BlueConic offers a powerful data collection feature called Listeners. The more you listen to your individual customers and visitors, the more you know to help drive a better outcome.
Listeners collect data about visitors and customers based on their online behavior or provided input and store that data in BlueConic customer profiles. BlueConic offers a range of listeners to collect first-party customer profile data. Below are a number out-of-the-box listener types. Each BlueConic listener is defined by a set of rules you can customize.
Using Listeners for data collection in BlueConic
Listeners in BlueConic add information to individual profiles based on each individual's online behavior or provided input. There are several powerful listener types available out of the box, for example:
You can even develop custom listeners as BlueConic plugins.
Learn more: Visit BlueConic University
See the Introduction to Listeners video in BlueConic University.
About the BlueConic Global Listener
BlueConic uses a built-in Global Listener to collect some important profile properties. See What kind of data does BlueConic collect? for a list of profile property values BlueConic collects automatically (so you don't have to...).
Listeners and privacy management
Listeners can be added to Objectives, allowing for privacy management of the information that is being listened for. A listener is only executed for customers or visitors who consented to at least one of the objectives linked to the listener.
Organizing and managing listeners
To see the listeners configured in your BlueConic environment, choose Listeners from the BlueConic navigation bar. You can use different view options to configure this display. See Object navigation for an overview of all available navigation options.
Creating a new listener
To add a new listener in BlueConic, choose Listeners from the BlueConic navigation bar and select "Add listener" at the top right of the Listeners tab.
A gallery opens, where you can search for and select the type of listener you want to use:
Find the type of listener you want to add and select it. After choosing the listener type, you can configure your listener. To maintain your Listeners, use Save, Save As, and Delete as with any other BlueConic object.
The list only shows the types of listeners currently installed in BlueConic. Select the Show all checkbox to see all types of listeners available in the Plugins Gallery.
The "Show all" checkbox is unchecked by default and is specific for each marketer and each type of object. As a result, changing the object for the Listeners lightbox doesn't impact the display in the Dialogues lightbox for example.
The "Show all" option for Listeners is remembered over sessions; therefore, if you log out and log back in, the state of the checkbox remains the same.
If you check the checkbox:
- A "Loading..." screen is placed over the plugins area for 1.5 seconds.
- All plugins from the Plugins Gallery that are not installed yet are added to the list.
- Only plugins of the same type as the current object type are added (for example: only uninstalled Listener plugins are added to the list if the marketer is adding a Listener on the Listener tab).
If you choose an uninstalled plugin, then selecting a new listener will automatically install it in BlueConic. If the checkbox is unchecked (the default state) then only the installed plugins are shown in the lightbox.
Name and Description
You can change the name of the listener by clicking on the name and editing it. Optionally, you can also add a description. See Best practices for names and labels for tips on naming your listeners and adding metadata.
"Where": Channel selection
At the "where" section, you select the channels on which you want this listener to be active. By default listeners are running on "all channels." You can select a specific channel by entering a few characters of that channel in the search box. Channels that match your criteria will appear in a list to select from. If needed you can also open the advanced search to find the right channel.
If you want to specify a specific URL on which the listener is active, you first need to select the channel to which this URL belongs. Then you can add the specific URL by clicking the "Add Rule" button.
The number of specific URL-restrictions in a channel is mentioned after the channel, and can be viewed and edited by clicking on it.
Configuring listening rules
The rest of the setup of the listener depends on the type of listener you choose. Explore the Listeners documentation for instructions on how to configure a specific listener.
Change the status of a listener
The status of a listener is displayed next to its name. By default the listener is off and will not be triggered for visitors. Only enabled listeners are triggered for visitors. Enable or disable a listener by clicking the switch button.
Consent management Objectives and related items
In the right-hand sidebar, the consent Objectives and "Related items" widgets are displayed. They show the other objects in BlueConic that are directly related to the listener you are managing.
Listeners can have the following types of related items:
- Channels: The channels on which this listener is active.
- Profile properties: The profile properties that are set by this listener.
- Plugins: The plugin on which this listener is based.