Read an audience

Objective

In the next set of steps you will create a campaign to read an audience from AEP and use it along with the Profile Target Dimension created earlier. Use the Split activity to split the data based on a condition. Finally test the campaign to understand how these audiences work when used with the Relational schema.

Read audience

This lab covers using the Read audience activity in conjunction with the Relational schema for enrichment.

Orchestrated Campaign uses the Relational schema for all the activities. When using the Read audience activity, which reads the audience from AEP, a corresponding Entity (Target Dimension) should be configured to reconcile the audience with the Campaign Target Dimension.

Create a campaign

  1. In the left side rail, click on Campaigns

    Left rail navigation to Campaigns

  2. Click on Create campaign

    Create campaign button

  3. Select Orchestration - Marketing and click on Confirm

    Orchestration - Marketing campaign type selection

  4. Provide Campaign details as follows and then click the Save button

    • Name: OC-RSL-ReadAudience-Test
    • Description: RSL-Read Audience Test

    Campaign settings form with name and description fields

  5. Wait for the confirmation message

Confirmation message after saving campaign settings

Add Read audience activity

  1. Click on the + inside the canvas to open the options menu and then select Read audience from the Targeting activities

    Targeting activities menu with Read audience selected

  2. In the Read audience details pane, click on the Search icon for Audience

    Read audience details pane with the Audience search icon

  3. Select the dep: Basic Plan Members audience with Profile Count of 9 and click on Add audience

    dep: Basic Plan Members audience selected with Profile Count of 9

  4. Next click on the drop down for Entity and select the dep-rel: Customer Account - customer_id Campaign Target Dimension

Entity drop-down with the Customer Account Target Dimension selected

NOTE
Other attributes can also be extracted from the AEP Profile for use in the canvas using the Add attribute button. But for this lab, extra attributes are not required, so that step is skipped.

Test the campaign

  1. The settings for the Read Audience activity are filled in. Click on Start to run the campaign in Test mode

    Start button to run the campaign in Test mode

    note
    NOTE
    This takes a few minutes to run.
    Test mode permits the execution of the campaign to verify and monitor its behavior along with the results from each activity. The activities get executed sequentially through to the end of the canvas.
  2. The test execution starts and the results are displayed when completed. Click on the Result node and then Preview results to see the execution results

    Result node with the Preview results option

  3. Notice that 2 (out of 9) profiles from the Read audience do not have a corresponding matching Target dimension from the relational schema (i.e. they exist in the Profile store but not the relational store). And since Orchestrated Campaign works off the Relational schema, the unmatched customer_id (2) from the Read audience is dropped and only the matching ones, 7 in this case, are usable in subsequent activities that leverage relational data in the campaign

    Preview results showing profiles missing a matching Target Dimension

    note
    NOTE
    The following steps use the relational data to confirm the above statement of unmatched customer_id getting dropped.
  4. Click on Stop to stop the Test mode of the campaign

    Stop button to end campaign Test mode

  5. Click on the + at the end of the flow and add Split from the Targeting activities

    Targeting activities menu with Split selected

  6. In the details pane of the Split activity, expand the first split called Subset

    Split activity details pane with the Subset segment expanded

  7. Rename it to “In Store” and click on Create filter to set the filter condition

    Segment renamed to In Store with the Create filter option

  8. In the Create filter pane, click on Add condition

    Create filter pane with the Add condition button

  9. Since no other attributes were extracted from the AEP Profile, the only AEP Profile attribute available here is the Customer ID. However, columns from the relational store corresponding to the matching Target dimension are available for setting up the filter condition. Expand the Targeting dimension by clicking on >

    Targeting dimension expanded to show relational store columns

  10. Select Source from the list and click on Confirm

Source attribute selected from the Targeting dimension columns

  1. The distinct values for the Source column are available in the drop down. For the Custom condition, select “In Store” from the drop down and click on Confirm to exit

Custom condition set to In Store

  1. Back in the details pane of the Split activity, the settings for the first Split are complete. Click on Add segment to the second split

Add segment button in the Split activity details pane

A new segment with the name Result is created

New segment named Result

  1. Rename “Result” to “Not In Store” and click on Create filter to set the filter condition

Segment renamed to Not In Store with the filter option

  1. In the Create filter pane, click on Add condition. Follow the same approach as above, expand the Targeting dimension by clicking on >, then select Source from the list and click on Confirm

Targeting dimension expanded to show relational store columns

Source attribute selected from the Targeting dimension columns

  1. For the Custom condition, select “In Store” from the drop down and for the operator select “not equal to”. Click on Confirm to exit

Custom condition set to not equal to In Store

  1. Back in the details pane of the Split activity, the settings for the two Splits are complete. Click on Start to run the campaign in Test mode

Start button to run the campaign in Test mode after configuring the Split

  1. The test execution begins and the results are displayed upon completion. Since only 7 matching Target dimension were found in the Relational schema, the same count is observed post the Split operations (7 and 0) as well

Split activity results showing counts of 7 and 0

  1. Click on each result box and Preview results to view the results

Preview results option for each Split result box

  1. Click on Stop to stop the Test mode of the campaign

Stop button to end the final Test mode run

NOTE
The Read audience showed 9 profiles. Because you built a filter on Source, and the Source field exists in the Relational store, you had to join the Profile store with the Relational store to check it. When joined with the Relational schema via the Campaign Target Dimension, only a total of 7 profiles matched. These 7 matched customer ids are available for use in the following activities that attempt to use relational data. All of the 7 customer ids had Source set to “In Store”, which was evident via the Split flows.
Hence, maintaining data consistency is critical when using AEP Profiles along with their relational counterparts for enrichment.
SUCCESS
Congratulations, this completes the lab on using the Read Audience activity with Relational schema.

Recap

You have now seen how easy it is to create a Campaign, perform a Read Audience activity along with the Profile Target Dimension to use the relational schema. You used the Split activity to split the audience based on a condition. Finally, the test mode helped understand that it is important to have the data consistency between the Profile and the Relational schema.

You can read more here if you are interested.

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