Explore Data Sources for Email Personalization
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the benefits of using unified data to personalize email content.
- Explain which data sources are right for which personalization features in Marketing Cloud Next.
Using Unified Data Sources for Email Personalization
Using unified data sources consolidates data about your customers. This unified data is vital for creating marketing emails that engage your audience and are tailored to each customer. In Marketing Cloud Next, you can personalize emails with information about a customer’s actions, event history, purchase history, engagement, location, and more. Communicating with your audience in a data-driven way also allows for more efficient content development. You ensure consistency, while generating unique emails for each customer.
Prerequisites for Setting Up Personalization Data
Before you can start personalizing your content in Marketing Cloud Next, an admin first sets up personalization. This involves deploying and connecting the right data in Salesforce Setup and creating a default data graph. Then, you can select data sources while building an email message.
To learn more about setting up data sources for email personalization, see Manage Data Sources for Email Personalization.
Data Sources
Let’s review the data sources that you can use to personalize your marketing emails.
Data Source |
Purpose |
Example |
|
|---|---|---|---|
Default Data Graph |
A data graph brings together data from Salesforce Data Cloud to create a unified, easy to use view of your customer interaction information. After your admin sets up a default data graph for personalization, you can refer to its data when using dynamic content variations, merge fields, and repeaters in your emails. |
Isabelle’s admin included recent product purchases in the default data graph. She can easily add that data to her follow-up email thanking customers for their purchase. She filters data from the default data graph to find the most recent product purchased by a customer and inserts a merge field in the email: “Thank you for your recent purchase of {Product}!” |
|
Event |
By using event data, you can personalize emails based on a customer’s experience with your company. Event data refers to specific actions or interactions that customers have with your brand, such as orders, website visits, or unsubscribe requests. You can select an event data source for merge fields and repeaters in an email. |
Isabelle wants to automate order confirmation emails when a customer purchases from the Northern Trail Outfitters website. She creates an email and selects an Order Confirmation event as a data source for the message. She then uses that message in an event-triggered flow. When an order has been placed on the website, an order confirmation message is sent that includes the order amount and shipping details. |
|
Personalization Recommender |
Recommenders suggest relevant content to customers based on past purchases, location, clicks, and other information related to their journey with your company. Recommenders are used in conjunction with repeaters to display a list of items in your messages. |
Isabelle wants to promote products that current customers might like based on their past interactions on the Northern Trail Outfitters website. All she has to do is insert a four-card list of recommended products that are relevant to each customer based on their past product purchases and website searches. |
|
Summary
Unified data is the foundation for personalizing your emails. With data sources like data graphs, event data, and recommenders, you can create personalized emails for customers that feel like a one-on-one conversation. This leads to targeted and effective marketing efforts that can result in higher engagement. Now that you’ve learned about data sources, let’s check out the personalization features that can take your marketing emails to the next level!