{"id":7008,"date":"2022-07-12T09:48:27","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T02:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adtek.agency\/customer-data-platform-cdp-guide\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T22:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T15:54:13","slug":"customer-data-platform-cdp-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adtek.agency\/en\/customer-data-platform-cdp-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything about CDPs: customer data in the age of digital transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated on October 19, 2026: data reviewed and updated.<\/em><\/p>\n

Everything about customer data platforms (CDPs): customer data in the age of digital transformation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The customer data platform (CDP) is currently getting a great deal of attention as businesses go through digital transformation. But is a CDP actually a useful system for managing data and for driving your marketing activities? Let’s explore what a CDP is, together with Adtek, in the article below.<\/p>\n

Background<\/b><\/h2>\n

In sales and marketing, data also plays a part in steering the actions you take. The information you hold about your target audience is a key factor in guiding how you target people, how you reach them and how you generate potential customers from them.<\/p>\n

The question, then, is where we can collect high-quality data in the first place, and how you should store that data once you have it. You could buy a list of leads (at the risk of the information being out of date), or build an in-house data research team (an approach that is fairly expensive and slow). Good research can help you gather a lot of information from many different sources, but then you run into a different problem: how do you turn all of that information into one unified data record?<\/p>\n

Both of these ways of collecting and storing data have their benefits. But there are now some newer ways to collect data automatically, unify that data and build an individual data profile for each and every one of your customers. This is where the customer data platform (CDP) comes in, to help businesses reach that goal.<\/p>\n

What is a customer data platform (CDP)?<\/b><\/h2>\n

A customer data platform (CDP) is an interactive database that collects customers’ sales data and their related behavioral data, and uses that data to extend and further develop an individual data profile for each person.<\/p>\n

The software can collect data from channels such as the web, apps, digital assistants and marketing clouds. It gathers demographic data, psychographic data, behavioral data, firmographic (business segment) data and transactional data. Most importantly, the data must be collected lawfully (with the customer’s consent) and kept continuously up to date.<\/p>\n

A customer data platform gives you a better understanding of both your existing customers and your potential customers. It lets you build hyper-personalized marketing and sales campaigns, it links new data with the data you already hold, and it is usually compatible with the tools you already use.<\/p>\n

A CDP acts as a central home for customer data, so that marketing, sales and customer service can be brought together to serve the customer. It works by collecting data from many different sources, such as the brand’s social media accounts, its website analytics, live chat events and so on.<\/p>\n

You should build and use a customer data platform to market more relevantly and to understand clearly what your customers want. You can also save time and stop wasting money on sales and marketing efforts that do not reach the right people. Instead of guessing, you will have accurate buyer personas to guide your advertising, your sales staff and your other departments.<\/p>\n

Common types of CDPs today<\/b><\/h2>\n

There are countless CDPs out there, built for businesses of every type and every size. They are classified by various vendors, by Gartner, and by the CDP Institute, a vendor-neutral organization for the CDP industry. Understanding your specific goals and your usage requirements is essential before you consider which packaged solution could be the right candidate to join the tech stack you use to manage customer data and marketing.<\/p>\n

Data CDPs<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

These systems collect customer data from source systems, link the data to customer identities and store the results in a database that external systems can access. This is the minimum set of functions a system needs in order to meet the definition of a CDP. In practice, these systems can also extract audience segments and send them on to external systems. Systems in this category often use specialized technologies to manage and access data. Some of them started out as tag management systems or website analytics systems and still keep that legacy business running alongside the CDP.<\/p>\n

Marketing campaign CDPs<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

These systems provide data assembly, analytics and customer treatments. What sets them apart from simple segmentation is that the system can assign different treatments to different individuals within the same segment. A treatment might be a personalized message, an outbound marketing campaign, a real-time interaction, or a product or content recommendation. They usually also include orchestration, coordinating these customer treatments across the different channels.<\/p>\n

Analytics CDPs<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

These systems provide assembled data along with analytics applications. The applications include customer segmentation and sometimes extend to machine learning, predictive modeling, revenue attribution and journey mapping. These systems also often automate the distribution of data to other systems.<\/p>\n

Delivery CDPs<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

These systems provide assembled data, analytics, customer treatments and message delivery. That delivery can run through email, the website, mobile apps, CRM or advertising. Products in this category usually started as delivery systems and added CDP functions later.<\/p>\n

Standalone CDPs vs CDPs combined with marketing automation<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

The main difference between CDP vendors is whether they offer a CDP on its own or a CDP combined with other solutions. It is important to understand exactly what your vendor is offering you, because this distinction can lead to a big difference in how your business ends up using its CDP.<\/p>\n