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Establish Data Foundation Requirements for Marketing Cloud Engagement
When integrating Data 360 and Marketing Cloud Engagement, clearly delineate the roles and responsibilities between each product. Data 360 is designed to ingest, resolve, transform, segment, and enrich data. Marketing Cloud Engagement is an engagement product that orchestrates personalized messaging campaigns.
We recommend taking time to examine the data foundation that you create in the Engagement Contact Model. To balance and increase marketer efficiency while preventing data sprawl in Engagement, we recommend an initial data foundation that selectively integrates a commonly shared dataset. You can use this foundation for content personalization and decisioning across many different Journey Builder use cases.
Which Data is Needed for Your Marketing Cloud Engagement Data Foundation?
The data foundation in Engagement stores refreshed data to use throughout your journeys. An audience-based journey uses the data foundation for rapid decisioning but typically doesn’t use it for content personalization. However, an event-triggered journey can use the data foundation for both rapid decisioning and content personalization.
Determining the personalization attributes that your organization needs in their Marketing Cloud data foundation involves data specialists and marketers reviewing the campaigns and journeys that they want to execute. Start with an initial set of attributes commonly used for content personalization only for your event-triggered journeys. We then recommend an initial set of commonly used attributes for the decisioning of all of your journeys. You don’t need a comprehensive list of attributes to begin. You can adjust your data foundation and add more attributes as you launch more campaigns and grow into your implementation.
Individual Attributes Versus Unified Individual Attributes
For sensitive information, such as personal identifiable information for personalizing messages or consent attributes used for journey decisioning, we recommend activating attributes at the Individual level. This action ensures that the data foundation contains the correct context of data for the given Individual’s activated contact points.
Example: John Smith has three Individual profiles: John.Smith.1, John.Smith.2, and John.Smith.3. Each profile is imported to Data 360 with a slightly different full name—John Smith, John Smith Jr., and Johnny Smith—and each has a unique email address: js@example1.com, js@example2.com, and js@example3.com. The lifetime values are $20, $30, and $50, respectively, and the loyalty levels are Bronze, Silver, and Gold.
To add all three representations of John Smith into a single data extension, use Data 360 to segment and activate at the Individual level. The resulting data extension contains three rows, with each attribute selected directly from their respective Individual profile.
For aggregate information used for journey decisioning, activate attributes at the Unified Individual level. This activation enables you to retarget the person based on data collected throughout their larger Unified Individual profile.
Example: John Smith has 3 separate Individual profiles: John.Smith.1, John.Smith.2, and John.Smith.3. Each profile is imported to Data 360 with a slightly different full name —John Smith, John Smith Jr., and Johnny Smith—and each has a unique email address: js@example1.com, js@example2.com, and js@example3.com. The lifetime values are $20, $30, and $50, respectively, and the loyalty levels are Bronze, Silver, and Gold.
To add pieces from the three representations of John Smith into a single data extension, use Data 360 to segment and activate at the Unified Individual level. The resulting data extension contains one row, with each attribute either selected from one of the three Individual profiles or aggregated among them. For example, Individual ID: John.Smith.1; Full Name: John Smith Jr.; EmailAddress: js@example1.com; Lifetime Value: $100; Loyalty Level: Gold.
How to Model Your Data Foundation in Marketing Cloud Engagement
First, determine the best model for your data foundation. Then initialize your data foundation by using Data 360 to activate core audiences to Engagement. Finally, establish your data foundation by connecting the resulting data extensions to the Engagement Contact Model.
| Organizational Factors | Core Audience Model | Collective Core Audience Model |
|---|---|---|
| Total Audience Size | 0–8 million | 8 million or more |
| Number of Shared Personalization and Decisioning Attributes | 1–100 | 100+ |
| Team Experience with Marketing Cloud Engagement | None–Low | Moderate–Advanced |
| Desired Journey Length and Sophistication | None–Low | Moderate–Advanced |
Core Audience Model
- The marketer creates two activations in Data 360: one activation at the Individual level, and one at the Unified Individual level. Each activation contains your organization’s full active audience and all your required content personalization and decisioning attributes chosen by your organization.
- The data specialist creates a Marketing Cloud Engagement attribute group named “SF CDP” and
attaches the Individual activated data extension audience to the root of the Engagement Contact
Model in a 1:1 relationship. The data specialist then connects the Unified Individual data
extension directly to the Individual data extension in a 1:1 relationship.Note Some datasets can benefit from mapping in a 1:N relationship. In that case, we recommend creating a separate activation and connecting it within the attribute group.
- The data specialist creates a Marketing Cloud Engagement attribute group named “SF CDP Ad Hoc” for future one-off campaigns. This group requires unique data that isn’t commonly shared across multiple journeys and can be deleted after the journey is complete.
Collective Core Audience Model
- As a team, think of 2–15 groupings to organize the commonly shared attributes that you’ve chosen with your team. For example, Identity & Consent or Demographics & Psychographics.
- The marketer creates a separate activation in Data 360 for each grouping. Determine which groupings to activate at the Individual level, Unified Individual level, or both. Each activation contains your full active audience. Between the collection of activations, include all your required content personalization and decisioning attributes you’ve chosen with your team.
- The data specialist creates an attribute group in Marketing Cloud Engagement for each
grouping and attaches the resulting data extension activations to the Engagement Contact Model
in a 1:1 relationship. Link the Individual data extensions for each grouping to the root of the
Engagement Contact Model in a 1:1 relationship. The data specialist then links the Unified
Individual data extension for that grouping directly to the Individual data extension in a 1:1
relationship. Note Some datasets can benefit from mapping in a 1:N relationship. In that case, we recommend creating a separate activation and connecting it within the attribute group.
- The data specialist creates a Marketing Cloud attribute group named “SF CDP Ad Hoc” for future one-off campaigns This group requires unique data that isn’t commonly shared across multiple journeys and can be deleted after the journey is complete.
