Key Concepts in BlueConic
The BlueConic customer data platform provides a unified view of the customer – paired with the capabilities to activate that data in the core processes used to drive business growth. This glossary defines key CDP concepts to help you get familiar with terminology and features in BlueConic.
AI Workbench
The AI Workbench in BlueConic combines the power of machine learning with rich profile data to perform analysis, gain new insights, and further enrich individual profiles. Using built-in Jupyter notebooks, you can build and train machine learning models to analyze BlueConic data and return new, richer data to user profiles that can be used for segmenting and other CDP use cases. You can use AI Workbench to run machine learning models with data from BlueConic profiles, timeline events, segments, lifecycles, and dialogues.
Batch
A batch process or connection runs in sets or groups on a regular scheduled basis. BlueConic connections can either run in batch mode or in real time. In the platform, batch scheduling options range from once every three minutes to once a month, and the result or changes from each run can be found in the “Run history” table of the connection.
Channels
Channels in BlueConic are unique websites, interactions, applications, or accounts where the real-time, online conversations between you and your customers take place. Channels are a key concept in BlueConic and allow users to define where visitor streams should be monitored. When setting up listeners for data collection in BlueConic, you can specify which channels you want to monitor for data collection. You can also set up dialogues with online visitors for each of your channels.
Connections
Connections in BlueConic are data integrations with other systems, such as marketing platforms, email service providers, customer relationship management platforms, and more. Connections let you integrate your customer profile data with existing data sources to help make the most of your technology stack. Depending on the configuration settings, BlueConic connections export data to other systems, and import data from other systems into BlueConic. BlueConic offers several kinds of connections, including named connections to major platforms, universal connections to SFTP, S3, and Webhook, and firehose connections to event-streaming services. See the list of BlueConic connections for a summary of connectors and integrations with other platforms.
Content store
BlueConic provides tools for managing personalized content recommendations. The content store is a pool of content items to be recommended, gathered using the BlueConic Content Collector Connection. This connection collects data about your content and stores it in a BlueConic content store, which feeds personalization in BlueConic. See the CDP use case for delivering 1:1 content recommendations.
Dialogues
Dialogues in BlueConic are online conversations with a customer or visitor to your website, mobile app, or other channel. Based on a visitor's profile or behavior, you can trigger dialogues that directly start a conversation with your customers. They range from forms and pop-up windows to overlays, toasters, notification bars, and many more.
First-party data
The term first-party data refers to consented customer data (demographic, behavioral, contextual, etc.) for visitors that interact with your channels. Examples of first-party data include online or offline data for website visitors, email recipients, social media followers, and in-store shoppers. First-party data is the cornerstone of the philosophy and technology at BlueConic. To emphasize the importance of first-party data, BlueConic released the First-Party Hostname Console (FPHC), which ensures that web browsers will appropriately recognize your web content, cookies, and the BlueConic script as first party.
Hostnames
Hostnames are used in computer networking to assign a label to a device or channel that communicates across the World Wide Web. In the platform, the BlueConic First-Party Hostname Console (FPHC) enables you to create a unique, first-party BlueConic hostname for each BlueConic channel. This ensures that web browsers will appropriately recognize your web content, cookies, and the BlueConic script as first party.
Lifecycles
Lifecycles in BlueConic are defined, step-by-step processes that help you orchestrate customer journeys across channels using your first-party customer data. As your customers interact with your organization, your brand, or your channels, they travel on their own individual journeys. Marketers can identify key milestones and touchpoints along that road based on unified data available in a profile. Lifecycles use stages to sequence each potential interaction across channels, and use BlueConic dialogues and connections to orchestrate integrated, cross-channel marketing programs.
Listeners
Listeners in BlueConic are data collectors that can be placed on specific pages or features of your channel to gather behavioral information from customers and visitors. Once this data is collected, it is added to those individual profiles to enhance important profile properties. Types of listeners in BlueConic include behavior, form, funnel, interest, and scoring listeners.
Objectives
Objectives in BlueConic are goals that can be used to manage actions within the platform, such as privacy and consent management, across your connections, dialogues, trackers, listeners, and segments. Objectives help you keep track of the purposes for which you store data and for which purposes actions are taken.
Omnichannel
The term omnichannel refers to a sales approach that aims to provide customers and prospects with a seamless experience across multiple channels. For example, on a website, on social media accounts, on different devices, and in-store.
Open-time email
In BlueConic, you can send personalized content and product recommendations in email and ensure that the recommendations are updated at the time of email opening. See Open-time email recommendations for details.
Plugins
Plugins in BlueConic are add-on functions that can be used to extend the features of the platform. The standard, certified plugin connections integrate BlueConic data with dozens of other systems, platforms, and data sources. You can also create custom connections to plug into BlueConic, or use custom integrations.
Product store
BlueConic provides tools for managing personalized product recommendations. The product store is a pool of content items to be recommended, gathered using the BlueConic Product Collector. This Product Collector gathers data about your content and stores it in a BlueConic product store, which feeds personalization in BlueConic. See the CDP use case for delivering 1:1 product recommendations.
Real time
The phrase ‘in real time’ refers to a process or connection that runs within milliseconds so that it is available virtually immediately. BlueConic connections can either run in batch mode or in real time.
Second-party data
The term second-party data refers to another entity's first-party data. Receiving second-party data is usually done by working out arrangements with trusted partners to share customer data. Second-party data plays a large role in audience extension and audience targeting efforts. The BlueConic-to-BlueConic connection creates a second-party data exchange between BlueConic customer tenants, meaning they can send first-party data to another tenant, making it second-party data.
Segments
Segments in BlueConic are dynamic groups of customer or visitor profiles characterized by a defined set of interests, preferences, demographic properties, and so forth. Based on how a customer behaves in your channels and the information you have gathered from them, you can classify customers, either by using a single filter or a sophisticated set of filters to create multidimensional, real-time customer segments.
Session
A BlueConic session is defined as a period of consistent activity by a website visitor. This term is used interchangeably with "visit" and represents the period of time starting when a visitor enters your universe and ending after 30 minutes of inactivity. If that visitor comes back after the 30 minutes of inactivity, a new session is registered.
Simulator
The Simulator in BlueConic provides a testing area to simulate how BlueConic will behave in real time on a web page. You can test how BlueConic schedules dialogues, connections, listeners, and variants to be triggered and how your profiles, segments, timeline events, and lifecycles are affected. This is useful for seeing how BlueConic will behave based on your settings before going live. You can use the Simulator on any page that is part of a channel defined for your BlueConic implementation and that contains the BlueConic script on the page. You can view other pages in the Simulator, but you will not be able to manipulate them.
Tenant
A BlueConic tenant is a specific licensed instance of the BlueConic technology and service, which includes a database for storage. Each tenant encompasses a customer’s discrete database and any owned channels that run the BlueConic script. Wikipedia defines a SAAS tenant this way: "A tenant is a group of users who share a common access with specific privileges to the software instance."
Third-party data
The term third-party data refers to data acquired from data sales houses or other large site and system operators. Third-party data is not typically from a single site, rather a consolidation of user data across a set of sites across the web and licensed to third parties for use in data and ad targeting.
Timeline
A timeline in BlueConic is a log that stores time-based events to capture information about the timing and sequence of events for a BlueConic profile. A timeline belongs to a profile and includes the set of all events belonging together for that profile. Examples of events include orders, email opens, abandoned baskets, and returns.
Unified profile
The term unified profile refers to a single source of truth where all data about an individual customer can be found in a centralized place. Using BlueConic connections, you can import and export profile data to synchronize your customer data across your entire marketing technology ecosystem, building more unified profiles and targeting audiences based on smarter segmentation.
Use case
A use case in BlueConic is a potential scenario of how a person will use a process or system, such as a customer data platform, to accomplish a strategic goal. A use case describes the current state, target outcome, supporting activities, and relative complexity required to successfully reach your business goal. Examples of common CDP use cases include delivering personalized content recommendations or accelerating lead generation campaigns.
User roles
User roles in BlueConic are used to grant access to various platform functions. You can grant users access to the BlueConic functionalities that suit their function within your enterprise, and a user can be assigned to one or more roles. Preconfigured user roles in the platform include application manager, content manager, customer insights manager, data scientist, insights only, IT/system administrator, and online marketer. You can also create custom roles for your BlueConic users.