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In BlueConic, you can use groups to organize, segment, and target profiles as a group -- such as Households, Accounts, Companies, or another group type that works for your marketing plans.

Individual profiles can be associated with groups such as companies, accounts, or households when the profile includes a group ID as a special profile property.

Getting started with groups

To get started with groups, first you create a new group type -- for example, a Company group type (or Household, Account, etc.). Then you create groups of type Company, such as BlueConic or Microsoft.

Individual profiles can be associated with a company by using a unique group property. An individual profile can be part of multiple groups of the same group type through either a single profile property or separate profile properties.

Example group types and profile properties

Single profile property	Separate profile properties
For groups with the group type Company:
If a person is employed by multiple organizations at the same time, you can capture those different companies in one profile through a single “Employed by” profile property.	If a person is employed by multiple organizations at the same time but in different roles, you can capture each company through separate position-based profile properties, such as “Strategic buyer with company” or “Tactical buyer with company.” Each property would log one specific company.
For groups with the group type Store:
If a person visits multiple store locations (e.g., New York Flagship Store, Boston Store), you can capture those different stores in one profile through a single “Visited Stores” profile property.	If a person visits multiple store locations, you can capture those different stores through separate properties such as “Favorite Store,” “Closest Store,” and “Last Visited Store,” with each one logging one specific store.

When you define customer segments, you can filter both on profile properties (e.g. all residents of Florida under the age of 50) and on group properties (e.g. all residents of Florida under the age of 50 employed by a software company).

Contact your BlueConic Customer Success Manager to learn more about adding groups to BlueConic.

BlueConic CDP architecture diagram

BlueConic Groups and resource usage

Existing BlueConic customers can use the Group feature free of charge as long as your total data storage remains smaller than the amount that is allotted to your subscription. Contact your Customer Success Manager at support@blueconic.com if you intend to use this feature, to ensure your subscription can accommodate your intended usage. We'll discuss your requirements and upgrade your subscription as necessary.

Group properties

Each group type has its own properties, including a unique identifier (group_ID). For each group type, BlueConic creates an ID property that contains the unique group ID and becomes a unique identifier for individual members of the group. You can associate individual profiles with a group using this profile property. For example, Household = [household account number] or Company = "Microsoft."

So if you are creating a group type of Company, you would first set up the group type, then create instances of the group for individual companies (creating a group of type Company for Microsoft), and then use the company's unique ID property in individual profiles to associate that profile with a company (so Bill Gates' profile would contain a profile property value of Company = "Microsoft").

Creating group types

To create a new group type, follow these steps:

1. In the BlueConic Settings menu, choose General.
2. At the bottom of the General settings page, under Group settings, click Add group type.
3. Enter a name for the group type (adding both singular and plural forms). For example, to market to households, create a group type Household.
4. Review the Group Type ID. This ID is automatically populated with the singular name input in the Name (Singular) field; if necessary, edit this ID by clicking in Group Type ID field and making your changes.
   Note: You cannot change this Group Type ID once you save your settings.
5. Select an icon to represent the group type.
   
6. Save your settings to create the new group type (by clicking Save at the top right).
   

Note: After saving your settings, you can begin creating profile properties that align with your new group type through the Profile Properties page (More > Properties > Profiles). A link to this page will be provided next to "Profile properties" for each saved group type. For more information, review the next section, Linking profile properties to groups.

Linking profile properties to groups

After you create a group type, use the steps below to link any profile property to this type. (This enables individual profiles to be associated with multiple groups of the same type.)

1. From the Profile Properties page (More > Properties > Profiles), select the property in which you want to store the group memberships for a profile for that group type. Or create a new property by clicking the Add profile property
2. In the Type dropdown, select “Group ID.”
3. In the Group Type dropdown that opens immediately to the right, select the specific group type this property should link to (e.g., Company).
4. Click Save.

Notes about groups, group types, and group IDs

• Once a profile receives a value for your profile property, you cannot change that property’s group type (e.g., from Company to Store).
• Normal merge strategies still apply to profile properties with Group ID as its Type.
• The Unique Identifier option on individual property pages is unavailable for profile properties containing Group IDs.

Understanding groups and properties

The first time you create a group type, you will notice a few changes in BlueConic:

• The Profile properties menu is renamed Properties, since the page includes both profile properties and group properties. Submenus appear below the main navigation bar for Profiles and each of your group types (e.g., Households, Accounts, Companies).
  
  Here is where you can define new group properties, such as household properties, account properties, or company properties.
• The Profiles menu is renamed Profiles & Groups (or Profiles & [Group Name], such as Profiles & Households, if you have created only one group type so far). A submenu appears for Profiles alongside submenus for each of your group types, allowing you to inspect the members of each group (e.g., all of the individual accounts or households in a group, etc.).
  

Creating group properties

Use the Properties page to set up properties to define your group.

To define new group properties:

1. Select the Properties menu, and choose the group type (e.g., Households).
2. On the Household properties page, select the Add household property button.
3. Define new profile properties for the Household group. You can add as many group properties as you like. This is how you create the data model for new groups (i.e., the data you will collect for each group).

Importing group data

You can import data into BlueConic groups via CSV imports with the SFTP Connection, Amazon Web Services (S3) Connection, or Salesforce Marketing Cloud (FTP) Connection.

 

Examining group instances and properties

To see all the group instances associated with a specific group type, open the Profiles & Groups page and select your group type from the submenu (e.g., Companies).

From this page, you can select an individual company to see all the group properties or all profiles that are linked to this company.

Note: In order to view group data with data sensitivity set to PII, BlueConic users must have a user role with data visibility privileges. See users and roles for more information.

Finding the members of a group

Once you have created a group, you can use the profile import tool to add members of the group.

Select Profiles in group to see all individual profiles that are part of this group (e.g., to find members of a certain household, or employees of a company, as shown below).

Note: The table on this tab includes a column for Profile Properties, which lists the specific properties for each profile that has this group as its value. At the top, you can filter by property to only display profiles in the table with a specific property listed (e.g., “Favorite Store”).

Viewing the groups associated with an individual profile

To see which groups an individual profile is a member of, use the Profiles menu to open a profile and view its details.

In the Groups section on the Profile Overview tab of individual profiles, tags display for each group linked to this profile, along with its linking properties. For example, if “New York Flagship Store” is listed on someone’s profile for the “Closest Store” and “Favorite Store” profile properties, then the tag on their profile will display as such:

New York Flagship Store | Closest Store | Favorite Store

Defining customer segments using group properties

You can define BlueConic customer segments based on a mix of profile and group properties. This also allows you to target profiles based on the activities of others in the same group. For example, you could offer a promotion to all profiles at one company (or household) based on recent events or browsing habits of others at that company (or in that household).

This example shows how to define a BlueConic customer segment on the Segments page using both a profile property (recent high engagement) plus a group property (company size), to create a segment of profiles of highly engaged profiles of people employed by large companies with more than 1,000 employees:

You can also define a customer segment using specific profile properties linked to groups. (These properties are included in the Select Condition dropdown when building a segment.)

For instance, if you created a “Strategic buyer with company” profile property and you’re looking to build a segment of strategic buyers employed in Boston, you would create this condition using the steps below:

City (Strategic buyer with company) = Boston

1. Select the “Strategic buyer with company” option from the Select Condition dropdown.
2. Select the “City” option, which is a group property of the group type Company.
3. Select “Boston” from the list of values displayed.

Learn more about BlueConic Groups

Contact your BlueConic Customer Success Manager to learn more about adding groups to BlueConic.

Groups REST API

BlueConic application developers can refer to the BlueConic REST API documentation for information on accessing groups in BlueConic applications.