Use Data Across Marketing Experiences
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify how activated data is used in segmentation.
- Describe the role of data graphs in personalization, flows, and forms.
Segment by Loyalty Tier
At the start of this module, the Cloud Kicks marketing team was sending the same campaign to every loyalty member. Platinum members with years of purchase history were getting the same message as Silver members who just joined. The activation work you completed in the previous units changes that. Loyalty Tier and Points Balance are now live in the data graph, which means they're available as filter attributes across Marketing Cloud Next. The marketing team is ready to put them to work.
The team is launching an exclusive early-access campaign for their highest-value members. In the segment builder, they select Loyalty Tier as a filter attribute and set the condition to equals Platinum. The segment calculates, and they have a targeted list of their highest-value members.
But not every contact is a loyalty member yet. The team creates a second segment for contacts with a blank or null Loyalty Tier and routes them into a nurture campaign that invites them to join the program. No one falls through the cracks.
After identifying the right people, the team turns to what those people actually experience.
Personalize Messages with Points Balance
The campaign starts with an email. Rather than a generic message, the team wants every member to open something that feels written just for them. In the email editor, they insert personalization merge fields for First Name and Points Balance, sourced directly from the data graph.
Marketing Cloud Next automatically populates each member's actual values at send time. A member receives ‘You have 8,500 points ready to redeem’. The content adapts to the person, and draws from the fields mapped earlier in this module.
But the email is just the beginning. What happens after a member opens it is where the journey gets smart.
Branch Flows with Points Balance
When a Platinum member opens the email, the flow runs for that member. But not every Platinum member is in the same situation. Someone with 12,500 points needs a different nudge than someone with 6,200. The team adds a decision split in Flow Builder and selects Points Balance as the branching condition.
- Members with a points balance equal to or above 8,000 get an exclusive offer with a short redemption window, to create urgency to act on their balance.
- Members with fewer than 8,000 points get a gentler message that highlights what they could earn with more purchases.
- A default path catches any remaining members whose points balance can’t be retrieved, to ensure no one exits the flow without an experience.
With the right message sent and the right journey triggered, there's one more moment where the data can do the heavy lifting.
Prefill Forms with Member Information
Nobody wants to fill out a form that requests information they’ve already given the company. For your most valuable customers, that friction suggests the brand doesn’t recognize them.
Cloud Kicks runs a points redemption form where members choose how to apply their balance toward a product discount, a charitable donation, or an exclusive experience. Before the data graph included loyalty data, members had to find their own tier and balance just to get started.
With Loyalty Tier and Points Balance now in the data graph, the team maps both fields to the redemption form. When a known member opens the form, Marketing Cloud Next pulls their tier and balance directly from the data graph and populates the form automatically. They skip the lookup and go straight to making their choice.
Form prefill setup steps are out of scope for this module. To learn how to set it up, check out Create and Manage Forms in Marketing Cloud Next.
It’s a small change but with a real impact. Completion rates go up, members feel recognized, and the marketing team didn't build anything new. They just connected an existing form to data that was already in the graph.
Explore the Possibilities with Activated Data
Loyalty Tier and Points Balance are now live filter attributes in the segment builder, personalization tokens in the email editor, branching conditions in the Flow Builder, and prefilled values on the redemption form. Four different tools use the same two fields and are connected through the data graph.
And this is just the beginning. As Cloud Kicks adds more data sources, such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and service interactions, each new connection makes the whole marketing program smarter. Every one of those connections starts with a data stream, a field mapping, an identity resolution ruleset, and a data graph.
Linda's CSV was just one data source. Think about what's sitting in your own systems right now. There’s purchase history, service interactions, and browsing behavior waiting to be connected. Start with a data stream, the rest follows.