3 Reasons to Reevaluate Your CDP Strategy
Between 2018 and 2021, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) emerged as the next big thing in marketing technology, promising a centralized, first-party data engine to create the 360-degree view of the customer, improve engagement, and drive personalized, compliant experiences. However, many organizations found CDPs expensive to implement, hard to use, or lacking in clear return on investment. As a result, there was a shift back to composable stacks, a move toward native platform tools, and a continued reliance on patchwork solutions.
So why revisit the idea of a CDP in 2025?
Marketers now face increasing data privacy regulations, rising expectations for personalization, and new possibilities with the rise of AI (especially agent-based AI systems). All of these are transforming what marketers can do with data. It’s time to reconsider the role of a CDP.
Here are three powerful reasons why healthcare marketers should take a fresh look at CDPs this year.
Marketing in healthcare is a balancing act. On one hand, consumers expect the same seamless, personalized experiences they get from retail and travel. On the other hand, you have to navigate strict privacy standards, especially HIPAA.
A well-implemented, HIPAA-compliant CDP can be your ally.
At their core, CDPs collect customer data by ingesting and aggregating it from all of your disparate sources, such as websites and mobile apps, web forms, and email marketing subscriber lists.
They then clean that data by reviewing each bit of data and separating the sensitive information from non-sensitive information, anonymizing or pseudonymizing it before activating the data by sending portions of that data back out to destinations such as web analytics systems, marketing automation tools, or personalization systems.
That cleansing process means that you can collect sensitive data but send only the cleaned non-sensitive data out to your marketing stack.
CDPs allow you to collect and use only what’s necessary, keeping Protected Health Information (PHI) separate from non-sensitive data, anonymizing or pseudonymizing data before sharing with vendors, and sanitizing incoming data so marketing platforms don’t handle PHI directly.
CDPs can also track marketing consent and opt-outs across channels, log timestamped consent records, and build audiences that automatically exclude users who opted out. A centralized CDP makes oversight easier, allowing you to monitor who accesses PHI and how, apply and audit role-based permissions, and quickly spot and respond to data misuse or anomalies.
HIPAA demands accountability, and CDPs can deliver by maintaining immutable logs of access and activity, generating reports for internal or regulatory audits, and simplifying incident response workflows.
Instead of relying on ad hoc tools or worrying about where your PHI might be leaking, a CDP gives you centralized control. And unlike legacy tools, modern CDPs often include built-in consent and preference management — making it easier to honor opt-outs, track timestamped consent, and keep your outreach clean.
You don’t have to trade compliance for marketing performance. A CDP lets you protect your patients and reach them more effectively.
2. Your First-Party Data Is More Valuable Than Ever — A CDP Helps You Use ItMarketers from across all industries have long been bracing for the end of third-party cookies and the decline of the third-party data ecosystem. The solution to this ever-impending tragedy is to adopt a first-party data strategy. Few have adopted this approach due to the perceived barriers to entry: infrastructure or technology gaps, organizational silos, lack of strategic clarity, and dependence on third-party tactics.
Few organizations feel the urgency to change, because Google and the rest of the third-party data ecosystem continually push back the date when that third-party data will cease to be available: January 2020, June 2021, July 2022, September 2023, April 2024, with another delay in April of 2025. Additionally, Google occasionally teases various replacements to third-party cookies - FLOC, Privacy Sandbox, the Topics API - each of which is intended to keep marketers within their advertising ecosystem but none of which have come to fruition.
Absent this external pressure, marketers are content to continue the present course and delay the long-term investment.
But these delays should be seen as only a temporary reprieve. Organizations should start now and transition to a first-party strategy so that they are no longer holding their breath and waiting for the major advertising vendors to solve their data problem.
Healthcare brands sit on mountains of data. But too often, that data lives in silos — EHRs, CRMs, billing systems, web platforms — each holding a piece of the puzzle. Without a unified view of the patient, it’s nearly impossible to deliver the kind of relevant, consistent experience today’s consumers expect. Additionally, the first-party gathered directly from a visitor is more valuable and trustworthy than the “hearsay” data that one might get from third-party sources.
A CDP brings it all together.
It ingests and resolves identities across channels so that someone booking an appointment by phone and logging into the portal later is seen as the same person. With that unified profile, you can build smarter segments based on real-time behavior, care gaps, or location.
Those segments can then be used for improved email marketing, HIPAA-compliant A/B testing, or true personalization. For instance, a patient reading about joint pain might get follow-up reminders for a screening; one could personalize content in portals based on demographics or visit history, or promote local screenings and events to nearby users.
When you activate this data across channels — email, ads, SMS — you move from generic messaging to meaningful engagement. The results? Higher ROI, improved visitor experience, and fewer missed opportunities.
3. CDPs Are Foundational to Your Agentic AI StrategyGenerative AI has changed how marketers think about content and engagement. But AI doesn’t work in a vacuum — it needs context. It needs to know who it’s talking to, that person’s history, and what matters to them now.
This is where a CDP becomes essential.
As large language models (LLMs) evolve into agent-based AI systems — think virtual health assistants, intelligent marketing copilots, or automated personalization engines — they need more than just prompts. They need to understand user preferences, past interactions, and longitudinal behavior available via structured, first-party data in order to operate effectively.
Emerging standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) are creating ways for CDPs to act as a bridge between LLMs and your first-party data, allowing the CDP to supply this context directly to AI systems. Some CDPs (like Tealium AudienceStream) already support these integrations.
Put simply, your CDP becomes the long-term memory for your AI agents, enriching their capabilities and making your digital experiences smarter, safer, and more personalized.
What Happens When Everything ClicksWhile any of these three reasons should spur healthcare communicators to reconsider the CDP, what’s powerful about these shifts is how they reinforce and build on each other.
When your CDP helps you manage HIPAA-compliant data, it unlocks more meaningful first-party strategies. And when that data is structured and consented, it becomes the foundation for AI-driven engagement. It’s a virtuous circle that creates better marketing outcomes — but only if your CDP is up to the task.
Jason is a digital communications strategist with more than 15 years' experience in creating award-winning online presences. Over the course of his career, he has developed customer and audience engagement strategies for national brands like CrossFit, national non-profits like the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation, and government organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the US State Department.
Featured Blog Post? Yes Has this blog post been deprecated? No Summary CDPs are making a comeback. Discover why healthcare marketers should revisit them to stay HIPAA-compliant, unlock the full value of first-party data, and power AI-driven experiences — all while meeting rising personalization demands. Topic Integration Systems Promo Image
