You are here:
Data Extensions for Data 360
The Data 360 activation workflow creates audiences in Marketing Cloud Engagement as Sendable Data Extensions.
When you use the Data 360 activation workflow, you have two options to activate audiences to Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- Activate on Individuals: Activate an audience with individual records only because they were sourced from Marketing Cloud Engagement or other systems that sent data to Data 360. There’s no enrichment of data that’s combined from other matched records.
- Activate on Unified Individuals: Activate an audience with unified individual data from Marketing Cloud Engagement or other systems that sent data to Data 360. Unified individual records in these audiences include an enriched dataset from the combined, merged individual records.
Both activation selection choices create the audience in Marketing Cloud Engagement as a Sendable Data Extension in the Shared Data Extension folder in Contact Builder. Activation audiences get refreshed based on the publishing schedule designated within Data 360. Every audience refresh performs a full overwrite of the previously published version.
Data Extension Integration
The Sendable Data Extension for individual and unified individual based audiences contains the following attributes and relationships.
Subscriber Relationship: Individual-Id relates to Subscriber on Subscriber Key
Included Attributes:
- Individual-Id
- ContactPointEmailAddress (email)
- ContactPointPhoneNumber (phone E164 formatted)
- ContactPointPhoneCode (locale)
- Any additional attributes selected by the user in Data 360 at Activation (optional)
Integration Considerations:
- In Data 360 data modeling, the Marketing Cloud Engagement Subscriber Key field from Marketing Cloud Engagement is mapped to the Individual-Id field in Data 360.
- When you activate an audience from unified individual records, Data 360 activates one row in the Sendable Data Extension for each unified individual. To determine the Individual-Id that is mapped from the Marketing Cloud Engagement Subscriber Key to send for the unified record, Data 360 selects the Individual-Id that is associated with the lowest system-generated Marketing Cloud Engagement SubscriberID. This record is used as a proxy to determine the oldest record.
- If unified individuals in Data 360 include matched individuals from Marketing Cloud Engagement, the Individual-Id selection process defers to the records originally sourced from Marketing Cloud Engagement. So the marketer maintains the consent, subscription, and consent signals already stored in Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- If unified individuals in Data 360 don't include matched individuals sourced from Marketing Cloud Engagement, but do contain matched individuals sourced from other systems, then those non-Marketing Cloud Engagement records can be activated as new contacts in Marketing Cloud Engagement. Data 360 selects the Individual-Id that is associated with the lowest contact point email ID or phone ID if an email ID isn't included. Users are required to obtain prior consent for contacts to receive marketing communications.
- Data 360 activated on unified individuals can contain a combination of both individual records originally sourced from Marketing Cloud Engagement and records originally sourced from other systems.
- The activation workflow doesn't set a length limit on text fields.
Data Extension Unified Individual Publishing Scenarios
These scenarios show how Data 360 publishes a single row for unified individuals. The information is based on enriched data sent to Data 360 from Marketing Cloud Engagement and other data sources.
| Scenario | Activation Output to Marketing Cloud Engagement Data Extension | Data 360 Selection Criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Unified Individual has emails and phone numbers from Marketing Cloud Engagement only. | Schema:
Output: one row with email subscriber key, email, phone, phone country code |
Data 360 selects the subscriber key and email of the lowest alpha-numerical subscriber ID from all the subscriber IDs associated with the contact point emails. Data 360 selects the phone of the lowest alpha-numerical subscriber ID from all the subscriber IDs associated with the contact point phones. |
| Unified Individual has emails from Marketing Cloud Engagement only. | Schema:
Output: one row with email subscriber key, email |
Data 360 selects the subscriber key and email of the lowest alpha-numerical subscriber ID from all the subscriber IDs associated with the contact point emails. |
| Unified Individual has phone numbers from Marketing Cloud Engagement only. | Schema:
Output: one row with email subscriber key, phone, phone country code |
Data 360 selects the subscriber key and phone of the lowest alpha-numerical subscriber ID from all the subscriber IDs associated with the contact point phones. |
| Unified Individual has emails and phone numbers from Marketing Cloud Engagement and CRM. | Schema:
Output: one row with email subscriber key, email, phone, phone country code |
Data 360 selects the subscriber key and email of the lowest alpha-numerical subscriber ID from all the subscriber IDs associated with the MC contact point emails. Data 360 selects the phone of the lowest numerical subscriber ID from all the subscriber IDs associated with the MC contact point phones. |
| Unified Individual has emails and phone numbers from non-Marketing Cloud Engagement sources only. | Schema:
Output: one row with individual id, email, phone, phone country code |
Data 360 selects the individual id and email of the lowest Individual ID from all the Individual IDs associated with the contact point emails. Data 360 selects the phone of the lowest individual ID from all the individual IDs associated with the contact point phones. |
Personalization Considerations
Consider the Marketing Cloud Engagement messaging personalization strategy and setup for content used with activated Data 360. Include personalization strings or AMPscript lookup functions that depend on specific column names in the Data 360 Sendable Data Extension.
Marketing Cloud Engagement data is mapped into Data 360 entity objects. These entities are referred to as Data Model Objects (DMO) in Data 360. These DMOs are intended to be part of an application-agnostic data model, so note that Marketing Cloud Engagement could be one of several source systems mapping to the same entities and related fields. The field name for an attribute mapped from Marketing Cloud Engagement to Data 360 doesn’t always automatically return to Marketing Cloud Engagement in an activated Data 360 audience with the same column label in the Sendable Data Extension.
For these types of messaging personalization scenarios that depend on specific column names for the Sendable Data Extension target, consider these options.
- To reflect the Data 360 DMO label names that are returned in the Data 360 activation, modify any personalization strings or AMPscript lookup functions in content assets. Use this option when there isn’t a significant amount of pre-existing content referencing the original column or label name.
- Create and establish custom fields in the appropriate Data 360 CIM entity (DMO) and map the respective Marketing Cloud Engagement fields in user setup. After they’re mapped into Data 360, select any custom fields needed for Marketing Cloud Engagement messaging or content personalization as an appendable attribute in the Data 360 Activation workflow.
