Entities and concepts
Customer Data Platform (CDP) offers multiple entities to support loading marketing campaign information and broader inbound and outbound events that occur between a customer and the brand. It helps in tracking a customer’s activity with the brand, doing follow-up campaigns, and reporting on campaign performances. CDP uses these entities for all standard tracking, reporting, and segmentation in Metrics, Actions, and 360 Profiles.
Entities
CDP supports this type of data by using the following entities:
| Entity | Description |
|---|
| Campaign | The actual concept of a marketing campaign. For example, VIP customer reactivation. It can have multiple executions with different dates known as Dispatch and it can be executed on different channels. |
| Dispatch | The concept of a specific campaign executed on a specific date on a specific channel. CDP provides Type and Subtype attributes with dispatch. For example, AttributionStartDate attributes for Direct Mail campaigns are tied to a specific execution of the campaign. |
| Message | The concept of a version of a dispatch, which is similar to A/B testing’s variant and segment. It contains the details at the most granular level for a specific execution of a specific campaign, sent to a specific group of customers. For example, “Cost” for direct mail campaigns. |
| Event | An event is anything that happens between the customer and the brand, regardless of who initiated the contact. For example, CDP uses Events to track visitor activity on the brand’s website. Events record email clicks and open forms for the customer. Events are used to track use cases. Events close the loop on marketing campaigns by recording every interaction a customer had with the campaign and what results it had. For example, email clicks, products viewed on the web, products added to the cart, transactions. |
These entities have the following hierarchical relationship:
- A campaign can contain multiple dispatches or a campaign has a 1:n relationship with dispatch.
- A dispatch can contain multiple messages or a dispatch has a 1:n relationship with a message.
- A message can have multiple events tied to them or none.
- An event can be tied to no messages or messages that have a 0:n relationship with the event.
Each level of hierarchy of CDP entities supports custom attributes. You must know how each attribute ties to each level. If the entities provide details about the overall campaign, add it to the Campaign entity. If it provides information for one specific execution of a campaign and a specific group of recipients of the campaign, add it to the Message entity.
For any ingestion of marketing campaign and custom event data, it is imperative that you review your proposal with a CDP Product Manager to ensure that your use cases are implemented.
Use case typology
The following table lists the use cases:
| Use case | Description | Data requirement |
|---|
| Simple interaction tracking | Tracks simple inbound and outbound interactions with the customer and surfaces the interactions the brand had with the customer in the form of logs. This manifests in two ways: - As events in the 360 Profiles application under the Journey timeline to support better clienteling to enable the marketing team.
As a part of the filter Performed an event in a time period in Actions. This supports custom attributes as usual, but no hierarchy. For example, ingestion of event data, surfacing of store visits for each customer, and surfacing of support calls for each customer.
| Ingest and map the data to the Event entity. |
| Marketing campaigns tracking | This tracks the events that append the previous use cases and considers the concept of marketing campaigns as a whole for reporting on performances and further filtering. On top of the previous manifestations, this adds: - Hierarchical organization of different types of events and campaigns for ease of navigation in Metrics.
- Support for the Performed a campaign activity filter and its refinements such as message name.
- Campaign performance reporting through query-based reports.
- Detailed information in the 360 Profiles application’s Journey timeline.
For example, standard ingestion of Google Analytics data, standard ingestion of Direct Mail data, ingestion of email data from ESPs that are not supported by the standard connectors, ingestion of marketing attribution provided by vendors other than Google Analytics such as Adobe Analytics, IBM Coremetrics. | Ingest and map the data for the Campaign, Dispatch, Message, Event entities. |
Related setup documentation
To capture events for custom campaigns through WebTag and email, you must first configure WebTag on your site and ensure that campaign‑specific parameters are passed from the email platform into page URLs. When a recipient clicks an email link, WebTag collects these URL parameters and associate with the visitor’s behavior on the site.
To configure event capture for custom campaigns using WebTag or email, refer to the following:
Ingesting custom campaigns and events
Entities and concepts
Customer Data Platform (CDP) offers multiple entities to support loading marketing campaign information and broader inbound and outbound events that occur between a customer and the brand. It helps in tracking a customer’s activity with the brand, doing follow-up campaigns, and reporting on campaign performances. CDP uses these entities for all standard tracking, reporting, and segmentation in Metrics, Actions, and 360 Profiles.
Entities
CDP supports this type of data by using the following entities:
| Entity | Description |
|---|
| Campaign | The actual concept of a marketing campaign. For example, VIP customer reactivation. It can have multiple executions with different dates known as Dispatch and it can be executed on different channels. |
| Dispatch | The concept of a specific campaign executed on a specific date on a specific channel. CDP provides Type and Subtype attributes with dispatch. For example, AttributionStartDate attributes for Direct Mail campaigns are tied to a specific execution of the campaign. |
| Message | The concept of a version of a dispatch, which is similar to A/B testing’s variant and segment. It contains the details at the most granular level for a specific execution of a specific campaign, sent to a specific group of customers. For example, “Cost” for direct mail campaigns. |
| Event | An event is anything that happens between the customer and the brand, regardless of who initiated the contact. For example, CDP uses Events to track visitor activity on the brand’s website. Events record email clicks and open forms for the customer. Events are used to track use cases. Events close the loop on marketing campaigns by recording every interaction a customer had with the campaign and what results it had. For example, email clicks, products viewed on the web, products added to the cart, transactions. |
These entities have the following hierarchical relationship:
- A campaign can contain multiple dispatches or a campaign has a 1:n relationship with dispatch.
- A dispatch can contain multiple messages or a dispatch has a 1:n relationship with a message.
- A message can have multiple events tied to them or none.
- An event can be tied to no messages or messages that have a 0:n relationship with the event.
Each level of hierarchy of CDP entities supports custom attributes. You must know how each attribute ties to each level. If the entities provide details about the overall campaign, add it to the Campaign entity. If it provides information for one specific execution of a campaign and a specific group of recipients of the campaign, add it to the Message entity.
For any ingestion of marketing campaign and custom event data, it is imperative that you review your proposal with a CDP Product Manager to ensure that your use cases are implemented.
Use case typology
The following table lists the use cases:
| Use case | Description | Data requirement |
|---|
| Simple interaction tracking | Tracks simple inbound and outbound interactions with the customer and surfaces the interactions the brand had with the customer in the form of logs. This manifests in two ways: - As events in the 360 Profiles application under the Journey timeline to support better clienteling to enable the marketing team.
As a part of the filter Performed an event in a time period in Actions. This supports custom attributes as usual, but no hierarchy. For example, ingestion of event data, surfacing of store visits for each customer, and surfacing of support calls for each customer.
| Ingest and map the data to the Event entity. |
| Marketing campaigns tracking | This tracks the events that append the previous use cases and considers the concept of marketing campaigns as a whole for reporting on performances and further filtering. On top of the previous manifestations, this adds: - Hierarchical organization of different types of events and campaigns for ease of navigation in Metrics.
- Support for the Performed a campaign activity filter and its refinements such as message name.
- Campaign performance reporting through query-based reports.
- Detailed information in the 360 Profiles application’s Journey timeline.
For example, standard ingestion of Google Analytics data, standard ingestion of Direct Mail data, ingestion of email data from ESPs that are not supported by the standard connectors, ingestion of marketing attribution provided by vendors other than Google Analytics such as Adobe Analytics, IBM Coremetrics. | Ingest and map the data for the Campaign, Dispatch, Message, Event entities. |
Related setup documentation
To capture events for custom campaigns through WebTag and email, you must first configure WebTag on your site and ensure that campaign‑specific parameters are passed from the email platform into page URLs. When a recipient clicks an email link, WebTag collects these URL parameters and associate with the visitor’s behavior on the site.
To configure event capture for custom campaigns using WebTag or email, refer to the following:
Acquia CDP