How To Define Customer Data Platform Use Cases In 2025

Use Cases: The First Step In Martech Investment

Martech utilisation rates are dismal. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are a prime example. Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for CDPs survey found that only 22% of marketers reported high CDP utilisation. This is up from 17% in 2024, but still below Gartner’s across-the-board utilisation rate estimate of 33%.

CDPs have been the hot topic for years. So why does the shine seem to come off post-purchase?

One reason (among many) is that organisations buy new platforms without defining their customer data platform use cases up front. They get excited by features and forget to ask the all-important question: What is a CDP used for?

Another way to phrase the question is: What value will this platform bring to my business and customers?

Two Views on Customer Data Platform Use Cases

A CDP’s main job has historically been to build unified customer profiles and provide useful data. CDPs receive bits and pieces from all your customer touchpoints and interactions, and compile one neat, reliable picture of each customer*.

So, it’s no surprise that data assembly is the most common CDP use case. It’s arguably the only use case if we’re talking about pure-play CDPs. The only thing they do is collect and standardise customer data to create a single source of truth. But there are two things you need to know to understand customer data platform use cases in 2025:

1. CDPs are evolving: Most platforms have functionality beyond data assembly, with a lot of variation across the landscape.
2. CDPs never exist in isolation: They provide usable data to other platforms (engagement, analytics, journey orchestration, ad markets) through APIs and custom integrations.

This means that from the perspective of investing in CDPs to bridge a capability gap, the first answer is always data assembly. If we’re talking about functionality, most marketers invest in CDPs to help corral and collate audience data. 

However, it also means customer data platforms have several other use cases:

• Real-time interactions: Minimising delays between data ingestion and action.
• Journey orchestration: Sending actionable data to orchestration tools for smooth omnichannel experiences.
• Outbound campaigns: Providing the data for targeted marketing campaigns.
• Analytics: Furnishing analytics and measurement tools with clean, structured data.
• Activation (especially personalisation): Making customer data accessible and usable across various marketing and customer engagement platforms.

All these other use cases rely on getting the data right, which helps to explain the popularity of CDPs.

*Or client, deviceID, prospect, etc. CDPs can be used for known and unknown audiences.

Another Perspective On CDP Use Cases

Let’s flip the question. Why is data assembly important? In most cases, the answer is “to get a better understanding of our customers”. This shifts the focus from capability use cases to business goal use cases.

With a clearer understanding of customer behaviour and preferences, marketers become more effective. The most common goal-oriented customer data platform use cases revolve around existing customers:

• Customer value: Combining purchase history with behavioural insights to identify cross- and up-selling opportunities.
• Retention: Standardising data across purchase history, engagement, and other signals, making it easier to identify customers at risk of churning.

There are other use cases that tend to be secondary:

• Acquisition: Using lookalike modelling or pushing audiences into digital ad platforms.
• Awareness: Usually a side-effect or a step towards acquisition; CDPs can support awareness campaigns, but it’s never the main event.
• Expense reduction: By improving data quality and automating processes, CDPs can help reduce wasted spend and manual work.

How To Clarify Your Customer Data Platform Use Case

What all these use cases across both perspectives have in common is a clear, cohesive, and progressive understanding of individuals. How you translate that understanding into action depends on your business goals.

Ultimately, this means the argument for investing in a CDP rests on your requirements for a unified customer database. Don’t let shiny features or promises of personalisation at scale distract you from the real value of a CDP: gathering data from all touchpoints and interactions, and making it usable.

Blurred Lines: The State of CDPs in 2025

Globally, the CDP market is projected to grow by roughly 4x between 2024 and 2028, to over £21B ($28B). While much of that growth will come from established players expanding into new markets, a good chunk will come from emerging platforms that break the traditional mould of data assembly platforms.

Gartner’s prediction for 2028 is that the data management markets (Including storage, management, activation, analysis, and compliance) will converge into a single market enabled by AI and data fabric. CDP as a tech category could even cease to exist as data collection and identity resolution become standard features in platforms that personalise experiences or orchestrate journeys.

All of this begs the question: What is a CDP used for in 2025?

What Is A CDP Really Used For?

If you Google “customer data platform use cases,” you’ll find lists of 5-10 use cases. Most lists start out ok, focusing on customer understanding. But they veer off quickly into areas like personalisation at scale, customer journey tracking, marketing process automation, and even omnichannel engagement.

These aren’t CDP use cases. What they are is a reflection of the confusion that tends to cloud martech investments.

As vendors add features outside the core CDP functionality, especially in customer engagement, the definition is blurring. We’re also seeing vendors badge their offerings as CDPs despite focusing more on activation than aggregation.

Despite all this, the core function of a CDP hasn’t changed. CDPs are primarily good at collating data and resolving customer profiles.

In short, a CDP is for understanding your customers. It’s the right tool for that job. For everything else, the value equation is less stable.

This isn’t to say that CDPs shouldn’t ship with additional tools pre-configured. Engagement, analytics, reporting, tracking, outreach, and orchestration are all common in modern “CDPs”.

But if you’re putting together an RFP on the basis of using a CDP for real-time personalisation or dynamic journey orchestration rather than understanding your customers, you’ve missed a step.

Curveball: Do You Actually Need a CDP?

Interrogating your requirements could also lead you to realise that a CDP isn’t the right fit. Maybe you have a decent data warehouse with unused identity resolution features. Maybe your organisational processes are letting you down. Maybe you’re mixing up analytics with customer understanding.

There’s no doubt that a CDP aligned with business goals will usually deliver strong ROI. Up to 800% in some cases, and 79% of new adopters see ROI within 12 months.
Still, your requirements should be the basis for martech investments. Not industry hype or flashy features. It’s worth spending a little extra time to determine whether a CDP is the best solution. It could mean saving a lot of money on martech you won’t use.

What Happens When You Nail the Customer Data Platform Use Case Question

Our client Vertu Motors is a prime example of why customer data platform use cases matter. The company tried and failed twice to implement a CDP. The reason? They’d bought a licence without clarifying what the tech would be used for.

It was a costly lesson. Before the third attempt, Vertu did the work to clarify a series of use cases that would ease the customer journey and provide a better experience.

It all started with the need for a single customer view. In other words, data assembly.
Once Vertu’s team had a better understanding of the 4M+ individuals in their database, they could move on to the next use cases:

• Re-engaging customers who didn’t complete a car service booking.
• Optimising ad spending by suppressing people who purchased recently.
• Increasing campaign throughput without adding to headcount or staff hours.

Vertu rolled out the first CDP-enabled activities in December 2024. In January 2025, they made enough profit to cover the entire cost of the CDP project. If that doesn’t demonstrate the power of purpose in CDP projects, nothing does.

What This All Means For Your CDP Project

In essence, successful CDP projects hinge on clearly defining why you need one in the first place. That definition will always involve assembling data to better understand your customers.

When you start by clearly defining your customer data platform use case, you focus on the business benefits of establishing a robust data assembly process. Whatever comes next – real-time interactions, orchestrated customer journeys, targeted outbound campaigns, personalisation at scale – can only function with that foundation in place.

By prioritising clarity of purpose over flashy features, you’ll not only ensure a more successful CDP implementation but also unlock the true potential of your customer data to drive tangible business growth.