in learning more about how a CDP can upgrade your customer data management, let’s talk!

CDP vs CRM: What’s the Difference?

Customer data platforms and customer relationship management systems both help you get a handle on the customer experience. .

A CDP consolidates data sources into one hub, unifying profiles, and powering personalization. CDPs follow a process that:

Collects data
Unifies profiles
Performs segmentation
Allows omnichannel activation
Generates analysis

Like CDPs, a CRM consolidates data to build unified customer profiles. But while CDPs focus specifically on collecting, unifying, and activating customer data, CRMs have a broader purpose.

CRM systems aim to manage all interactions and relationships between a business and its customers, including:

Sales automation
Marketing automation
Customer service capabilities
Reporting and analyzing

Unlike CDP’s more robust analytics, CRM reporting is typically limited to sales metrics, campaign performance, and customer service KPIs. While valuable, this does not provide a complete customer intelligence solution.

What are the benefits of CDPs?

CDPs create a powerful competitive advantage through their ability to unify data for deeper customer insights and coordinated engagement.

Here are some of the most important benefits of CDP adoption:

A 360° customer view. By integrating data from all sources, CDPs break down data silos to build a single panoramic profile for each customer.
Improved personalization. With unified data and machine learning, CDPs deliver dynamic, 1:1 personalization across channels tailored to customers’ behavior, interests, and needs.
More relevant messaging. CDP’s segmentation ability means you can target each customer group with the most relevant messages via their preferred channels and at optimal times.
Omnichannel coordination. CDPs align experiences across channels by linking customer identities and sharing segments.
Enhanced customer experience (CX). CDP’s capabilities combine to provide customers with elevated, seamless experiences that deepen engagement across the entire journey.

What are the Top 10 CDP Platforms?

With the CDP market booming, companies have dozens of solutions to evaluate. While needs vary, these ten leading platforms represent powerful options suitable for many organizations:

Salesforce
Adobe
Segment
Tealium
ActionIQ
AgilOne
BlueConic
Ascent360
mParticle
Zylotech

Salesforce CDP

Salesforce’s CDP is natively integrated across its products like Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Service Cloud. Key features include:

Connected ID for linking identities across devices and channels
Einstein AI and predictive analytics for segmentation and personalization
Customer 360 Audience Builder for unified profiling
Journey Builder for cross-channel campaign orchestration
MuleSoft connectors to pipe data across systems

Salesforce CDP’s downsides are premium pricing and potential vendor lock-in.

Adobe Real-Time CDP

Leveraging Adobe Analytics, Adobe’s CDP focuses on data collection, segmentation, and actionable insights. Key features include:

A broad connector ecosystem bringing data into the Adobe stack
Audience discovery and sharing powered by Adobe Sensei AI
Integration with Adobe campaigns, journey orchestration, and attribution
Data science workspace for analysts
Affordable pricing for mid-market companies

The primary downside to Adobe’s CDP is that tight Adobe integration limits flexibility.

Segment

Segment is a top mid-market choice prized for intuitive implementation and workflows. Key features include:

400+ native connectors to apps, databases, APIs, etc.
A drag-and-drop workflow builder for nontechnical users
Out-of-the-box pipelines for analytics, marketing, and product ops
Developer-friendly extensibility and APIs
Twilio’s acquisition of Segment provides a focus on customer engagement

Segment suffers from a lack of customization that complex enterprises require.

Tealium

Tealium is an enterprise-scale CDP with strong data management and analytics. Key features include:

Collecting, governing, and distributing structured and unstructured data
Machine learning for predictive modeling and analytics
Integration hub to distribute real-time data across systems
More cost-effective enterprise pricing model
New growth capital provided by 2022 IPO

One of Tealium’s downsides is the complexity of its highly-siloed, legacy infrastructures.

ActionIQ

ActionIQ focuses on orchestrating end-to-end customer journeys with capabilities such as:

Artificial intelligence (AI-powered) customer insights for modeling
Workflow automation based on predictive analytics
Tight integration with Braze for engagement
Ability to handle complex enterprise needs

ActionIQ’s main drawback is that it requires significant IT involvement.

AgilOne

AgilOne specializes in predictive analytics and machine learning with features such as:

Predictive scoring and customer segmentation
Personalized recommendations and offers
Real-time engagement execution
Performance focused analytics

AgileOne does, however, have limited integrations outside of marketing.

BlueConic

BlueConic is a low-cost SaaS alternative suited for constrained teams. Notable features include:

Cloud-based software with rapid deployment
Minimal IT involvement required
Basic segmentation and personalization tools
Simple onboarding and usability

BlueConic’s downside is its lack of advanced analytics capabilities.

Ascent360 CDP

Part of its customer engagement suite, Ascent360’s CDP offers key advantages like:

Comparatively budget-friendly pricing
Natively integrated modules and touchpoints
Omnichannel analytics and optimization
More hands-on configuration requirements
Smaller provider with responsive support

Ascent360’s primary drawback is that, as a smaller provider, it has support limitations.

mParticle CDP

mParticle CDP specializes in multichannel data collection and routing. Its features include:

300+ pre-built integrations and connectors
Central nervous system for martech stacks
Strong identity resolution capabilities
Focuses on transporting data across systems

mPArticle CDP currently lacks downstream analytics and activation tools.

Zylotech

Zylotech is an emerging CDP focused on ease of use. Its notable features include:

Simple 5-step workflow for implementation
Intuitive, arcing, customer-journey visualization
Native Salesforce integration and optimization
Scaling company with 50% ARR growth

Zylotech is a good starter CDP, but functionality is limited.

How Are CDPs Different from Other Data Platforms?

CDPs have emerged as a new marketing technology category with a specific focus on unifying customer data for activation. This can lead to some confusion around how CDPs differ from other common platforms such as customer relationship management platforms (CRM), data management platforms (DMP), and data warehouses (DWH).

While CDPs offer some overlapping capabilities, their core function is distinctly different. CRM platforms are optimized for managing customer interactions and transactions. Importantly, they track sales activity support cases, product purchases, and more. However, CRM data is limited to first-party data and cannot easily be augmented to create unified customer profiles.

DMPs organize audiences into marketable segments for advertising and attribution analysis. They aggregate online and offline data to build audiences for digital advertising and attribution analysis. However, DMPs lack the identity resolution to connect cross-channel data fragmentations back to real customers. Unlike CRMs, DMPs work with second and third-party data and can segment anonymous customer IDs.

DWHs are centralized repositories focused on data ingestion, management, and reporting. They can retrieve customer data to generate holistic business insights via analytics, visualizations, and dashboards. However, DWHs require greater native design focused on bidirectional data distribution in order to optimize customer engagement.

CDPs are purpose-built to act as a continuously updated database for customers. They ingest data from all sources, resolve identities, and enrich profiles. This unified view fills critical gaps left by other platform types.

Perhaps most importantly, CDPs activate data across channels to orchestrate personalized experiences that drive growth. While CDPs can complement all these other platforms, they are uniquely positioned to maximize the value of customer data.

CDP Adoption Considerations

CDP adoption has tremendous potential but also major implications for organizations.

Some major considerations companies may face when adopting a CDP include:

Privacy and data governance
Integration with existing tech stacks
Change management requirements

Privacy and Data Governance

As customer data consolidators, CDPs require rigorous data security and privacy protocols to maintain compliance and prevent misuse. CDP vendors should provide transparency in their data handling practices to maintain customer privacy. Companies need to ensure CDP deployment adheres to internal and external data governance policies.

Integration with Existing Tech Stack

CDPs must interconnect with other core platforms like CRMs, analytics, and marketing automation. Prioritizing CDP integrations and prebuilt connectors for current systems simplifies deployment. API flexibility is key for integrating legacy and emerging tools over time as tech stacks evolve.

Some CDPs allow for custom integrations to legacy or in-house built systems containing valuable customer data.

Change Management Requirements

CDPs impact processes and roles across IT, marketing teams, products, and analytics. Cross-functional collaboration is required for optimizing capabilities. Companies should properly train and engage in knowledge sharing to maximize a CDP’s value. Change management should be continual as capabilities scale up.

CDP Examples

CDPs empower brands to truly personalize engagement by consolidating data into unified customer profiles. Here are three impactful examples:

Spotify’s CDP parses the listening habits and favorite artists of its nearly 200 million users. This allows serving up personalized playlists and recommendations that feel tailor-made for each subscriber’s tastes. The result: over 30% of listening now happens through Spotify’s own personalized playlists.
Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus uses its CDP to remember high-spending customers across visits. Store associates greet VIPs by name and offer personalized product suggestions based on customer purchase history and preferences. This white-glove service delights their top-tier clientele.
Charity: water, a nonprofit, employs its CDP to analyze donors’ giving history, engagement, and demographics. When a supporter’s birthday arrives, the CDP automatically triggers a personalized matching gift campaign. This results in a 2x higher response rate compared to generic outreach.

How Symplicity Can Help with CDP Implementation

We’re here to help you supercharge your CX program, including CDP assessment and implementation. We’re happy to help with any or all of the following:

Conduct CDP readiness assessments
Implement leading CDP solutions
Measure the CX impact
Ensure you’re getting the very best solutions for the very best price

At Symplicity, we take a vendor-neutral approach, carefully analyzing your business requirements, budget, and industry to identify the ideal solution for your needs.

We understand that every organization has unique priorities and challenges, which is why we offer a customized approach to match you with the perfect solution. We connect you with the best CX solutions by thoroughly evaluating providers based on their expertise, track record, and ability to meet your specific requirements.

With our expertise, guidance, and ongoing support, we ensure your CX implementation is seamless and efficient and provides peace of mind that your devices and data are secure.

We can also help you with your managed IT, business intelligence, SIP trunking, business automation, disaster recovery, and mobile device management needs. See our solutions page for the full range of services we offer.

CDP FAQ

Who uses a customer data platform?

A wide range of businesses use customer data platforms, including consumer brands, media companies, retailers, financial services, travel, nonprofits, and more. Typically, medium to large companies with complex data environments adopt CDPs to unify their customer data and power personalized engagement.

Early adopters have been brands focused on digital experiences, but legacy enterprises also implement CDPs to modernize their technology stack.

What are the 4 types of customer data?

The four main types of customer data are:

Demographic data like age, location, gender, income level, education, etc.
Customer behavioral data including purchase history, website activity, app usage, and engagement across channels
Attitudinal data from surveys, feedback, preferences, interests, and communication content
Operational data such as customer support interactions, product registrations, customer loyalty program status