Learn all about Segment in 15 minutes

If there is someone out there who can explain what Segment does in one sentence please step forward.

And no, Segment is not really a classic customer data platform.

It is something different.

But what is Segment?

For me, Segment is a data collection layer. The one endpoint I can send all my event data to. The endpoint I can receive webhook events from third-party tools. And the platform that then passes the data on to multiple destinations.

And that is great. By that, you can make sure that different destinations receive similar kinds of data. No more discussions about why the Newsletter subscribed event is different in Google Analytics, Amplitude, and Hubspot.

And Segment also is one of the easiest ways to store raw event data into a database like Snowflake or BigQuery. Takes 15 minutes to set up.

And now let's talk about the CDP part. Of course, as pointed out before Segment collects a lot of customer data from different systems. So it is a kind of customer data platform. But in comparison to classic ones, Segment does not include the activation layer (sending emails, pushes, running ads). Segment has customer data and allows you to create global segments and share them with all your marketing tools.