What is Customer Data Platform (CDP)?
A platform that unifies customer data from multiple sources into a single, persistent profile.
Definition
A customer data platform collects first-party data from your website, CRM, email tools, support tickets, and other touchpoints, then stitches it together into one record per person. Unlike a data warehouse, a CDP is built for activation. It's designed so marketing and sales teams can segment audiences and trigger campaigns without writing SQL or waiting on an analyst.
Why It Matters
Without a CDP, customer data lives in silos. Marketing sees email engagement, sales sees CRM activity, and support sees tickets, but nobody has the full picture. That fragmentation leads to duplicate outreach, conflicting messages, and missed upsell signals. A CDP gives every team the same unified view so they can act on it.
Example
A B2B SaaS company connects HubSpot, Intercom, Stripe, and their product database to Hightouch. When a free-tier user hits a usage threshold and also opens a pricing email, the CDP creates a unified signal that triggers a sales alert and moves the account into a targeted ad audience.