Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn how to turn complex MarTech ecosystems into coordinated, customer-focused journeys with Customer Intelligence 360.
Watch the Webinar
You will learn more about:
Custom task types and connectors.
How to use custom task types to create seamless connections to external delivery platforms and the benefits of such integration.
The differences between triggers and bulk custom tasks.
Best practices when configuring custom tasks.
Technical aspects of custom tasks, connector configuration and deployment.
The questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar are listed below and the slides from the webinar are attached.
Q&A
Can you integrate into ANY marketing vendor or platform?
In a nutshell, yes.
Looking into it in more detail, it generally just depends on how easy it will be.
Some integrations can be done through configuration only, where we simply need to specify API endpoint, authentication/credentials and the API payload format with data mapping to CI360. This is often the case with messaging channels, like SMS or messaging apps, because APIs are that straightforward.
Others need some code to transform data or orchestrate API calls. In those cases, we can put in place intermediary code, we often refer to it as a connector function, that performs those transformations, if needed. We have integrations into not just the marketing platforms, but CRM systems, like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, for creating leads for example. Some of these require some API orchestration, where more than one API call may be needed, so a simple integration or connector function is needed. This is in addition to the classic use cases, like “let's send a message, deliver the message to a customer, just simply contact someone”.
Can you get insights or feedback on how the campaigns delivered through external vendors are performing?
This is really the topic of insights and metrics, which is how our feedback surfaces in CI360. We define metrics which turn into Insights and are available on Insights tab in the current UI or the Insights section in the new tables Task UI design. They are driven by events in our system, and events are injected by pushing data in from an external vendor. For example, SMS delivery failure or success signal. Or email bounce or open event.
The key consideration here is what's the availability of that data from the external vendor and how quickly we can get it. Is this something that vendor can still send in real time or near real time? Does it have to be batched up and then pushed into the system? Is this easy or how accessible is that data from the external system?
Assuming that we can get the data from external system, then, yes, we can get the insights, and get all these displayed in CI360, in as part of the task. We can measure performance of a task, that is, campaign, this way. We can also use those to drive orchestration and experience down the road, for example in journeys.
Can I use multiple different creatives to deliver more personalized content to my customers using custom tasks?
That’s a great question, and something that I forgot to mention when we were talking about creatives during the presentation. The answer is yes! The approach is the same as what you may be familiar with in some of our other tasks.
For example, in a task, including Custom Tasks, when you assign a creative, you can pick multiple creatives instead of just one. And in this case, you can set up the distribution rules, which can either be random percentage based, or rule based. If they are rule based, then you can use the data to determine who gets what creative. It is the same mechanism as with some of our native tasks. The interface looks the same and works the same for our custom tasks. The creative handling is not at the same level yet for the bulk tasks as it is for triggered custom tasks, but once it's there, the intent is that it's going to be the same.
Ultimately, it is all following the stated goal of having the custom tasks look, feel and perform as close as possible to our native tasks, so that marketing end-users get the same familiar experience, regardless of what task they are using.
Is this something that non-technical users can configure, or do I need to engage with IT or an implementation partner?
I addressed this partially when answering the question about if we can integrate to ANY platform. The answer will somewhat depend on the system we’re trying to integrate with.
Sometimes it's easy and done through configuration only. Sometimes there's a little bit of integration work, with a little bit of code involved. If there's code, if we need to leverage an intermediate connector function, for example for data transformation, then yes, this is a technical task. It's either going to be your IT or an implementation partner. Implementation partners are always a good option for these kinds of integrations, especially if you're working with an existing one. It may just be an additional effort in supporting your MarTech.
But if it's truly just simple configuration, then it’s something that a “power user” could be capable of. There are many levels of “technical users” or “non-technical users”. Maybe you're not the developer, but you if you are comfortable with tools like Postman or similar, know what the web service and API is, or how format a simple JSON object and insert the merge tags, all done through CI360 UI, then this is a straight-forward task.
In a lot of cases, to be fair, it will be at the very least power user, technical user or an IT function that will support initial setup. But I'm not going to eliminate the possibility that maybe you can do it yourself. One thing to note, this is certainly an administrative function within CI360, so regardless of the skill level, one has to have admin privileges in CI360 to be able to configure a connector and a custom task type.
Recommended Resources
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Please see additional resources in the attached slide deck.
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