Skip to Content

Martech Therapy

Posts on page 6

Previous Posts
marketing technology

The real battle for CDP relevance

The real battle for CDP relevance

Rethinking the Quadrant / Part 2: When definitions stop matching reality

If you follow the CDP Institute’s definition, there are four non-negotiable traits for a platform to be considered a Customer Data Platform. But there’s a huge problem. Those traits are no longer exclusive to CDPs. Customer Engagement Platforms like Braze, Bloomreach, Customer.io, Klaviyo, and ZEPIC, or composable vendors like Hightouch, are ticking the same boxes. Some were never meant to be in the CDP category, yet they’re already competing for the same budget lines.

It’s too late to say that it is purely theoretical. We have already crossed that bridge. It’s what I see

The real battle for CDP relevance Read More
marketing technology

Is it all a magical illusion?

Is it all a magical illusion?

Rethinking the Quadrant / Part 1: Why the Magic Quadrant no longer reflects CDP reality

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is treated like gospel in boardrooms from Dubai to Düsseldorf. A single position in that familiar matrix can nudge millions in Martech budgets from one vendor to another. The thing to keep in mind is that the Quadrant doesn’t measure what many buyers think it does. It rewards size, vision, and analyst choreography, and not necessarily real-world usability, implementation speed, or practitioner satisfaction. It reflects power structures, and rarely performance.

This first part in the Rethinking the Quadrant series takes aim at the mechanics behind those polished charts and asks a blunt question:

What kind
Is it all a magical illusion? Read More
marketing technology

What are we even buying?

What are we even buying?

Multi CDP Part 4: The CDP category reckoning is nigh

Let’s be honest with ourselves, this was never just about software.

If you’ve made it through parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series, you’ve seen how most organizations don’t run on a single CDP, but on a patchwork of tools that reflect team priorities, governance gaps, and the relentless pressure to just keep moving.

The industry has started catching on. In the July 2025 CDP Institute Industry Update, David Raab offered a sharp summary of where we’ve landed:

“The term CDP has become a catch-all that includes everything from CRM-lite orchestration tools to complex,
What are we even buying? Read More
digital transformation

Your CDP is more than just a platform

Your CDP is more than just a platform

Why CDP projects unravel and what they reveal about your real digital transformation readiness

I just got back from a family trip to Paris, which was mostly great except for the hour I spent in a queue under the Eiffel Tower with my daughter constantly requesting more screentime on her phone, my wife and son (afraid of heights… like me) trying to find shade at a local cafe, and my brain, entirely on its own, thinking about CDPs and digital transformation. Because of course it did.

That moment, standing between chaos and culture, reminded me that CDP implementations are like tiny, well-lit previews of the digital transformation mess most companies are too scared to

Your CDP is more than just a platform Read More
marketing technology

Who’s actually in charge?

Who’s actually in charge?

Multi CDP Part 3: When every team owns a piece, but no one owns the whole

You can tell a lot about a company by how it answers one deceptively simple question: Who owns the CDP?

Not the license. Not the roadmap. The actual thing. The model that sits between what marketing wants and what the data team tolerates. The implementation that touches consent flags, event structures, identity graphs, and half a dozen teams trying to ship something yesterday. The reality is that ownership, when it exists, is rarely stable. It shifts and changes shape over time as initiatives develop, teams restructure, or priorities float between the many others on people’s lists.

Across the last

Who’s actually in charge? Read More
marketing technology

Same stack, different worlds

Same stack, different worlds

Multi CDP Part 2: Why Multi-CDP setups reflect team reality and not just tech debt

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “We already have a CDP,” it’s worth asking two questions:

  1. What exactly do you mean by CDP?
  2. And who is “we” in this scenario?

Because most of the time, what one team considers the CDP is just a feature to another. And what’s sold as a single platform rarely acts like one across an entire company.

This is where David Chan’s Dual Zone model starts to feel less like a theory and more like an MRI. The Data Zone and the Engagement Zone reflect how stacks are split in real

Same stack, different worlds Read More
Load More You've reached the end of the list
© Martech Therapy