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Visitor profiles and IDs

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About Real-Time visitor profiles and IDs

This section outlines what Real-Time profiles consist of, how visitor IDs are assigned and used, and how master and alternate keys work.

Visitor profiles and IDs

Below are details related to Visitor IDs and associated profiles and their use.

Visitor IDs are unique identifiers assigned to individual visitors to a website or other online channel. In Redpoint Interaction (RPI), visitor IDs are used to track customer behavior and personalize interactions across multiple channels.

When a visitor first encounters a Real-Time interaction, they may be assigned a new visitor ID, which is stored in the system along with other details about their behavior, such as the pages they visit, the offers they receive, and the goals they achieve. This information can then be used to personalize future interactions with the customer, for example by displaying targeted offers, recommending relevant products, or providing personalized content.

Visitor IDs can be generated in a number of ways, depending on the channel and the specific implementation. In some cases, they may be generated using a cookie or other tracking mechanism, while in others they may be generated based on user login credentials or other identifying information.

In addition to tracking individual visitors, RPI also allows you to segment visitors based on their behavior and other characteristics, such as demographics, purchase history, and preferences. This allows you to target specific segments with personalized messages and offers, improving the relevance and effectiveness of your campaigns.

Overall, visitor IDs are a critical component of RPI's (Real-Time) personalization capabilities, allowing you to track customer behavior and personalize interactions across multiple channels to drive engagement, loyalty, and revenue.

Known and anonymous visitors

Every known and anonymous visitor to a web page tagged using RPI Real-Time’s JavaScript web client, and/or a call made directly to an RPI Real-Time API method, results in the building up of a unique Profile per discrete individual. Note that Profiles are built up on a per-device and per-browser basis, so if you view a web page in Chrome and also in Firefox on your laptop, and then again on your phone, you'll be treated as three Visitors by RPI.

Visitor profiles are stored in an in-memory Real-Time cache. This means that latency is minimized when making decisions based on the information in the Visitor Profile.

A visitor’s profile can also be built up through the execution of Real-Time cache offers, and through database lookups using cached attribute lists.

Populating the visitor profile

Visitor data in the form of name/value pairs can be added to the visitor profile through a variety of methods:

  • Querystring parameters: if a visitor navigates to a web page tagged by RPI Real-Time using a URL to which querystring parameters have been appended, the parameters' name/value pairs will be added to the Real-Time cache. For example, navigating to 'http://mylandingpage.com?CustomerKey=12345' will result in the addition of value '12345' for attribute CustomerKey to the visitor profile.

  • Web form submission: on submission of an RPI web form, the data entered by a visitor within the form will be added to his or her visitor profile if the RPI Real-Time web.config setting CacheWebFormData is set to True.

  • A call to the RPI Real-Time API:

    • api/Cache/Visit

    • api/Decisions/[endpoints]

  • The Real-Time JavaScript web client: the web client provides methods for pushing data in the visitor profiles. In addition, the web client allows for the configuration of Real-Time lenses, which are mechanisms for capturing and storing Real-Time parameters based on the various sources from a web page.

    • Refer to the web client documentation for details on Real-Time lenses: DeploymentFiles\InteractionReal-TimeAPI\RPIFormValidation\shared\js\rpiwebclient\do cumentation\index.html

    • Refer to the Lens configuration definitions topic for information about using Real-Time lenses, including descriptions and examples of the various lens options.

Supplementing visitor profiles with data from database

Data from one or multiple databases can also be added to the visitor profile through the following mechanisms:

Data can be retrieved from the data warehouse and stored in the visitor profile when a visitor self-identifies to RPI through the use of a Cached Attribute List (CAL). A CAL is a list of RPI attributes managed within a dedicated configuration interface in RPI. Identification of a visitor can occur:

  • At submission of a web form that is associated with a CAL.

  • On receipt of a name/value pair (e.g., through a querystring parameter) when the name maps to an entry within the RPI Real-Time ParameterToDataMappings section of appsettings.json file, then the associated CAL will hydrate the visitor profile with the associated data. (See the ParameterToDataMappings setting section next for some additional details of RPI Real-Time appsettings.json configuration of this setting.)

    • Via a call to the RPI Real-Time API: api/Cache/CachedAttributes
      This endpoint could also be used to add an attribute to a visitor profile, as opposed to on the querystring, which would trigger a lookup from a CAL and a hydration of data to the profile if a match was found.

    • If the CAL is defined in the appsettings.json file and a lookup can be performed based on an attribute in the visitor profile, the hydration of data to the visitor profile will happen regardless of whether there is a Real-Time decision that is using that data. Alternatively, if the CAL is not defined in the appsettings.json, but a Real-time decision is called that references the CAL and an attribute in the visitor profile can be used to perform the look in for the CAL, then the data will be hydrated in the profile for the CAL referenced in the Real-Time decision.

  • A CAL can also be used to store “virtual lookup tables” in the Real-Time cache. Calls to the data warehouse to retrieve visitor data can be avoided through the usage of this mechanism.

  • Visitor profile data can be populated in advance of site visits through the execution of a Real-Time cache offer. This offer type is executed in the Interaction Designer workflow, within which an audience is used to define the list of potential site visitors for whom profile data is to be loaded. A Real-Time cache offer is subsequently executed against the audience. Data, the structure of which is defined by the Real-Time cache offer, is retrieved from the data warehouse and stored in visitors’ profiles in the Real-Time cache. This data is then available when making decisions about content to be rendered to site visitors.

  • Visitor profile data can also be populated in batches via the RPI Real-Time API: api/Cache/Visitors/CachedAttributes

ParameterToDataMappings setting

ParameterToDataMappings are defined in the RPI Real-Time website's appsettings.json file, as per the following example:

CODE 
ParameterToDataMappings": [ 
  {"ParameterName": "Email", "CALName": "CAL01"}, 
  {"ParameterName": "Employee", "CALName": "CachedTable01"}, 
  {"ParameterName": "CustomerKey", "CALName": "Cassandra"}, 
  {"ParameterName": "Cassandra2", "CALName": "Cassandra2"}]

Note: that RPI looks for changes to cached attributes every 10 minutes and updates the Real-Time cache if any attribute values have changed in that period.

Visitor profile details and examples

A visitor profile is stored in two separate keys in the Real-Time cache:

  • The primary visitor profile maintains all data except for Real-Time events and is stored in the cache with VisitorID as the key.

  • The second visitor profile stores data related to Real-Time events and is stored in the cache with a key of VisitorID_WE, where WE stands for Web Events.

Primary visitor profile

This is identified in the cache by the VisitorID being the key. There is an example of the VisitorID as well as a list of the types of elements that can be found in the profile.

Example VisitorID

This is an example of a VisitorID, which is a GUID assigned by Real-Time:

b5ab8de7-f342-43d5-94cd-ae6546960b4c

Types of elements stored in the primary visitor profile

Below is a list of elements that may exist in a visitor's profile.

  • Parameter/attributes (Key/Value, Key/ValueList, Key/ValueJSON)

    • Values: written to the profile directly; includes attributes created via lenses

    • Database values (DBVals): values looked up in the database and stored in the profile

  • Geo location (Location)

  • Pages visited (Pages)

  • Real-Time decisions and results (Decs)

Example visitor profile in the cache

JSON 
{
  "v": 1,
  "lastActivity": "2023-05-16T18:07:45.6333346-04:00",
  "lastSavedDateUTC": "2023-05-16T22:07:46.6013915Z",
  "isMasterProfile": "False",
  "clientID": "d85fd304-91be-42ff-afd5-71876201ac4c",
  "lTransfer": "2023-05-16T18:07:46.6013915-04:00",
  "Values": {
    "realtime_test": {
      "u": "2023-05-16T18:00:15.7136716-04:00",
      "iLE": "True",
      "v": "False",
      "vfmt": "str"
    },
    "PATHNAME": {
      "u": "2023-05-16T18:07:45.6333346-04:00",
      "iLE": "True",
      "v": [
        "/FTP/Landing_Pages/Realtime_Demo_Pages/Realtime_Examples.html",
        "/FTP/Landing_Pages/Realtime_Demo_Pages/Realtime_Examples.html"
      ],
      "vfmt": "cls"
    },
    "LATEST_PATHNAME": {
      "u": "2023-05-16T18:00:15.7136716-04:00",
      "iLE": "True",
      "v": "/FTP/Landing_Pages/Realtime_Demo_Pages/Realtime_Examples.html",
      "vfmt": "str"
    },
    "fe7e61b1-dfc8-492a-a452-ed727a3f0c22": {
      "n": "Number of visits",
      "u": "2023-05-16T18:00:15.7136716-04:00",
      "iLE": "False",
      "v": "1",
      "vfmt": "int"
    },
    "6930beb7-ce98-4b8a-a00b-2bfd8fe0757d": {
      "n": "Language",
      "u": "2023-05-16T18:00:15.7136716-04:00",
      "iLE": "False",
      "v": "English (United States)",
      "vfmt": "str"
    },
    "1945768d-7970-4e6c-aa4c-91c336f784df": {
      "n": "Region",
      "u": "2023-05-16T18:00:15.7136716-04:00",
      "iLE": "False",
      "v": "United States",
      "vfmt": "str"
    },
    "individual_id": {
      "u": "2023-05-16T18:07:45.6333346-04:00",
      "iLE": "True",
      "v": "100",
      "vfmt": "str"
    }
  },
  "Location": {
    "lon": "string",
    "lat": "string",
    "sch": "string",
    "upd": "2022-12-01T16:31:13.9920792-05:00"
  },
  "DBVals": {
    "order_id": {
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:46.6013915-04:00",
      "v": [
        "123",
        "654",
        "334",
        "786"
      ]
    },
    "total_price": {
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:46.6013915-04:00",
      "v": [
        "20.20",
        "1000.07",
        "475.35",
        "85.92"
      ]
    }
  },
  "isHistoryCached": "False",
  "Pages": [
    {
      "n": "https://local.rphelios.net/ftp/landing_pages/realtime_demo_pages/realtime_examples.html",
      "h": "local.rphelios.net",
      "lV": "2023-05-16T18:07:45.6333346-04:00",
      "lDec": "2023-05-16T18:07:46.5594887-04:00",
      "pubid": 0,
      "noV": 2,
      "dyn": [
        {
          "id": "52586962-ff91-43e1-aab7-99c0e5b657a8",
          "ix": "2"
        },
        {
          "id": "96c306e8-ee3b-4163-a3ed-adffcc594e40",
          "ix": "1"
        },
        {
          "id": "5835daae-21c8-4b60-9d78-771c5c551f4f",
          "ix": "5"
        },
        {
          "id": "bfcec0e1-3d14-4676-ad8d-c6a213683898",
          "ix": "2"
        },
        {
          "id": "b7c9d812-9dd1-4b2e-ace7-3cdefb51e5a3",
          "ix": "1"
        },
        {
          "id": "2c91948b-bca1-4751-9a52-97354ee8b208",
          "ix": "1"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "Decs": [
    {
      "id": "52586962-ff91-43e1-aab7-99c0e5b657a8",
      "r": 2,
      "i": 2,
      "n": "RTD - RB - Query String Attribute realtime_test",
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:45.635266-04:00"
    },
    {
      "id": "96c306e8-ee3b-4163-a3ed-adffcc594e40",
      "r": 1,
      "i": 1,
      "n": "Goal Smart Asset Test",
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:45.6382575-04:00",
      "h": [
        {
          "r": 2,
          "i": 1,
          "d": "2023-05-16T18:00:15.7272849-04:00"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "5835daae-21c8-4b60-9d78-771c5c551f4f",
      "r": 5,
      "c": "Default",
      "i": 2,
      "n": "SA - RB - Favorite Color",
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:45.6434602-04:00"
    },
    {
      "id": "bfcec0e1-3d14-4676-ad8d-c6a213683898",
      "r": 2,
      "i": 2,
      "n": "SA - RB - DB - Gender",
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:46.5557119-04:00"
    },
    {
      "id": "b7c9d812-9dd1-4b2e-ace7-3cdefb51e5a3",
      "r": 1,
      "i": 2,
      "n": "SA - Number of Visits",
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:46.55849-04:00"
    },
    {
      "id": "2c91948b-bca1-4751-9a52-97354ee8b208",
      "r": 1,
      "i": 2,
      "n": "SA - RTD -  RB - Test Table Asset",
      "d": "2023-05-16T18:07:46.5594887-04:00"
    }
  ]
}

Web events visitor profile

This is identified in the cache by the <VisitorID>_WE being the key. Below is an example of the VisitorID that is generated in the cache, as well as a list of the types of elements that can be found in the profile, including an example of a profile.

Example web event VisitorID

This is an example of a VisitorID, which is a GUID assigned by Real-Time:

b5ab8de7-f342-43d5-94cd-ae6546960b4c_WE

Types of elements stored in the web event visitor profile

Below is a list of example events that may exist in a web event visitor's profile. These are just a few of the out-of-the-box event types that are generated when submitting RPI Web Forms or when the RPI web client generates events when page view and click tracking is enabled. Outside of these examples, any event and associated data will be stored in this profile, including custom events. Goals are also captured in the WE profile.

  • Events

    • Pages visited/viewed

    • Page link click

    • Form submission

  • Goals

Example visitor profile in the cache

JSON 
{
  "lTransfer": "2023-03-29T16:32:32.8905336-04:00",
  "Goals": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "date": "2023-03-29T16:32:32.8915314-04:00",
      "pub": 0,
      "purl": "string"
    }
  ],
  "Events": [
    {
      "name": "Test Event",
      "detail": "Test Event Detail",
      "date": "2023-03-29T16:32:32.8915314-04:00",
      "metric": 0.0
    },
	{
      "name": "PageVisit",
      "detail": "Realtime Decision Examples",
      "date": "2023-05-17T01:07:54.5409295-04:00",
      "metric": 0.0
    },
    {
      "name": "PageLinkClick",
      "detail": "https://local.rphelios.net/Realtime_Examples_LinkClick.html",
      "date": "2023-05-17T01:07:51.1681543-04:00",
      "metric": 0.0
    },
    {
      "name": "PageVisit",
      "detail": "Realtime Decision Examples Link Click",
      "date": "2023-05-17T01:07:51.3321564-04:00",
      "metric": 0.0
    },
    {
      "name": "PageLinkClick",
      "detail": "https://local.rphelios.net/Realtime_Examples.html",
      "date": "2023-05-17T01:07:54.4573806-04:00",
      "metric": 0.0
    },
	{
      "name": "Sample_Event",
      "detail": "Sample_Event_With_Meta",
      "date": "2023-05-17T01:28:57.3261905-04:00",
      "metric": 1.0,
      "meta": [
        {
          "eDt": "2023-05-17T01:28:57.3261905-04:00",
          "Meta": {
            "svid": {
              "v": "svid_123"
            },
            "fsid": {
              "v": "fsid_23"
            },
            "rpcid": {
              "v": "rpcid_357234"
            },
            "cxid": {
              "v": "cxid_65843"
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

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