The BlueConic database will grow over time. For every new visitor to your site, a new profile is created. If visitors do not return within a reasonable amount of time, their profiles lose value when actions that took place long ago are less relevant. If these profiles do not contain any unique identifiers and visitors have not returned, the likelihood that these profiles ever will be activated are close to zero. In addition, these profiles can be included in segment counts and take up costly database space.
Setting profile cleanup rules in BlueConic
In the Profile Cleanup section of the BlueConic General Settings page, you can create rules that determine when customer profiles are removed from the BlueConic database. You can create flexible, custom rules using several factors: based on a specific period of inactivity, or by adding criteria based on one or more empty profile properties. Any current or future customer profile that matches a cleanup rule is removed. Profile cleanup does not happen at a specific time — it is a continuous process.
System-defined default cleanup rules
Note that BlueConic applies a default profile cleanup rule to old profiles that do not have a known unique identifier. The system-defined cleanup rule removes any profile that has a very old (>400 days) last visited date (or no last visited date), and no values for a unique identifier profile property. This default profile cleanup rule cannot be edited or changed.
Deleting profiles with cleanup rules
To create your own profile cleanup rule, follow these steps:
- Open the BlueConic General settings page, and click [Add profile cleanup rule] in the Profile cleanup section.
- Create a name for the cleanup rule.
- Select one or more conditions to select profiles to be purged.
- Optional: Enter the number of days in the inactive days input field. This is the number of days that the profile must be inactive in order to satisfy the rule and trigger a cleanup. The time measured for profiles' inactivity is determined by the value of the 'lastvisit' profile property that's set server-side whenever there's a web visit, an external tracking pixel view, an AMP view, or a shortened URL view.
Tip: To link the profile cleanup rule to the Last visited date profile property, add a rule under 'Meet the profile criteria you define' to require Last visited date to be outside of the last X days. - Optional: To prevent the rule from purging identifiable profiles, select the "Are not identifiable profiles" option to ensure that profiles containing a value for a property marked as a unique identifier will not be purged.
- Optional: Use the empty value option to specify that a profile must not have a value for one or more profile properties. For this example, the rule will purge profiles that are not active subscribers. Note: This rule functions using AND logic, so if multiple profile properties are selected here, profiles will only be deleted if they don’t have a value for any of them.
- Optional: Use the 'Meet the profile criteria' option to set filtering conditions to select the profiles to be purged.
- To the right of the cleanup rule, the number of profiles that will be affected is shown along with the percentage of the total number of profiles this represents.
Note: If the number of customer profiles affected by the cleanup rule is more than 1% of the total number of profiles, the number of profiles affected and its percentage of the total appear in red as a warning to you that the rule will affect a significant number of profiles. For example: - Save your changes.
A pop-up appears to confirm whether to delete the number of profiles in the cleanup statistics. - Click Delete to confirm the cleanup, or Cancel to cancel the deletion.
Profile inactivity and connection imports
The time measured to "Remove all profiles that haven't visited your channels for X days" is determined by the value of the profile property "Last visit date." Profiles that have been imported by a connection but that have never visited a channel will have an empty value for this profile property. This means that if no further constraints are configured, these newly imported profiles will match the cleanup rule - and will be cleaned up shortly after importing. Avoid problems by adding other conditions such as unique identifiers or profile property values to exclude imported profiles.
Precautions
Only users with access to the BlueConic General Settings tab will have access to profile cleanup settings.
As you formulate cleanup rules, note the cleanup statistics that show the number and percent of profiles to be purged. Once you create and save a cleanup rule, a confirmation pop-up appears to confirm you intend to delete the number of profiles affected by this rule.
Cleanup rules are irreversible, and they apply to current and future profiles
Using multiple cleanup rules
If you create more than one cleanup rule, they have an "OR" relationship with each other which means that multiple rules can be in force at the same time.
Deleting a cleanup rule
To delete a cleanup rule, hover the mouse over it and click the Delete icon that appears to the right of the rule. Confirm the deletion in the pop-up window that appears.
Need help with profile cleanup rules?
Contact your Customer Success Manager for additional guidance on creating profile cleanup rules.