Customer Data Platform (CDP)

A customer data platform (CDP) is infrastructure that collects user and event data from your app, website, and backend, unifies it into a persistent per-customer profile, and forwards it to the downstream tools that need it — analytics, email, ads, support, and your warehouse. Segment, RudderStack, and mParticle are the reference examples. The core value for builders is instrument once, send everywhere: you fire a single `Order Completed` event, and the CDP fans it out to Mixpanel, your ad pixels, and Snowflake, so adding a new tool no longer means a new engineering ticket. CDPs also handle identity resolution, stitching anonymous and logged-in activity into one profile. Practical note: two flavors exist — packaged CDPs that store the data, and warehouse-native (composite) CDPs that leave data in your warehouse and activate it via reverse ETL. For early-stage teams the packaged route is faster; once your warehouse is the source of truth, the composite approach avoids paying to duplicate it.