In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the foundation of creating the most perfect data ecosystem possible has a clear objective: to get the most out of this tool and of the data itself. Thus, with this it will be possible to segment, personalize, transact, feed your customers with additional data, etc. In this article we tell you about the importance of the data model in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Any time you spend on defining this data model as well as possible will pay off in the future, both in terms of time savings (costs) and in terms of return on your actions (ROI).
At the beginning, it is time to ask yourself a lot of questions and to meet with the different departments (Marketing, Sales, IT...) to see what each one needs and what is possible. It is time to make an inventory of our current data and to define what data we want to add:
The types of data that provide us with value in defining the activity with our users are multiple: geographic, psychographic, demographic, behavioral, purchase histories, etc. And as we have mentioned, it is not only what we have, it is also what we want to have.
There are many possible strategies to enrich the database with additional information about our users. The easiest and most non-intrusive is behavioral, but depending on the actions we do and the type of products/services we have, other types of variables can also be requested.
Our data can converge in Marketing Cloud from different sources:
Analytics.
Web forms.
CloudPages.
Preference centers.
Via API from other platforms, sites, etc.
Point-of-sale systems.
Social networks.
Ecommerce.
User behavior.
RFM data.
Demographic variables.
Since there are multiple sources, it is best to have as many collaborators and points of view as possible, as well as to plan and document precisely what we have and what we want to have.
If I haven't convinced you with my arguments so far, let's try a proverb:
We already know which sources we are going to use in our data structure, but we still have a fundamental part: what is going to be our "master" table, which is also called Database Of Record or DBOR. This is the master table where we will have the essential data of our subscribers in a centralized way and above all, its opt-in status. It all depends on where you have the most updated information. Sometimes the choice is your CRM and then dump your data to Marketing Cloud. In others, to have both synchronized. In some cases, simply the status in All Subscribers, etc.