customer data platform - Martech Therapy (Page 2)

If CDPs are dead, they’ve donated their organs...

Despite the headlines, Customer Data Platforms aren’t dead. Their best parts now power engagement platforms and data warehouses. This article explains why CDPs still matter, especially for mid-market businesses driving the next wave of customer data innovation.

Every week a new headline drops like a bomb. This company's app just killed another company's app, blew up something else, or declared the death of a technology category. As a military veteran, I find it strange how casually our industry borrows the language of conflict. There’s enough of that in real life.

Take Customer Data Platforms. Depending on who you follow, CDPs are either dead, obsolete, or absorbed beyond recognition. But as Brian Blessed once roared in Flash Gordon, “GORDON’S ALIVE!”

If he worked in martech, he’d be shouting, “CDP’S ARE ALIVE!”

Ten reasons to bring in outside expertise for your CDP RFP

...and why your team will thank you.

I’ll be honest, I usually dislike “top ten” style articles. They tend to oversimplify complex decisions and make it sound like ticking boxes will magically solve everything. But after publishing my last three pieces, on dating vendors, reference calls, and surviving the RFP process, I kept hearing the same question: why bring in outside help at all?

So, against my better instincts, here’s a list. Not because every company will face all ten of these issues, but because most will recognize at least a few of them. And if even one sounds true to you, it might be

From particle physics to privacy-first analytics

Mitzu's István Mészáros explains why the future of Martech runs on composable data

From CERN’s particle accelerators to the messy world of marketing data, István Mészáros has seen it all. In this episode of Couch Confidentials, we trace his path from working on the Large Hadron Collider to building Mitzu, a startup rethinking how companies approach composable analytics.

We talk about why centralizing KPIs matters more than shiny dashboards, how enterprise data culture often lags behind the technology, and why privacy is becoming as big a driver as scale.

I loved how István described the “people-pleaser” instinct that shaped his career, always chasing faster answers for colleagues, which eventually grew into a

Why skipping the RFP isn’t always an option and how to avoid the biggest traps

Four practical steps that help teams protect themselves when the process can’t be avoided

If you have been following my latest articles, The CDP RFP Dating Game and The Reference Call That Changed Everything, you will understand this article even more. This article, a follow-up in a sense, eventhough my goal was not to make a series, was partly inspired by Tealium’s Jay Calavas comment on my LinkedIn post, stating:

“Skip the RFP and focus on use cases and measurable outcomes!”

And I’ll be frank, Jay is right: use cases should lead. I’ve even worked on projects where we skipped the RFP entirely and validated tools

The reference call that changed everything

A reminder, based on a true story, that even when teams do their homework, the CDP market still stacks the deck, and what to do about it.

Last week, after publishing The CDP Dating Game, my LinkedIn inbox lit up, and the number of subscribers to this Substack jumped. Marketers on the brand side reached out privately with a mix of relief and frustration. Heck, I even spoke to a few at the Martech World Forum who reacted in the same manner. Relief that someone had finally put words to what they’d been experiencing. Frustration that they’re stuck in a market where even defining what a CDP is has become an impossible task.

One marketer admitted in confidence that they no longer bother correcting their

Why the next five years of data strategy will make the last look easy

Season 2, Episode 4 of Couch Confidentials with Tealium’s Zack Wenthe

When Zack Wenthe from Tealium told me, “the next five years of data strategy will make the last look like child’s play”, I felt both intrigued and uneasy. Intrigued because Zack has been around long enough in the CDP world to know what he’s talking about. Uneasy because if the last few years already left most teams exhausted, what’s coming next?

We circled around two big forces → privacy and AI. Not in the shallow “AI will optimize your campaigns” sense, but in the way these forces are already reshaping human behavior. Zack made the point that customers

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