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Cordial data platform

Overview

Cordial stores and exposes several data structures in order to build audiences, trigger messages, personalize content, and create analytic reports. Data flows in and out of Cordial via the UI, the RESTful API, or JavaScript Listeners embedded on your website.

It's important to understand the data available so you can take advantage of advanced segmentation and personalization. Articles in this section cover available data, how it's stored, and how you can use it.

Data available in Cordial

The following types of data are available in Cordial. Take note of the data collections that each data structure is stored in, since collections are referenced when personalizing messages using Cordial’s template syntax. 

Data Collection Description
Contact attributes Contact collection Data specific to each contact such as name, address, etc. You can store string type (i.e. first name), number type (i.e. age), geo type (i.e. addresses) and array type (i.e. favorite colors). You can add as many attributes as needed to describe your contacts.
Lists Contact collection List membership is a way to associate contacts together. Contacts can be members of many lists.
Cart items Contact collection Cart items are stored with each contact and can contain information about a product such as SKU, description image, and much more.
Events Events (contact activities) collection Data related to a contact's activity or behavior. This can be message activity as well as website activity (browsed a page, added to cart), or external (IoT) activity.
Products Products collection Data related to a company's product catalog.
Orders Orders collection Data about a contact's order history.
Supplements Supplements collection Custom data collections that extend beyond the above data types such as information related to the business (store locations) or a contact (nights stayed).

External data

External or remote data can be pulled from outside of Cordial and used as message content. This remote data is never stored within Cordial and can only be used for message personalization and content.

Some examples of external data include (but are not limited to):

  • JSON feeds
  • Any JSON response at a public URI
  • RSS feeds
  • XML feeds
  • External variables

How Cordial stores data

Cordial stores all data in a document-based and search-based database as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) objects. This allows for greater control, flexibility, and higher performance.

Each data record is stored in a specific collection according to its data structure. You can think of each collection as a folder and each record as a document.

Below is an example of a contact record written in JSON and stored in the Contacts Collection. Each contact record contains data about the channel, attributes, list membership, and cart items.

[{
	"channels": {
		"email": {
			"address": "fredgarvin@example.com",
			"subscribeStatus": "subscribed",
			"unsubscribedAt": ""
		}
	},
	"address": {
		"street_address": "555 Truss Ave",
		"postal_code": "92108",
		"country": "United States of America",
		"state": "CA",
		"city": "San Diego",
		"tz": "America/Los_Angeles",
		"loc": {
			"lat": "32.7773",
			"lon": "-117.1008"
		},
		"countryISO": "US",
		"auto": false
	},
	"gender": "Male",
	"last-name": "Fred",
	"first-name": "Garvin",
	"lists": [
		"Newsletter",
		"Weekly-Specials"
	],
	"lj": {
		"5184": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000",
		"5185": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000"
	},
	"listJoinDate": {
		"Newsletter": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000",
		"Weekly-Specials": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000"
	},
	"cart": {
		"cartitems": [{
			"productID": "About Last Night",
			"sku": "26616383623",
			"category": "sunglasses",
			"name": "About Last Night",
			"qty": 2,
			"description": "QUAY AUSTRALIA - About Last Night  Your style goes around and around! Classic styling\nClean lines Brand mark logo on center  50% 50% mix Washable Imported. Measurements:  Length: 10   Product measurements were taken using size MD. Please note that measurements may vary by size. ",
			"itemPrice": 50,
			"url": "https://cordialthreads.myshopify.com/?exitintent",
			"images": [
				"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1070/1848/products/3705707-p-MULTIVIEW.jpg?v=1470290687"
			],
			"amount": 100
		}],
		"totalAmount": 112,
		"lm": "2018-03-28T18:13:06+0000"
	},
	"_id": "58d2fc99ac0c8117814d4e78",
	"lastModified": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000",
	"createdAt": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000"
}]

If you're not familiar with JSON format, it can seem a little overwhelming, but when you break it down, it's mostly just groups of key/value pairs. Some additional basics of JSON syntax include:

  • Data is in name/value pairs
  • Data is separated by commas
  • Curly braces hold objects
  • Square brackets hold arrays

In the above example, notice the name/value pairs associated with the attributes of the contact. You can see the email address, name, address, list association, and other relevant data.

How Cordial uses data

With Cordial, you can use data to:

In the next article, you can learn about contact attributes.

The Cordial difference

We've worked hard to make Cordial stand out from the competition.

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