What is a CDP, and why do marketers need one?

A customer data platform (CDP) unifies your customer data. It brings your website, CRM, email, mobile app, commerce, service interactions, and more into a single, real-time profile for every customer. For marketers, that means you always know who you’re talking to: what they’ve purchased, what they’ve browsed, what they’ve opened, and what they’re interested in right now. With that foundation, your team and your AI agents can build smarter audiences, personalise every experience, and activate across every channel without waiting on IT or a data analyst.

How does the Salesforce CDP help me build and activate audiences faster?

Instead of waiting days for an IT ticket or manually uploading lists, you can describe the audience you want in plain language and Agentforce builds the precise segment for you using real-time data across every customer signal. No SQL required. Audiences refresh automatically as customer behaviour changes, so you’re always marketing to who your customers are right now, not who they were when your campaign launched.

How can data help marketers solve key business challenges?

A unified data foundation makes your customer data actually usable. That looks like raising conversion rates with real-time segmentation and personalisation, improving customer lifetime value with AI-powered next-best-action recommendations, and driving upsell and cross-sell with connected journeys that respond to live intent signals.

How is the Salesforce CDP different from just using our existing data warehouse?

Your data warehouse is a system of insight, which is great for analysis. The Salesforce CDP is a system of activation. It takes that data and puts it to work across campaigns, AI agents, personalisation, and paid media in real time. And with Zero Copy, your data stays exactly where it already lives (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) meaning no movement, no duplication, no compliance risk. You get activation without the overhead.

Can the Salesforce CDP connect to our existing data tools and ad platforms?

Yes, and it can even do it without moving your data. Zero Copy connects directly to Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Databricks, and 100+ other sources in place. On the activation side, you can push consented first-party audiences directly to Google, Meta, Amazon Ads, LinkedIn, The Trade Desk, and CTV partners through native connectors. Your data powers every channel, all from one place.

Data 360 is a CDP, but one that goes far beyond your average data storage solution. It delivers all the traditional CDP benefits like identity resolution, audience segmentation, cross-channel activation. It’s also the shared data foundation for every Agentforce agent across marketing, sales, service, and commerce. For marketers, that means your campaigns run on the same customer truth that your service team and AI agents use.

How does the Salesforce CDP work with Marketing Cloud Next?

The Salesforce CDP (Data 360) is built directly into Marketing Cloud Next. It’s not a separate integration. Every audience you build, every journey you launch, and every AI agent you deploy runs on the same unified customer profile. Your data is always ready to activate, and every marketing action automatically stays connected to what’s happening across sales, service, and commerce.