Build Your Data Foundation
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Establish data foundation requirements for Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- Create core activations in Data Cloud and link them to Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- Create related attribute relationships for your customers.
- Use data from Data Cloud throughout Marketing Cloud Engagement.
A Strong Foundation
You and Isabelle have learned the basics of how to use Data Cloud audiences in Marketing Cloud Engagement, but did you know that you can build an even stronger and more personalized data foundation to connect with your customers?
Model Your Data Foundation in Marketing Cloud Engagement
When you use Data Cloud to power customer engagement (and we hope you do), think about intentionally structuring your data foundation instead of activating the same data repeatedly.
First, determine the best model for your data foundation. Then initialize your data foundation by using Data Cloud to activate core audiences to Marketing Cloud Engagement. Finally, establish your data foundation by connecting the resulting data extensions to the appropriate Marketing Cloud Engagement Contact Model.
Core Audience Model
Using the core audience model, you create two activations in Data Cloud—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.
Collective Core Audience Model
Your marketing team chooses 2–15 groupings to organize the commonly shared attributes. For example, Identity & Consent or Demographics & Psychographics.
When choosing a model, there are a few things to take into consideration.
- Consider your use case and include the audience and all of the attributes that you want to capture for personalization and decisioning. For example, contacts who purchased running shoes during a specific sale and spent at least $100.
- Use a core audience model for attributes that you'll use repeatedly.
- Use a collective core audience model when the core model might be too complex and it’s better to segment it for more specific use cases.
Here are some other factors to consider when choosing the best model for your organization.
| 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 |
Isabelle chose the collective core audience model for her audiences. This model gives her the power to specify her audience and messaging more succinctly based on their interests and actions.
She creates three activations:
- Unified demographic information
- Individual purchase data
- Loyalty status
For more details about these audience models and how to activate them, see Create Your Core Activations in Data Cloud.
Activate the Core
Once you choose the model for your foundation, you need to create core activations in Data Cloud.
- Create a segment in Data Cloud.
- Create one or more Data Cloud activations.
- Select channels and contact points for your activations.
- Organize and include commonly shared attributes for each activation.
It’s All Relative
While you’re activating your core, you can personalize Marketing Cloud Engagement communications using direct and related attributes from Data Cloud. This practice helps you control the volume and variety of data that can be used in marketing segments.
- Direct attributes (1:1): Attributes that have a direct relationship in a data model object, meaning a user has only one value, for example, postal code or first name.
- Related attributes (1:N): Attributes that have a one-to-many (1:N) relationship, meaning they could have many values per attribute for a specific user, for example, purchases or email events.
Here’s an example of adding some related attributes to an SMS campaign in a Marketing Cloud Engagement activation.
Find all the info you need about related attributes in our Related Attributes in Activation Solution Kit.
Link Them Up
Now it’s time to link your core activations to the Marketing Cloud Engagement Contact Model. You might want to enlist the help of your data specialist for these steps.
- Create attribute groups in Marketing Cloud Engagement Contact Builder.
- For each attribute group, data specialists link the data extensions that marketers activated in Data Cloud.
- In Marketing Cloud Engagement, create a Contact Model attribute group.
To prevent data sprawl and performance impacts, turn on the data deletion feature only for the ad hoc data extensions so that their stored data is deleted after the journey is complete. It’s also best practice to routinely check and delete old data extensions from the Contact Model.
Use This Foundation Throughout Marketing Cloud Engagement
You’re ready to start using the foundation you’ve built! We’ve got a few recommendations to help you to maximize system performance. (Note: Your foundation is refreshed according to the schedule you’ve set in Data Cloud.)
When activating audiences from Data Cloud, related attributes can’t be used for journey decisioning. Instead, use the commonly shared attributes that have been established as part of the data foundation for the journey’s decisions and exit activities.
First, use static journey data for content personalization for both audience-based journeys that use data extensions and event-triggered journeys that use data actions or API for journey entry.
And when activating audiences from Data Cloud, we recommend including all attributes that are required to personalize the content throughout the targeted journey.
- If you use AMPScript personalization strings, these strings reference journey data in the data foundation you already created.
- AMPScript functions and data extensions lookups pull the most up-to-date information about your audiences.
You can find more tips and tricks in Use Data Cloud Data Throughout Marketing Cloud Engagement.
Now that you’ve built your awesome foundation, check out how to use this foundation to create omnichannel journeys.
