CleverTap

Overview

CleverTap is a comprehensive customer engagement and retention platform that combines real-time analytics with multi-channel marketing automation. Its scripts run on websites and within applications to build detailed behavioral profiles of individual users, which then power targeted messaging through push notifications, in-app messages, email campaigns, and SMS. CleverTap's approach is deeply data-driven — every user interaction is captured, scored, and used to place users into segments that trigger automated engagement workflows.

For website operators, CleverTap represents a significant data collection footprint. The scripts go beyond passive analytics by actively building user identity graphs, tracking micro-interactions, and enabling real-time personalization that adapts the user experience based on behavioral patterns and lifecycle stage classification.

What This Script Does

CleverTap scripts perform extensive data collection and enable multi-channel engagement:

• Event tracking: Scripts capture a wide range of user events — page views, button clicks, form submissions, scroll behavior, search queries, and custom-defined actions — transmitting each event with associated metadata to CleverTap's servers in real time.
• User identity management: Scripts create and maintain user profiles by associating anonymous browsing activity with identified users upon login or registration. CleverTap builds an identity graph that merges pre-login and post-login activity into unified user profiles.
• Behavioral profiling: Collected events are processed to generate behavioral scores, lifecycle stage classifications (new user, active, at-risk, churned), and predictive analytics about future user actions such as likelihood to convert or churn.
• Push notification delivery: Web push notification infrastructure is managed through CleverTap's scripts, handling service worker registration, notification permission requests, and push message display.
• In-app messaging: Scripts render targeted messages — banners, modals, slide-ins — within the website based on user segment membership, behavioral triggers, or lifecycle stage. These messages are personalized using data from the user's behavioral profile.
• Session recording and heatmaps: Some CleverTap configurations include session replay capabilities that record user interactions for analysis, capturing mouse movements, clicks, and scroll patterns.
• Cookie and local storage usage: CleverTap sets multiple cookies and local storage entries to maintain user identity across sessions, store device identifiers, track campaign attribution, and manage notification preferences.

The scope of data collection is extensive and encompasses both analytics (understanding user behavior) and marketing (acting on that understanding through targeted messaging).

Consent & Compliance

CleverTap's scripts involve substantial personal data processing that requires careful consent management. Under GDPR, the behavioral profiling, identity graph construction, and automated segmentation constitute processing activities that generally require explicit consent. The use of data for personalized marketing communications adds additional requirements under both GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive.

Push notification permissions involve a separate browser-level consent flow, but the underlying tracking and profiling that determines which notifications to send requires consent at the cookie/tracking level first. Under CCPA/CPRA, the behavioral data collected by CleverTap may constitute personal information that is "shared" for cross-context behavioral advertising, triggering opt-out requirements.

Website operators should classify CleverTap under both "analytics" and "marketing" consent categories, ensuring the scripts only load after the visitor has consented to both. The extensive cookie usage and local storage data should be documented in the cookie policy with specific retention periods.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

CleverTap performs extensive behavioral tracking, builds user identity profiles, and uses this data for personalized marketing communications. The scripts set multiple persistent cookies and collect data that goes far beyond what is necessary for website functionality. Both the analytics and marketing aspects of CleverTap require consent under GDPR and similar frameworks. Blocking without consent does not affect core website functionality.

Yes.