Comparing the best CDPs for Snowflake

You have a stockpile of data from a cloud data platform like Snowflake. Now, you’re ready to drive personalized marketing for your customers. But how do you translate the data from your CDW into actionable campaigns? Simple: with a CDP.

There are multiple ways companies use CDPs. Some install a packaged CDP and integrate their Snowflake data into the CDP, while others employ a composable CDP approach — essentially bringing the CDP to Snowflake. 

Companies can also choose a two-pronged approach with a reverse-ETL tool for data management, and then employ a campaign or marketing-focused CDP for activation. What's right for a given organization depends on factors we can use this article to explain.

But with 76% of customers preferring brands that personalize their marketing, you’ll be expected to segment diverse audiences and run complex omnichannel campaigns to meet these demands. The world is increasingly data-driven, and content delivery platforms can help us turn data into actionable insights. CDPs create harmony from disorganized data noise.

Let’s walk you through how you select a CDP — one that checks all the boxes without skimping on any must-have features, so you can breeze through complex data tasks while sparing yourself time for the other responsibilities on your to-do list.

The first step? Understanding your cloud data platform. Here’s why Snowflake has so many competitive CDP options, but only Simon is the one that fully integrates and connects with it.

Why Snowflake for CDPs?

Snowflake is popular, both with customers and CDPs, for a few key reasons:

• Snowflake is one of the biggest data platforms in the business, cloud-agnostic, and available for Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. This gives it an edge in scalability. 
• Being cloud-based and with a real-time connection to a CDP means Snowflake won’t interfere with computer performance. It’s known for some of the fastest queries in the data warehouse business, and it’s uniquely aligned to power marketing use cases
• Snowflake is also airtight when it comes to security. It offers encryption in transit and at rest and grants access control to its users.

These reasons are why it’s one of the most highly recommended data platforms out there. And, coincidentally, these are all reasons Snowflake plays nicely with CDPs. 

CDPs are a natural match for a cloud data platform like Snowflake that is scalable and accessible for a diverse team with varying levels of technical know-how. Snowflake gives you real-time access to data from all the popular cloud platforms — then it’s a CDP’s job to unify and/or activate that data.

Choosing the right CDP for Snowflake

There’s no shortage of CDP options out there. The issue is finding one that will meet your specific needs with quick, no-fuss integration. Two huge considerations that factor into your decision are:

1. How much end-to-end marketing functionally do you need your CDP to support?
2. Do you care if it’s embedded into Snowflake?

Additionally, when you’re choosing a CDP, you’ll also need to consider:

• Your primary end user — is it your data engineers, your marketers, your customers? How about all three?
• Your primary use case — are you looking to organize, centralize, consolidate, move, route, or model your data?
• Building to last — is your CDP scalable and secure?

Let’s define these points and drill them down further to help you make an informed decision.

Key features to consider when choosing a CDP for Snowflake

Data ingestion and integration

CDPs are supposed to centralize data, right? How they do that depends on the product you choose. If you pick a CDP that won’t centralize all data from your stack, you may be stuck pulling information by hand out of your leftover tools. 

An incomplete dataset will leave you manually segmenting audiences or bouncing between tools to activate your campaigns. CDPs should ingest data from internal and external sources in real time; the flow of data should be active.

CDPs can integrate customer data in a few ways:

1. Data from multiple sources is consolidated into one warehouse — your CDW. This consolidated information is served up to you for takeout!
2. A CDP duplicates the data. While the data still exists at its source, it’s copied into your warehouse. This is beneficial if you have multiple tools that are using the same data, because they’ll both have copies. However, this method is messy if you have lots of data sources you need to consolidate!
3. Data is consolidated into your cloud data platform, but isn’t accessible until the end user makes a request. This means the data isn’t always accessible, but it can save you some money if you have large data sets and multiple sources.

Data segmentation and targeting

A good CDP makes your data actionable, but there are nearly endless ways to do that. CDPs can segment by:

• Demographic, such as age or income
• Behaviors, such as website visits or dwell time
• Transactions, such as subscription renewal history or types of product purchase
• Engagement history, such as email open rates
• Channels, such as social media or text
• Lifecycles, such as newbies or product superfans
• Predictive algorithms, like possible churners

And any number of custom rules that you get to dictate. Some CDPs can let you segment by all of these; others are more focused. Better yet, some CDPs like Simon will let you create segments without code, so they’re accessible to all of your teams.

Personalization and activation

If a CDP can help you segment and target your audiences, it’s likely got some recommendations for personalization and activation, too.

Many customer data platforms will let you personalize your messaging based on segmented audiences, so you can send newbies reminders about setting up their accounts or ask your superfans to leave product reviews. CDPs also incorporate generative AI and machine learning to help personalize the customer experience, even when it comes to predicting customer behavior.

With advanced personalization comes advanced activation. Once you’ve segmented audiences by account activity or subscription level, think about how you can engage them to upsell. CDPs can help you send an upsell nudge to an account that hit its monthly subscription cap or encourage a customer who hasn’t logged in over a month with an email reminder.

Analytics and reporting

It would be a shame if all your customer data went to waste in a warehouse. A CDP can wave a wand and whip that data into trend reports, campaign insights, and cutting-edge customer analytics — it will seem like magic.

CDPs can organize data without any of your heavy lifting. Expect a good platform to have a robust dashboard with filters that help you hone in on the metrics you need to do your job.

Scalability and security

We usually think about scalability when it’s too late. After all, we usually aren’t buying the flashiest subscription pan with the highest data cap right out of the gate, are we? But it’s important to know that your CDP can evolve with your company.

When you need a higher data volume, you have the option to up the limit. When you want to integrate a new data source, your CDP is compatible. Nobody has a course fully charted for the future of their business, but if you foresee changes in your data down the line, pick a CDP that’s scalable.

What’s more, security is another feature that we can take for granted. CDPs should ensure data encryption in transit and have access controls. Even more importantly, it should balance marketing team needs with customer privacy. Cloud data can be tricky; consider who owns the cloud security perimeter.

The top CDPs for Snowflake

Based on these criteria, we have some recommendations for CDPs that are a balance of these features and some that excel in their particular capabilities. Some don’t quite fall under the full capability of a CDP, but still help you collect and activate your customer data, which we’ve highlighted below. 

Here are some popular choices that are touted as essential Snowflake companions.

Best for data routing: Segment

If you’ve already done any hunting for a Snowflake CDP, you’ve probably heard of Twilio-owned Segment. Segment is a non-connected Snowflake CDP, but it’s flexible — for enterprises and SMBs, with customers in everything from healthcare to B2B to retail.

When you think about Segment, you probably think of the engineering and data teams that benefit from it. Segment excels at data routing, with a heavy emphasis on thorough documentation for ease of use. If you have a complex ecosystem that will require a thorough setup, Segment will work for you: it has over 450 integrations and is built for complexity.

The catch? Because it’s focused on data routing, it will not maintain Snowflake as your single source of truth, which can still result in disparate data silos.

Another option for data routing: mParticle

mParticle was built to solve a specific (and thorny) issue: engineering and data teams were struggling to integrate data throughout the enterprise. mParticle helps applications transfer data from one another.

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mParticle places great emphasis on data quality and governance. They want to ensure your data is clean and in compliance. If you’re tasked with the tricky ordeal of integrating data across applications, mParticle is worth a look.

Best rETL tool: Hightouch

Although you could argue Hightouch isn’t a “true” CDP, it has some big names in its portfolio: Spotify, PetSmart, and GitLab to name a few. You may notice that these are all enterprise companies, and they’re from diverse backgrounds.

Hightouch, founded by former Segment product leaders, has over 200 tools delivered into data engineers’ and data analysts’ hands. That data — assuming it is already well organized within the data warehouse — can then be further accessed by sales, marketing, and customer success teams’ tools for activation. How is it able to speak to this audience? Being a no-code solution certainly helps.

Hightouch’s features are full service, with action items that drive revenue as opposed to being a CDP that focuses on customer data cleaning and record-keeping.

What’s even bigger than its feature set is its number of integrations. Many customers seek out Hightouch because you need to get your cleaned and prepped Snowflake data sent into one or many of the tools in your current stack. 

Best for marketers: Simon Data

Excuse our humble bid. Simon’s value proposition says it all: it’s a CDP for customer marketers. Simon’s biggest differentiator is the priority given to activating data from a CDW so marketers can use it to run their campaigns. Simon emphasizes quick and robust onboarding so marketing teams can get the insights they need fast.

What’s more, we integrate with over 70 software tools (and are webhook-friendly!) and can help you activate Snowflake data from its platform. Simon Data is Snowflake’s powered by a partner of the year, so marketers can create and sync segments directly in their Snowflake instance. 

Best rETL for B2B SaaS teams: Census

Census is a reverse ETL with a lot of popular sources, and Snowflake is their bread and butter. What sets Census apart from other CDPs is their focus on building for sales and CS in addition to marketing and data teams. The fringe benefits of a CDP are obvious to these teams, but Census speaks directly to them in much of their messaging.

Census offers “Census Embedded,” their built-in rETL tool designed with developers in mind. According to their site, “Census Embedded enables you to instantly connect to 200+ SaaS tools and data sources, without the burden of managing pipelines and customer credentials.”

Check out CDP if you’re looking to put product-led growth into the hands of every team.

Choosing the best CDP for your business

Now that we’ve gone through some of the well-known names in the world of CDPs, how do you choose what’s right for your use case? You could go with the popular choice, or the least expensive, but selecting one that fits will go beyond that. You should think a few things through before you lock in on a CDP.

Define your specific needs and goals

First, define your organization's goals for implementing a CDP. What challenges are you hoping your CDP will help you overcome? Improving customer engagement, enhancing personalization, streamlining marketing efforts? Talk with your team about what they want and make a list. Then, review your options together.

Evaluate existing data infrastructure and Snowflake integration

How well do your existing systems integrate with Snowflake? 

Consider factors such as data formats, protocols, and synchronization capabilities. A CDP that seamlessly integrates with Snowflake ensures a unified and efficient data ecosystem, allowing you to leverage the full power of both platforms.

Consider your budget and future scalability needs

This is usually your biggest lever when purchasing any tool. You should already have a budget determined; some CDPs are a better price point for SMBs, while enterprise customers will typically pay more because their plan will need tailoring. 

Choose a CDP that will scale alongside your organization, accommodating larger data volumes without compromising your performance. Thankfully, many CDPs are ready to scale with you.

Conduct thorough research and platform comparison

Once you’ve gotten to this point, you’ve set a clear goal (or goals) for your dream CDP, know how airtight your existing Snowflake integrations are, and have your budget prepared. Now, you need to find the CDP that balances these priorities.

This is the fun part! Reading articles like this will help you decide on a CDP for Snowflake, but it’s not the full picture. Read customer reviews, take a look at each platform’s resources, and check forums or customer profiles for other peoples’ thoughts. 

Try to find case studies or testimonials from companies that look like yours — if your choice of CDP was able to help someone with a similar problem, they’ll probably work for you.

Request demos and trials

Once you’re ready, request demos or trials of your favorites. Narrow it down to just a few so that this more time-intensive stage doesn’t lead you down a lot of dead ends.

Once you’re here, you get to dig into a CDP’s feature set. Is it everything you dreamed? Is the query performance everything the company touted, is the UI accessible? Don’t box yourself into one choice here. Be sure to explore a few so you know if the grass is greener. You want to feel confident in your final decision.

Conclusion

This isn’t an easy decision. You have a vision of unlocking powerful data insights and driving successful marketing campaigns, but not every CDP you come across is right for these use cases, your team, or your company. CDPs have the power to benefit data analytics, software engineering, and customer marketing.

Take this guide under advisement and decide on a CDP as a group effort. If you need more information, check out our 2024 CDP Buyer’s Guide, which goes even further into depth on the selection process.

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