Profile-Based Automations

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A profile-based automation is an automated modification of contacts' profiles in Engage. A profile-based automation uses the value stored in one or more source attributes to determine the new value written to a target attribute.

Profile-based automations have a wide variety of applications.

Profile-based automations use expression language. This chapter provides many example expressions that you can modify and use. To create your own complex profile-based automations, you need to know how to write expression language.
You can also create a simple mapping with a selection. The selection must be based on profile attribute data.

There are two types of profile-based automations: mappings and operations. The following table provides an overview of the two types.

Mappings versus Operations

	Mapping	Operation
Description	A mapping consists of one or more expressions or an Engage function. You can use a mapping to assign one of several possible values to a contact. This is based on an analysis of the data in his profile. Mapping allows you to perform more complex analysis of profile data than Selections or the Selection Builder.	An operation consists of expression language applied to a profile attribute with the data type string, number, or date. You can use Engage functions to create operations. You can use an operation to derive or calculate a new attribute value. The resulting value is the product of the expression and is not defined in advance.
Use Cases	Identify what types of products your contacts are interested in, based on their previous click activity. Product Interest Mapping Identify your VIP customers based on the number of purchases they make, taking into account how long they have been group members. VIP Customer Mapping Categorize contacts into hot / warm / cold or gold / silver / bronze depending on the date of their most recent click or purchase activity. Recipient Activity Mapping Group several different domains, postal codes, telephone area codes or other information to create categories of contacts. Simple Category Mapping	Add together multiple attributes of the type Number. Use this to calculate a score, for example for a lead scoring program. Add Together Lead Scores Calculate a contact's age based on the date of birth. Calculate Contacts' Ages Calculate the total value of all purchases a contact makes over his lifetime. Calculate Total Purchase Value Change data with functions. For example, use a function to capitalize the first letter of contacts' first names. Capitalize First Letters of Contact Names
Target Attribute	The target attribute is enumerated or Boolean.	The target attribute is not enumerated. The target value is determined by the operation.
Read More	Mapping	Operations

You can only create profile-based automations with the data currently stored in contacts' profiles. Related data, group membership data and recipient activity data are not directly available for use. However, you can create event-based automations that write group membership data and recipient activity data to contacts' profiles. This data is then available for profile-based automations. For more information, see Event-Based Automation.

Activate and Apply Profile-based Automations

After you create a new profile-based automation, you must activate and apply the automation in order to change contact profiles.

Activate a Profile-based Automation

An active profile-based automation has not yet been applied to all contacts in the system.

An active profile-based automation affects individual contacts when their profiles change. This cane be a profile change via the API or in the Engage user interface. When you upload a file that results in a profile change, Engage does not apply the profile-based automation to the new or changed contact profiles.

Apply a Profile-based Automation

To apply the profile change to all contacts in the system, click the Apply Automations button. This immediately affects all contacts in the system. The priority determines the order in which the profile-based automations are applied.

When you click the Apply Automations button, Engage applies all automations with the status Active and reapplies all automations with the status Applied. You cannot apply profile-based automations one at a time.

When the automation is finished, the owner receives a notification email.

You can use a time-based or event-based automation with the job Execute Profile-based Automations to reapply all profile-based automations with the status Applied. This job does not reapply automations with the status Active.

Engage automatically applies both Active and Applied automations when Engage detects a change in the corresponding profile attribute. This profile change can be made via the API or in the Engage user interface. This does not apply to profile changes resulting from a file import.

Apply after Contact Import

When you apply a profile-based automation, it affects all contacts in the system. However, contacts imported after the profile-based automation is applied are not affected. You must create an automation to apply an existing profile-based automation to newly imported contacts. To do so, create an event-based automation that combines the following event and job.