Businesses today are sitting on a goldmine of rich engagement data – sales transactions, reservations, support cases, content interactions. Yet in many segmentation workflows, engagement data is treated as auxiliary—referenced when needed, but not central to the strategy. This data captures real behavior in context, often with far more clarity than static profile fields. Whether it’s a customer completing a specific activity, a user interacting with your digital content, or a subscriber demonstrating a particular behavior, these engagements paint a far more detailed picture of your audience’s immediate needs and intent. To empower businesses with a more granular level of insight, we are thrilled to announce a significant update to Salesforce Data Cloud’s segmentation capabilities.
Introducing Engagement-Level Segmentation
While engagement data has long been used for filtering and has played a role in the segmentation process, the core segmentation framework has traditionally focused on the individual profile. This profile-centric approach often makes it difficult to fully capture the depth and nuance of customer interactions, leaving several key opportunities for improvement:
- Further Leverage of Engagement Data: While rich engagement data lives in the system, marketers often struggle to use it as a primary, foundational object in their segmentation strategy.
- Context Aware Messaging: In scenarios where multiple engagements (e.g., two purchases or reservations) are associated with an individual, activating based on profile data would send a single, generic communication for all engagements, potentially making it challenging to deliver tailored and targeted messaging for each engagement record.
- Enhanced Personalization: Details embedded in engagement records, such as special requests within a reservation or service tickets associated with a purchase, can now be included directly in segmentation and activation flows, supporting truly personalized customer experiences.
Engagement-level segmentation enables marketers to go beyond individual-based approaches by segmenting and activating directly on specific engagement records. Each interaction—such as a reservation, sales order, or support case—can now be treated as a distinct unit of segmentation, allowing for much more precise targeting based on the unique context of each engagement.
This capability allows rich engagement details to flow seamlessly into activation campaigns, empowering teams to create experiences that are highly relevant, behavior-aware, and deeply personalized. Marketers can now target at a more granular level, craft messaging that aligns with the exact nature of the engagement, and deliver it to the right contact point with the right context.
Let’s consider a practical scenario to illustrate the transformative power of this capability. John, a valued customer of a hospitality company, has two upcoming reservations: a 3-day family vacation with his wife, kids, and parents, and a 2-night anniversary getaway with his wife. With profile-based segmentation, John’s record appears as a single entry, requiring additional effort to filter and tailor messaging for each of his separate reservations.
With engagement-level segmentation, each reservation is treated as a separate record. For the family trip, John receives information about adjoining rooms, kids’ activities, group dining options, and updates on his requests for a crib and early check-in. For the anniversary stay, he gets a separate message confirming his romantic room setup, spa appointment, and late checkout—tailored to the nature of that experience. By activating on the reservation, marketers can easily access related data like service requests, special comments, and feedback tied to that engagement, enabling precise and meaningful personalization that a profile-only approach cannot deliver.
Key Use Cases: Leveraging the Power of Engagement-Level Segments
The possibilities are vast with direct Engagement record segmentation and activation:
- Specific Activity Reminders: Create a segment of all upcoming scheduled activities (e.g., webinars, demos) and send tailored reminders with specific joining instructions for each activity.
- Granular Purchase Follow-ups: Segment individual product purchases and trigger specific post-purchase communications related to that exact product, such as usage tips or relevant accessories.
- Detailed Website Interaction Targeting: Segment users based on specific actions taken on your website (e.g., downloaded a particular whitepaper) and send highly relevant follow-up information related to that specific interaction.
- Individual Support Ticket Actions: Segment specific resolved support tickets and trigger feedback surveys directly related to the individual issue that was addressed.
- Appointment Confirmation and Reminders: For bookings, send confirmations and reminders that include the details of the specific appointment, like the service, time, and the person they’re meeting with.
Segment Creation and Activation
In the new segment creation flow, when choosing the ‘Segment On’ entity, users will now see two distinct sections: Profile Objects and Engagement Objects. The Engagement Object section will display all Data Model Objects (DMOs) categorized as ‘Engagement’. The remaining steps of the segment creation process, including setting the publish schedule and lookback window, will function identically to profile-based segmentation. Similarly, the filtering experience within the segmentation canvas will remain consistent.
When selecting ‘Activation Membership’, you will see available Profile, Engagement, and Other category objects that share a direct relationship with the ‘Segment On’ entity. The remaining steps for activation, such as selecting contact points, adding attributes, and filtering activation memberships, will follow the standard process.
The object you activate on—whether a Profile (Individual), an Engagement (e.g., Reservation, Purchase, Ticket), or Other—fundamentally shapes how much context and personalization you can include in your outreach.
When activating on Profile, you access individual-level data like name, email, and location and engagement data (like reservations) can be referenced through Related Attributes (RAs).
When you activate on engagement data such as reservation, you still have access to profile data, but now you gain full visibility into related objects of engagement details through RAs, enabling richer, context-aware communications. In our earlier example, given that each of John’s reservations is associated with additional data model objects—such as special requests, feedback, service tickets, and in-line bookings—activating on the reservation makes these connected details readily accessible through Related Attributes, allowing for seamless inclusion in the activation.
Conclusion
The ability to directly segment and activate on Engagement DMO data in Salesforce Data Cloud represents a significant leap towards achieving true hyper-personalization, enhancing existing capabilities to leverage engagement data for deeper connections and more meaningful interactions. Moving beyond a primarily profile-centric view by fully embracing the power of individual engagement records allows businesses across all industries to deliver exceptional, behavior-driven and contextually relevant experiences that truly resonate with their audience.
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