Elevate integration and customerKey guidance
In Elevate, the customerKey is the unique identifier for a visitor on the website. A customerKey is required for every request to the Elevate API, whether for notifications or queries. To link a visitor in Elevate to an Engage contact, the customerKey should be stored in the discoveryKey contact attribute within Engage. This enables cross-platform understanding of the visitor and enhances personalization capabilities for both Elevate and Engage.
Visitor identification
The website is the first touchpoint for a visitor and plays a critical role in identifying the visitor and assigning the customerKey. When a visitor can be identified and linked to an existing customerKey, they can benefit from personalized content based on historical data. With customerKey/discoveryKey, historical sessions in Elevate can be linked to customer data in Engage.
Achieving a high identification rate on the website is key for effective personalization and relevance. Voyado highly recommends utilizing Engage's softId in newsletters. By using softId, all visitors from Engage newsletters can be identified when they visit the website. Links within the newsletter are decorated with an encrypted URL parameter. This parameter contains data that identifies the visitor and can be used to ensure the correct customerKey is set.
Key considerations
Ensure that Engage is updated with the discoveryKey for all members (visitors who have an account and can sign in to the website).
Ensure that discoveryKeys are unique for all members in Engage. Members with duplicate discoveryKeys will not benefit from personalization.
Ensure that Elevate is called with the existing customerKey when the visitor is identified.
Integration flow
New visitor
Step | Action |
|---|---|
The visitor enters |
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The visitor browses (e.g. category pages, product pages) |
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The visitor clicks (e.g. navigation links, add to cart, add favorite) |
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The visitor signs up |
This should create a mapping between the user account, the Elevate customerKey, and the Engage contactId. |
Returning visitor
Step | Action |
|---|---|
The visitor enters |
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The visitor browses (e.g. category pages, product pages) |
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The visitor clicks (e.g. navigation links, add to cart, add favorite) |
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The visitor signs in |
The visitor is identified, and the existing customerKey from the user account may differ from the customerKey in the cookie. Therefore, it is important to use the customerKey from the user account when calling the Engage API and to update the cookie accordingly. |
Newsletter visitor
Step | Action |
|---|---|
The visitor enters |
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The visitor browses (e.g. category pages, product pages) |
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The visitor clicks (e.g. navigation links, add to cart, add favorite) |
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The visitor signs in |
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