CXP Glossary

The CM.com customer context platform provides a unified view of any type of object (person, company, household etc.)– paired with the capabilities to activate that data in the core processes used to drive business growth. This glossary defines key CXP concepts to help you get familiar with terminology and features in the CXP. By allocating a separate database for each customer, we ensure that the data is logically isolated from that of other customers. This eliminates the risk of data intermingling, providing clarity and integrity across all data operations.

Tenant

A CXP tenant is a specific licensed instance of the CXP’s technology and service, part of the Mobile Marketing Cloud.

Eventual consistent

What is Eventual Consistency?

Eventual consistency is a fundamental concept in distributed systems. In simple terms, it means that while our data isn't immediately consistent across all nodes, it will become consistent over time. This approach is crucial when dealing with large volumes of data and high-velocity transactional systems, like our CXP, which processes data from diverse sources such as customer interactions, behavioral data, and more.

Why Do We Use Eventual Consistency?

1. Distributed Architecture: Our CXP employs a distributed architecture to efficiently manage the extensive data it processes. With multiple nodes operating simultaneously, immediate data consistency can be challenging. Eventual consistency allows our system to handle these demands by prioritizing data consistency over a short period rather than instantly.

2. Scalability: By prioritizing eventual consistency, our CXP can scale operations to accommodate larger datasets and increased interactions without the overhead of strict synchronization. This scalability ensures that as our clients grow, our platform can grow alongside them, providing a seamless and efficient experience.

3. Resource Efficiency: Strict synchronization could slow down our system and demand more resources. Eventual consistency minimizes this burden, allowing our CXP to maintain high performance and fast processing speeds even as data volumes increase.

Real-world Example

• Marketing Campaigns: Imagine a retail brand launching a multi-channel marketing campaign using our Mobile Marketing Cloud. As data streams in from different interactions—emails, SMS, app notifications—the CXP captures this information across various nodes. While one node might receive data about an email interaction, another might capture app interactions. Initially, these interactions might not appear consistently across all parts of the system. However, eventual consistency ensures that all nodes will update to reflect the current state, enabling the brand to gain a complete and accurate picture of customer engagement.

Benefits of Eventual Consistency in Our CXP

• High Data Accuracy: Over time, the CXP aims to achieve high data accuracy, crucial for delivering personalized and consistent customer experiences. By allowing data to sync gradually, it builds a comprehensive customer profile that reflects the latest interactions and behaviors.

• Seamless Operation: Even when the data is in the process of becoming consistent, the CXP uses the most recent and relevant data available. This capability allows clients to continue creating seamless marketing campaigns without significant disruptions, ensuring that marketing efforts remain effective and timely.

Insights

In our insight menu you can get insight into your data, each definition can be explored depending on what you’re looking for. If you are looking for persons, simply query on your person definition or if you’re looking for a company, query on your company definition. You can query any definition.

Segments

Segments are dynamic groups of data objects, typically representing customers with shared characteristics defined by specific queries. These queries filter data from various definitions, and the resulting segments can be stored for use in for example workflows or exports, enabling targeted marketing and personalized engagement. Segments are "living" entities, automatically updating as new data enters the CXP, ensuring they remain current and relevant. This allows marketers to maintain agility and precision in their strategies, providing real-time insights for decision-making.

Data manager

The data manager oversees all aspects of your configuration and data integrations. It includes tools for setting up definitions and transforming events into objects. This central hub ensures efficient management and utilization of your data sources.

Definitions

In our Customer Context Platform, definitions serve as comprehensive representations of various objects that flow into the system.

For instance, within our Email Campaigns application, a range of events are transmitted to the CXP, including "email sent" and "email opened." Each of these events is encapsulated within its own event definition.

Furthermore, object definitions are dedicated to representing Personal Profiles and Company Profiles, ensuring a holistic view of both individual and organizational interactions.

Each definition includes properties, with each property having a specific type (like string or boolean), providing detailed data representation.

Definition types

We support 3 definitions types, events (raw incoming data), objects (transformed events) an relations (relations between objects)

Events

Event definitions represent the raw data captured from various interactions and touchpoints between people and a business, for example. These events are the building blocks for creating more structured objects and analyzing customer behavior. By applying transformations, you can convert event data into meaningful objects, enabling a deeper understanding of who your customers are and how they interact with your business.

• Definition: Actions triggered by people or AI that are recorded in the CXP.

• Examples: Website visits, product purchases, email openings, ad clicks.

• Characteristics:

  • Timestamps: Usually associated with a specific date and time.

  • Contextual Information: Includes data like location, device, and specific actions taken.

  • Usage: Used to analyze customer behavior and gain insights into interactions and engagement.

Objects

Event definitions (raw incoming data) are mapped and transformed into Objects . These objects are crucial for 'summarizing' data, enabling efficient queries, and initiating workflows. By aggregating data, users can derive meaningful insights, streamline processes, and trigger automated actions based on defined criteria.

• Definition: Objects of interest in the CXP that contain data.

• Examples:

  • Person Object: Information about specific persons, such as name, email, and purchase history.

  • Company object: Information about specific companies, such as company name, email, KVK number.

  • Email Object: Includes details about an email, like sent date, subject etc.

• Characteristics:

  • Properties: Contain details and characteristics about the object itself.

  • Relations: Objects can relate to each other, such as a person object linked to multiple order objects or a person who works at a company.

• Usage: Help in structuring and managing both static and dynamic data to build a complete view of the object (mostly a person or a company)

Relations

Keep in mind that relation definitions:

• Do not have a unique identifier

• Does not have an external key

• Can hold PII data

• Can hold sensitive data

Properties

Properties of a definition refer to the specific fields that make up each definition, like a Person definition may have properties like first name, last name, birthday etc. These properties outline the essential details and behaviors, serving as building blocks for effective functionality and customization. While some properties are fixed due to standardization and automation, others may allow for additional customization to tailor to specific needs. Based on the definition type you can have more flexibility and options in your properties.

Each property has a data type, like String, Boolean etc. and can be used to create segment filters or to include personalized information in your emails.

Data types & formatting

Scripting/Transforming

Unique identifiers

In the CXP, unique identifiers play a crucial role in organizing and managing data. A unique identifier is a distinct value assigned to each object (Company, Household etc.), which helps the CXP match all data points and interactions to the right individual. This is important for combining information from various sources, such as website visits, purchases, and customer service interactions, into a single, accurate object.

Unique identifiers, like email addresses or customer IDs, help prevent duplicate objects and ensure that data stays organized. This makes it easier for businesses to understand customer behavior and tailor their marketing efforts accordingly. With unique identifiers in place, companies can create effective segments, personalize experiences, and gain insights that drive decisions. They also help with data privacy compliance, allowing for precise data management when customers request to see or delete their information. In short, unique identifiers are essential for a CXP to provide reliable and actionable insights.

Integrations

Integrations with third party solutions (through our Marketplace) and/or internal CM solutions like CM ticketing, Mobile Service Cloud etc.

Workflows

Workflows are predefined sequences of automated actions and tasks that are designed to handle various aspects of customer data management and processing. They involve multiple steps or stages that are executed sequentially or conditionally based on predefined rules or triggers.

First-party data

The term first-party data refers to consented customer data (demographic, behavioral, contextual, etc.) for visitors that interact with your channels. Examples of first-party data include online or offline data for website visitors, email recipients, social media followers, and in-store shoppers. First-party data is the cornerstone of the philosophy and technology at CM. To emphasize the importance of first-party data, we offer our own web tracking capabilities, which ensures that web browsers will appropriately recognize your web content, cookies, and the CM webtracking script as first party.

Third-party data

The term third-party data refers to data acquired from data sales houses or other large site and system operators. Third-party data is not typically from a single site, rather a consolidation of user data across a set of sites across the web and licensed to third parties for use in data and ad targeting.

API

An Application Programming Interface (API) is provided by a service owner so that others may use the features and functions enabled by the service. APIs describe how a consumer will make requests of the service, and what they will receive in return.

Webhook

HTTP callbacks. They are triggered by some event in a web application and can facilitate integrating different applications or third-party APIs, like Twilio.