Reverse ETL

What is reverse ETL?

Reverse ETL is the process of syncing data from a source of truth like a data warehouse to a system of actions like CRM, advertising platform, or other SaaS app to operationalize data.

That’s basically just a fancy way of saying reverse ETL lets you move data about your users from your warehouse and makes it available for frontline business teams to use in their favorite tools.

However, to really understand the power of reverse ETL (and why it’s not just another data pipeline), we first need to take a quick look at what traditional ETL pipelines made possible for business and data teams.

What’s in a name: ETL vs reverse ETL

The traditional extract, transform, load (ETL) data pipeline has remained largely unchanged since the 1970s: extract the data from the source, convert it to a usable format (or transformation), then load it into your data warehouse.

The advent of flexible data pipeline tools like Airbyte has also made it possible to load your data into the warehouse and then use your storage target to transform it (referred to as ELT). These ETL/ELT enabled companies to combine data from multiple sources into a single source of truth to inform business intelligence decisions.

Modern data stack 2.0: The era of operational analytics

The growth in popularity of this new generation of data stack is emblematic of an important trend: Companies need to move data capabilities out of centralized silos and embed them within teams across business functions.

Reverse ETL equips these teams with detailed data inside the tools they're already using like Salesforce or Hubspot, empowering them to be more effective in their day-to-day work. The reverse ETL process effectively aligns your organization and applications around your source of truth. From there, business teams can build a shared, deep understanding of customers like never before.