Dialog Insight has 2 types of structures to host and manage your contact database.
- Single project structure: Composed of a single project (one contact list), this structure can also contain relational tables to host data that is related to the contact from the list.
→ Read Creating a project - CDP structure: A Customer Data Platform is composed of multiple single projects (source projects) that push data to a superior project (unified project). This structure is useful when you want to manage contacts coming from acquisition sources for which goals and data formats are different. The source projects are used to retrieve contact data coming from external sources (CRM, website or online store) or data generated from different Dialog Insight tools. The unified project is used to centralize data from secondary projects in order to create a 360 view for each contact and to manage contact duplicates. Generally, it is the unified project that is used to send communications. This structure is ideal when you have different data sources that you don't necessarily want to combine.
In summary, a CDP is useful to:- Unify/centralize contact data
- Create a 360 view for contacts
- Manage duplicates
- Prioritize sources
In this article, we will see how a CDP works. This is not an installation guide, nor a technical guide. The implementation is done by our team after evaluating your needs in contact data management. It's a structure that can be adapted as your needs change. It's possible to add or remove source projects after the implementation. It's possible to add or remove projects. If you wish to implement a CDP, please request a demo or contact your account manager.
Data Unification
Clients/Leads Use Case
You have, on one hand, data coming from your online store and, on the other, data generated when a lead fills a Dialog Insight opt-in form. This data is collected in 2 projects (Project A and Project B). The primary key for Project A (Clients) is the client number which is used to identify contacts from your store, as in Project B, the primary is the email collected in the form. Data in projects A and B are synchronized to the unified project, which is used to centralize contact data and manage duplicates. Synchronization is always unilateral and upwards.
In this example, there is a Jeffrey Smith existing in Project A (because he has an account in your online store) and a Jeff Smith in Project B (because he participated in one of your prospection activities, such as a contest). These 2 contacts (who are the same person) are synchronized to the unified project, which, in this example, has a unification rule using the email. This rule determines that the email field is used to connect the contacts together. Since both Jeffrey Smith and Jeff Smith have the same email, they are unified in the same profile in the unified project. In this example, the phone in the unified comes from the Clients project and the city from the Leads project.
If the same data is present in the 2 sources, but with a different value, a priority order can be applied to the unified project, allowing to prioritize the data, for example, from the Clients source, which is considerered as more trusted source than the lead data. In this case, for the first name (which is different in the 2 sources), we would prioritize Jeffrey from the from the Clients source over Jeff from the Leads project.
When a value for the connexion field is present many times in the same source project (for example, if Mr. Smith has several accounts online with the same email), they would all be connected to the same unified contact, but the data pushed to the unified would be those determined by the configured connected rules.
Contact Sources
Secondary projects are used to host data imported from external sources or directly generated in the project using DI acquisition tools.
External sources examples:
- CRM
- ERP
- E-commerce store
- Hosted lists
Here are some examples of DI methods to connect external sources: