A customer data platform is software that aggregates and organizes customer data from multiple sources into a single, consistent database. This allows companies to unify customer profiles, make informed decisions about marketing strategies, and drive personalized messaging. The purpose of a CDP is to enable customer modeling, optimize timing and targeting of messages, and provide insights into customer behavior. Benefits include breaking down silos between teams and departments, uncovering new upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and providing insight into customer sentiment. A CDP is important because it collects first-party data directly from customers, which provides an unaltered view of their behavior and preferences. It also helps with compliance by storing data in a single, organized database that can be easily accessed and managed. Key features include the ability to ingest real-time data, capture full detail of ingested data, support indefinite data storage, and share data with external systems.