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What:  The Acoustic connection allows you to enrich BlueConic profiles with data from Acoustic contacts and vice versa. You can import data from contact lists or relational tables, and you can export data to contact lists. This connection supports scheduled batch import and export and real-time export for individual profiles.

About BlueConic: The BlueConic customer data platform harnesses the data required to power the recognition of an individual at each interaction, and then synchronizes their intent across the marketing ecosystem. Learn more about the BlueConic platform.

Why: Interact with your email recipients with relevancy on-site, and in their inbox! By using BlueConic's unique behavioral data collection engine and/or sharing data from other platforms with Acoustic, you can enable a highly relevant email program for triggered emails and drip campaigns.

Adding an Acoustic Connection

1. Click Connections in the navigation bar.
2. Click Add Connection.
   
3. A pop-up window appears. Check the Show all box. Enter “Acoustic” in the Search bar.

   Click Acoustic Connection.
   

4. The Acoustic Connection opens. Enter a name for the connection and save your settings. Get tips on naming items in BlueConic. You can expand or collapse metadata fields (favorite, labels, and description) by clicking the gray chevron at the top of the page.

Getting email notifications for the connection

At the top of the connection page, in the metadata section, you can choose whether to receive email notifications when the connection runs.

1. (Optional) Add email addresses for email notifications. Select the Email notifications box if you would like BlueConic to notify one or more email addresses if there's a problem running the connection or if it runs successfully. 
   
2. Enter one or more email addresses and click OK.
3. Select whether to receive emails each time it runs or only if the connection fails to run successfully. Click OK.
   

Configuring an Acoustic connection

Set up and run

For the connection to work, you must have an active Acoustic account. In this section you set up the authentication with your Acoustic account, using either the username and password method, or via OAuth authentication.

1. Click Set up and run and enter your credentials to set up the connection.
2. To use the OAuth authentication method, enter your client ID, client secret, and refresh token.
3. Enter the server where your data lives. You can find your server in the URL of your login page. For example, if you log in via "https://login-campaign-us-1.goacoustic.com", your server is 'us-1'. Note that this used to be your pod number, but the pod number might be different from the server number you currently have.
   
4. For both authentication via OAuth and via username and password, enter your username and password to connect with your Acoustic server.
5. Save your settings.

Data exchange

This section shows the total number of unique profiles that have been imported or exported via the connection. Note that these are unique profiles. If the same profile is exported multiple times, it is counted as 1.

Next, select the relevant goal(s) for connecting BlueConic to Acoustic:

• Import contact list data into BlueConic
• Import relational table data into BlueConic
• Export data to Acoustic

The goals determine if capabilities of the connection will be a two-way or one-way capacity. Keep in mind that even with two-way authentication BlueConic may need multiple connections, used independently for various data lists. This is because only a single dataset can be matched at a time, because datasets each require their own rule sets. 

Importing Acoustic contact list data into BlueConic

In the lefthand panel, select the goal to "Import contact list data into BlueConic" to map data lists from Acoustic into BlueConic to enrich BlueConic profiles automatically. Values will be added to profiles in BlueConic and optionally new profiles can be created. Follow these steps to configure the connection goal.

1. Select the Acoustic database you will be importing data from.
2. Select one or more Acoustic lists to import data from. Click Create BlueConic profiles if you want to allow the creation of new BlueConic profiles if no matching profile can be found for a contact in the list.
   Optional: You can choose to save the list from which the profile data is imported or enriched, and select a profile property to store the Acoustic list.
   
3. Link identifiers between Acoustic and BlueConic. 
   If there is no match for an Acoustic contact, either the contact will not be imported or a new BlueConic profile is created (if you select 'Create new BlueConic profiles' in step 2). Contacts that contain no value for the Acoustic identifier are excluded from the import. You can match identifiers using either a BlueConic profile property or the unique profile identifier.
   
4. Map the Acoustic fields that you want to import into BlueConic. Select the Acoustic field and search for the BlueConic profile property it should map to.
   
   In the dropdown menu, you can choose one of four actions that should be taken:

   Action	Rule
   Add	The new value is added to the existing value(s) of the profile property.
   Set	The new value overwrites any existing value in the profile property.
   Set if Empty	Select this option to prevent overwriting, and only store the first value encountered for the visitor.
   Sum	If the profile property and the value entered are both numbers, these two values are added, and the new value is stored in the profile property. In all other cases. the rule does not change the existing value of the profile property.

   Click Add mapping to add more mapping rules. 
5. Save your settings and run the connection. See Running the connection for details.

Importing Acoustic fields into BlueConic profile property data types

When you import values from Acoustic fields, they are converted to the following BlueConic profile property data types. 

Acoustic field values	BlueConic profile property data types
Date and Timestamp	Date Time
Numeric	Number
Text, System, Yes/No	Text

Learn more about BlueConic Profile Property data types.

Importing relational table data into BlueConic

In the lefthand panel, select a connection goal to "Import relational table data into BlueConic" to map table data from Acoustic into BlueConic to enrich BlueConic profiles automatically. Values will be added to profiles in BlueConic and optionally new profiles can be created. Follow the steps below to configure this connection goal.

1. Select an Acoustic relational table to import data from.
   Optional: Activate the checkbox if you want to allow the creation of new BlueConic profiles upon import.
2. Link Acoustic contacts to BlueConic profiles by linking the identifiers from both systems. If there is no match for an Acoustic contact, either the contact will not be imported or a new BlueConic profile is created (if you select 'Allow to create new profiles' in step 2). Contacts that contain no value for the Acoustic identifier are excluded from the import.
   
3. Map the Acoustic fields that you want to import into BlueConic. Select the Acoustic field and search for the BlueConic profile property it should map to.
   
   Choose one of four actions that should be taken:

   Action	Rule
   Add	The new value is added to the existing value(s) of the profile property.
   Set	The new value overwrites any existing value in the profile property.
   Set if Empty	Select this option to prevent overwriting, and only store the first value encountered for the visitor.
   Sum	Only when the profile property is a number and the value that is entered at the rule is also a number, then these two values are added and the new value is stored in the profile property. In all other cases the rule will not change the existing value of the profile property.

   Click Add mapping to add more mapping rules.
   See "Importing Acoustic fields into BlueConic profile property data types" above.
4. Run the connection.

Exporting BlueConic data to Acoustic

To export data from BlueConic into Acoustic to enrich its contacts or create new ones, activate the goal "Export data into Acoustic" and then click the text link to view the tab.

Individual profiles are immediately exported to Acoustic if a visit to a channel triggers a change in one of the BlueConic profile properties.

1. Select the BlueConic segment of visitors that you want to export.
   

   In the top right-hand corner, the number of profiles available for the export appears.

   This number shows how many profiles meet the conditions for the selected segment (for example, they have an email address and gave required consent for an objective) and therefore are available for the export. BlueConic tries to export only the profiles that have changed since the last export. This number of profiles exported may be lower than the number displayed here. 

2. Select the Acoustic database to export to.
3. Link BlueConic profiles to Acoustic contacts by linking identifiers from both systems. You can choose to match them by a profile property or profile identifier.
   
4. Map the BlueConic data you want to export to the corresponding Acoustic fields.
   
   Click Add mapping to add a new mapping rule, or click Add multiple mappings to add a number of rules for properties.
   Note that clicking the icon before the entry field opens a menu where you can select the type of data you want to export: a profile property, the BlueConic profile identifier of the profile, the associated segments, lifecycles associated with the profile (or a selected lifecycle), all viewed interactions, permission level, or a text value.
   
5. Optional: If you want the export to create new contacts in Acoustic if no matching contact can be found for a BlueConic profile, activate the Allow checkbox.
6. Optional: Click to choose the Acoustic lists you want to assign exported profiles to. 
   
   Optional: If you want to remove contacts from lists if they are no longer part of the segment that is being exported, activate the 'Remove contacts' checkbox.
7. Set a Lifecycle threshold for this goal. 
   If this connection goal is associated with a BlueConic Lifecycle that has a stage threshold, you can specify the Acoustic events that should be counted toward that stage threshold (email opens or email links clicked). Learn more about BlueConic Lifecycles.
   
8. Run the connection. See Running the connection for details.

Exporting BlueConic Lifecycle data to Acoustic

You can add Acoustic export connection goals as touchpoints in BlueConic Lifecycles. Here are some key points to keep in mind:

• Exporting Lifecycle stage information to Acoustic: When an Acoustic connection goal has been added to a Lifecycle, you can use that export goal to send a list of profiles that attain a certain lifecycle stage along their customer journeys and use this information for targeted emails. You can also use lifecycle stage information to create new audiences or segments outside of BlueConic, for example.
• Setting Lifecycle stage restrictions: You can restrict a connection goal to export only the profiles that are currently part of a certain lifecycle stage.
• Setting thresholds on marketing touchpoints: You can use lifecycle stage thresholds to limit campaign pressure on customer profiles in a certain lifecycle stage. For example, you can make sure a customer is exposed to only 3 marketing touchpoints per week,  per month, or per quarter during a particular stage on their customer journey. You can choose whether to count opens or clicks toward Lifecycle stage thresholds.

Exporting BlueConic profile property data types to Acoustic fields

When you export BlueConic profile properties to Acoustic fields, keep in mind that BlueConic data types can be mapped to Acoustic field values as shown below:

BlueConic profile property type	Acoustic field type	Notes
Date time	Date	Only the date is saved; time information is not retained.
Date time	Time	Only the time is saved; date information is not retained.
Date time	Timestamp
Number	Numeric
Text	Text
Text	System
Text	Yes/No	Only if text is formatted for Acoustic Yes/No field type

Learn more about BlueConic Profile Property data types.  

Running the Acoustic connection

The arrows to and from the BlueConic and Acoustic logos turn green to show the connection has been authenticated and configured correctly.

Make sure you've added import and export goals before running the connection.

Scheduling the Acoustic connection

To run the connection on a schedule, follow these steps:

1. Click Set up and Run in the left-hand panel.
2. Click the settings icon  in the Run history section of the Set up and run page.
3. Schedule the connection to run by choosing options in the Schedule window.
4. Click OK.
5. Switch the Acoustic connection on.
6. Save the connection.

 

Privacy management

Connections can be added to Objectives, allowing for privacy management of the information that is being picked up. A connection will only process the profiles of visitors who have consented to at least one of the objectives that the connection is linked to.