Martech, explained · CDP architectures · 2:15
Can your warehouse replace your CDP?
Snowflake, Databricks or BigQuery as a CDP: which jobs move, and which stay
The short answer
A warehouse such as Snowflake, Databricks or BigQuery can take on two of a CDP's four jobs: collecting events and unifying them into one customer. Segmenting and activating still need a tool or your data team, which together makes a composable CDP. So it can become the center of a CDP; who does the other jobs is the real decision.
Questions this answers
Which CDP jobs can a warehouse take on?
Collect and unify. Every event can land there, and the rules that join an email, a cookie and a device into one customer can run there too.
What still needs another tool?
Segment and activate. Marketers need a way to build segments without writing SQL, and someone has to sync them to email, ads and the website.
Can segment and activate run inside the warehouse?
Increasingly, yes. They now come as apps that run inside your own warehouse account, such as Snowflake Native Apps, and some warehouse vendors build their own. Your data stays where it is, but someone still has to own the two jobs.
Is a warehouse fast enough?
For tomorrow's email, yes. Syncs out of a warehouse can run every few minutes, but every run costs compute, so most run every few hours. That is too late for a cart abandoned a minute ago, which is why some stacks add a fast lane, based on David Chan's Dual Zone model.
Is your warehouse ready to be the center?
Composable treated warehouse maturity as the starting line. For most teams it is still the finish line.
Transcript
Every chapter as text. Click a time to play the film from there.
0:00 Intro
Most of your customer data sits in a warehouse or a lakehouse already. So why pay for a CDP as well?
0:11 A CDP is four jobs
Start with what a CDP is. Not a box, but four jobs: collect, unify, segment and activate. In a packaged CDP, one vendor does all four, inside one product.
0:25 What the warehouse takes on
Put the warehouse in the middle, and it takes on the first two. Every event arrives there, and the rules that join an email, a cookie and a device into one customer can run there too.
0:37 The jobs that stay
But segment and activate don't go away. Marketers still need a way to build a segment without writing SQL, and someone still has to sync it out to email, ads and the website. That's another tool, or it's your data team.
0:52 Inside the warehouse
The warehouse vendors want those two jobs as well. Segment and activate now come as apps that run inside your own warehouse account, and some warehouses build their own. Your data stays where it is. That changes where the jobs run. It doesn't change who has to own them.
1:10 That's a composable CDP
Built that way, it has a name: a composable CDP. Saying composable won is not the same as saying you don't need a CDP. The four jobs are all still there. You just own the wiring between them.
1:25 The speed wall
Then there's speed.
Syncs out of a warehouse can run every few minutes, but every run costs compute, so most run every few hours.
That's fine for tomorrow's email, but too late for a cart abandoned a minute ago.
That's why some stacks add a fast lane beside the warehouse, based on David Chan's Dual Zone model.
1:47 Is your warehouse ready?
And all of this assumes the warehouse is ready. Composable treated warehouse maturity as the starting line. For most teams it's the finish line, and they haven't reached it yet.
1:58 The answer
So, can your warehouse replace your CDP? It can become the center of one. Who does the other jobs is the real decision.
See each model step by step at Martech Stack Builder, or build your own.
Read more
The articles this film is drawn from.