Customer Data Platform (CDP)
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is software that collects and unifies customer data from many sources (website, app, CRM, email, and more) into a single, persistent profile for each person. It then makes those unified profiles available to other marketing, analytics, and advertising tools.
CDPs help marketers build a single view of the customer, power segmentation and personalization, and keep activation tools in sync. Unlike a CRM, which is built around manual sales workflows, a CDP focuses on automatically ingesting and resolving behavioral and first-party data at scale. Examples include Segment, mParticle, and Tealium.
A common pitfall is treating a CDP as a quick fix for messy data; if source systems send inconsistent identifiers, identity resolution suffers. Clear identity strategy, governance, and consent handling are essential for trustworthy profiles.
Last updated: 14 June 2026