SF Marketing Cloud/CMT Consumer Update API

Overview

The API helps launch relevant and personalized marketing campaigns. This is useful in updating Salesforce Marketing Cloud Campaign Management Tool (CMT) with Consumer Profile data including child, pets, assets and opt-ins. It enables you to capture market specific consumer profile and identities through CIAM solution and sync the profile data to any campaign management or CDP platforms.

Functional Overview

The API enables you to capture market specific consumer profile and identities through CIAM solution and sync the profile data to any campaign management or CDP platforms. The following diagram gives an overview of the API functionality.

How It Works

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud/CMT Consumer API works as follows:

1. The API is used to transfer Consumer profile data to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC)/Campaign Management Tool(CMT) by calling the CMT APIs synchronously and sequentially. The CMT API is not a REST endpoint but a SOAP endpoint as it provides more detailed error information.
2. The API does not do any message transformation to CMT data format, so it expects the payload data to be already transformed using another API or readily available in the CMT specific format.
3. For New consumer registration the API will call the CMT API endpoint as many times as the number of consumer entities present in the profile and updates CMT (POST) with the consumer records.
4. In the case of profile updates of existing consumer, this API will upsert the records to CMT. This means that at first it will call a different CMT API endpoint repeatedly to retrieve (GET) all the records for that consumer (consumer contacts, interest, child, digital assets, pets, opt-ins etc.), and then makes another set of calls to a delete SOAP API endpoint (DELETE) to delete these entities individually. After deletion is successful, the API calls the CMT UPSERT API endpoint (POST) to create the consumer and its entities as a new consumer.
5. There are two types of consumer DELETE operations supported - one is a hard delete of the full consumer profile (DELETE operation at the parent consumer level) or cascade delete of individual consumer entities (child, pet, assets etc.).

Please note that the Marketing Cloud APIs currently does not have any APIs to perform asynchronous UPSERT or DELETE operation in a single call.

Security/Authentication

The API authenticates with CMT using JWT tokens (received from a CMT REST API) with a defined expiry, and uses secured HTTP data transfer to sync consumer payloads.

Error Handling:

1. For any failed operation to UPSERT consumer records (due to connection failure with CMT API), this API will retry based on configured retries (e.g. 5 times), after which it will push the message to a dead letter queue. If the message fails while upserting a consumer (parent) record, then it also triggers an alert to the Mulesoft Common Error Handling Framework to raise a ServiceNow ticket.
2. If one of the child entities of the consumer fails, while the parent consumer succeeds, then the failed child entity is not sent to dead letter queue, but only logged to Cloudhub log.

Custom KPI Metrics

For all the successful or failed messages to CMT, the API will send data to custom KPI dashboard on Anypoint Platform, providing analytic insights on how many consumer records are synced per day, which entities fail and for what reason.

How It Benefits

1. Relevant and Personalized Marketing Campaigns: The API allows you to launch marketing campaigns that are tailored to individual consumers based on their profile data. This personalization can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and improve customer engagement.
2. Integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Campaign Management Tool (CMT): By updating the CMT with consumer profile data, the API ensures that your marketing campaigns are seamlessly integrated with your existing Salesforce ecosystem. This integration streamlines your marketing processes and allows for better campaign management.
3. Comprehensive Consumer Profile Data: The API enables you to capture various aspects of consumer profile data, such as information about children, pets, assets, and opt-ins. This comprehensive data helps you gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, allowing you to create more targeted and relevant marketing campaigns.
4. Integration with CIAM Solution: The API facilitates the integration of consumer profile data with a Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solution. This integration ensures that the consumer profiles are securely managed and enables you to leverage the CIAM solution's capabilities for authentication, authorization, and user management.
5. Syncing Profile Data to Campaign Management or CDP Platforms:The API allows you to sync the consumer profile data captured through the CIAM solution to any campaign management or Customer Data Platform (CDP) platforms. This synchronization ensures that the profile data is readily available for campaign targeting and segmentation, enhancing the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.