Connect Your Data to Marketing Intelligence with Data Pipelines

Data pipelines automate the collection, transformation, and organization of marketing data to prepare it for analysis in Marketing Intelligence in Marketing Cloud Next. By using a predefined API connector or TotalConnect, pipelines structure data with entities like data streams and transforms. This process ensures accuracy, consistency, and alignment with the Marketing Intelligence data model, delivering faster insights and more reliable campaign optimization.

API connectors provide predefined mappings for common marketing channels and allow more custom mappings, so users can extend the integration for unique business needs.

TotalConnect supports custom sources, new objects, custom fields, and calculated fields. Users can upload files directly or select a Data Lake Object (DLO) as the source. A DLO is a managed data source in Data Cloud—such as an enterprise data warehouse or a synced connector—that enables automatic data ingestion without manual uploads.

Using DLOs broadens connectivity to enterprise sources and supports a zero-copy architecture, keeping a single source of truth while reducing Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) complexity. Pipelines also automate mapping and integration, streamlining workflows and ensuring consistent, error-free data for dashboards, reports, and campaign analysis.

• Understand Named Credentials, Connections, and Pipelines
  When you create a data pipeline in Marketing Intelligence, three components work together to ingest data: Named Credential, Connection, and a Pipeline. This architecture separates authentication, connectivity, and data processing so you can reuse credentials and configure pipelines efficiently.
• Connection Management in Marketing Intelligence
  Monitor and manage your Marketing Intelligence data source connections from a single, centralized location.
• Create a Data Pipeline With Custom Data in TotalConnect
  Use TotalConnect to upload data from files or pull data directly from Data Lake Object (DLO) into Marketing Intelligence enabling flexible integration of custom datasets without an API connector.
• Third-Party API Connectors for Marketing Intelligence
  Marketing Intelligence provides third-party API connectors that help you bring data from ad networks, analytics tools, and social media platforms into a unified view. By connecting these sources, you can analyze performance across channels and see how fields are mapped.