Reverse ETL
ELI5 - The Vibe Check
Normal ETL pulls messy data out of your apps and pushes it into a tidy warehouse. Reverse ETL does the opposite trip, taking the clean, analyzed data sitting in your warehouse and pushing it back out into the tools your team actually lives in, like a CRM or a marketing platform, so the insight doesn't just sit in a dashboard nobody opens.
Real Talk
Reverse ETL is the process of syncing data from a data warehouse back into operational systems such as CRMs, marketing platforms, and support tools. It closes the loop between analytics and the business tools where that data needs to drive action, typically run on a schedule or triggered by warehouse changes.
When You'll Hear This
"We use Reverse ETL to push the churn score from the warehouse into the CRM." / "Marketing wanted the segments live in their tool, not just in a spreadsheet, so we set up Reverse ETL."
Related Terms
Data Contract
It's like a pinky promise between two teams, but legally binding (well, technically binding). Team A says 'I promise this data will always have these colum
Data Warehouse
A data warehouse is where all your company's data goes to be analyzed.
ELT
ELT is ETL's modern cousin. Instead of transforming data before loading it, you dump the raw data into your warehouse first, then use the warehouse's beefy...
ETL
ETL stands for Extract, Transform, Load. You extract data from sources, transform it (clean, reshape, calculate), then load it into your warehouse.