Implement a Data Foundation in Marketing Cloud Engagement Using Data from Data 360

You can establish a data foundation by activating data from an external system into Marketing Cloud Engagement and linking it to the Engagement Contact Model. You can then refresh and reuse this data across Journey Builder for journey decisioning, wait activities, and exits. You can also use the data for the content personalization of event-triggered campaigns. This solution kit offers a general blueprint on how to set up a data foundation using Data 360.

This solution kit maximizes both marketer efficiency and end-to-end scale performance while reducing the chances of unintentional billing consumption.

Not all campaigns require implementing a data foundation, such as batch sends, transactional messages, and journeys that don’t use the Engagement Contact Model for decision splits.

Consider these configuration settings when your campaign does trigger a journey. Use Email as the type when creating the Data Extension in Engagement. In Data Cloud, there isn’t an email type so the field is text. For the journey to send to contacts that aren’t in Engagement, use the Journey Builder setting to use email from any source.

• Associated Terms for Data Foundation
  Review terms that you must know when creating your data foundation.
• Is This Data Foundation Solution Kit Right for My Organization?
  You can establish a data foundation in Marketing Cloud Engagement in multiple ways. Each customer implementation is unique and has different factors to consider. Use this grid to help guide your decision on which data foundation pattern makes sense for your organization. Your needs might require a hybrid approach and a combination of aspects from multiple patterns.
• Data Foundation Solution Workflow
  Review the solution workflow for integrating your initial data foundation in Marketing Cloud Engagement.
• 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.
• Create Your Core Activations in Data 360
  Let’s review the steps for creating your core activations in Data 360.
• Link Core Activations to the Marketing Cloud Engagement Contact Model
  Data specialists perform these steps in Marketing Cloud Engagement to establish the data foundation.
• Use Data 360 Data Throughout Marketing Cloud Engagement
  It’s important for Marketers to understand that their interaction with the data foundation varies based on the type of campaign that they’re activating. These recommendations maximize system performance.
• Use Case: Cumulus Bank and Financial Services Event-Triggered Journeys
  Cumulus Bank and Financial Services want to integrate Data 360 with Marketing Cloud Engagement. They’re using Data 360 to establish a data foundation in Marketing Cloud Engagement. They then want to use the data foundation as part of their campaigns, including their initial customer campaign: a 30-day journey to welcome new auto policy holders and to introduce them to their policy and benefits.
• Cumulus Establishes Data Foundation Requirements
  Cumulus Bank and Financial Services want to integrate Data 360 with Marketing Cloud Engagement. They’re using Data 360 to establish a data foundation in Marketing Cloud Engagement. They then want to use the data foundation as part of their campaigns, including their initial customer campaign: a 30-day journey to welcome new auto policy holders and to introduce them to their policy and benefits.
• Cumulus Creates Core Activations in Data 360
  In this use case, to build their data foundation the Cumulus team creates Data 360 activations for their audiences to Marketing Cloud Engagement. These activations comprise their data foundation.
• Cumulus Activates Segments and Adds Attributes
  Because the team has chosen to create a Collective Core Audience Model, the marketer repeats these steps for each activation in their data foundation.
• Cumulus Links Core Activations to the Marketing Cloud Engagement Contact Model
  Cumulus follows these steps to link core activations to the Marketing Cloud Engagement Contact Model.
• Cumulus Uses Data 360 Data Throughout Marketing Cloud Engagement to Create Event-Triggered Journeys
  Now that the team at Cumulus Bank and Financial Services has set up their Marketing Cloud Engagement data foundation, their data from Data 360 can be used throughout Engagement in a scalable, reusable way.
• Data Foundation Considerations and Best Practices
  Generally, we recommend using the Individual portion of your data foundation as much as possible. When executing a journey that uses content personalization or decisioning attributes from the Unified Individual portion of the data foundation, keep these considerations and best practices in mind.