A profile-based automation is an automated modification of contacts' profiles in Engage. A profile-based automation uses the value stored in one or more source attributes to determine the new value written to a target attribute.

Profile-based automations have a wide variety of applications.

Profile-based automations use expression language. This chapter provides many example expressions that you can modify and use. To create your own complex profile-based automations, you need to know how to write expression language.

You can also create a simple mapping with a selection. The selection must be based on profile attribute data.

There are two types of profile-based automations: mappings and operations. The following table provides an overview of the two types.

Mappings versus Operations


Mapping

Operation

Description

A mapping consists of one or more expressions or an Engage function.

You can use a mapping to assign one of several possible values to a contact. This is based on an analysis of the data in his profile. Mapping allows you to perform more complex analysis of profile data than ​Selections​ or the ​Selection Builder​.

An operation consists of expression language applied to a profile attribute with the data type string, number, or date.

You can use Engage functions to create operations.

You can use an operation to derive or calculate a new attribute value.

The resulting value is the product of the expression and is not defined in advance.

Use Cases

  • Identify what types of products your contacts are interested in, based on their previous click activity.
    ​Product Interest Mapping​

  • Identify your VIP customers based on the number of purchases they make, taking into account how long they have been group members.
    VIP Customer Mapping​

  • Categorize contacts into hot / warm / cold or gold / silver / bronze depending on the date of their most recent click or purchase activity.
    Recipient Activity Mapping​

  • Group several different domains, postal codes, telephone area codes or other information to create categories of contacts.
    Simple Category Mapping​

Target Attribute

The target attribute is enumerated or Boolean.

The target attribute is not enumerated. The target value is determined by the operation.

Read More

Mapping​

Operations​

You can only create profile-based automations with the data currently stored in contacts' profiles. Related data, group membership data and recipient activity data are not directly available for use. However, you can create event-based automations that write group membership data and recipient activity data to contacts' profiles. This data is then available for profile-based automations. For more information, see ​Event-Based Automation​.

Activate and Apply Profile-based Automations​

After you create a new profile-based automation, you must activate and apply the automation in order to change contact profiles.

Activate a Profile-based Automation

An active profile-based automation has not yet been applied to all contacts in the system.

An active profile-based automation affects individual contacts when their profiles change. This cane be a profile change via the API or in the Engage user interface. When you upload a file that results in a profile change, Engage does not apply the profile-based automation to the new or changed contact profiles.

Apply a Profile-based Automation

To apply the profile change to all contacts in the system, click the ​Apply Automations​ button. This immediately affects all contacts in the system. The priority determines the order in which the profile-based automations are applied.

When you click the ​Apply Automations​ button, Engage applies all automations with the status ​Active​ and reapplies all automations with the status ​Applied​. You cannot apply profile-based automations one at a time.

When the automation is finished, the owner receives a notification email.

You can use a time-based or event-based automation with the job ​Execute Profile-based Automations​ to reapply all profile-based automations with the status ​Applied​. This job does not reapply automations with the status ​Active​.

Engage automatically applies both ​Active​ and ​Applied​ automations when Engage detects a change in the corresponding profile attribute. This profile change can be made via the API or in the Engage user interface. This does not apply to profile changes resulting from a file import.

Apply after Contact Import​

When you apply a profile-based automation, it affects all contacts in the system. However, contacts imported after the profile-based automation is applied are not affected. You must create an automation to apply an existing profile-based automation to newly imported contacts. To do so, create an event-based automation that combines the following event and job.

For instructions, see Create a New Event-Based Automation​.

You can also manually re-apply all automations with the status ​Active​ or ​Applied​ to all contacts in the system. Click the ​Apply Automations​ button.