A central repository that aggregates an organization’s customer-specific data and makes that data available to “downstream” applications that need that data in order to perform specific tasks. The type of data that’s collected in a CDP is usually dependent on what the merchant wants to collect and what they have access to. The types of data that would typically be stored in a CDP include customer website activity, customer social media activity (as it relates to the merchant), customer data from backend systems like ERPs and CRMs. Modern CDPs generally have pre-built connectors (API-based) to allow for integrations with Cloud-based systems. Additionally, CDPs help to facilitate the flow of information from the CDP to other systems that need the data (e.g. a marketing automation platform may utilize data from a CDP to deliver highly personalized messaging to a customer).
