Insight data allows you to store collections of arbitrary data against your contacts or account using integrations or directly through our API.
The exception to this is WebInsights, which are passed into Dotdigital through a script placed on your website.
The data is historic and layered, enabling you to have multiple records against a contact, for example site visits, orders, bookings, consent, and so on. As a broad rule, you can store anything that can be serialised to JSON.
Insight data display
The platform can only display a maximum of 1000 records for a particular Insight data collection per contact.
For contacts with more than 1000 records in a single collection, data is still collected, and available to use, but is not displayed in the platform interface.
Types of Insight data collections
The Insight data collections you can use in your account are:
AccountInsight
OrderInsight
Wishlist
WebInsight
ConsentInsight
A summary and further information for each data collection can be found below.
AccountInsight
AccountInsight allows you to store data against your account rather than against individual contacts. This data can then be used in Liquid to display and make logical decisions in content based upon product catalogue data, store information, hotels/resorts, activities, events, news/blogs, and so on.
Learn more about AccountInsight.
OrderInsight
OrderInsight is stored information related to your customers’ purchasing histories and habits. It allows you to store collections of arbitrary data against your contacts or account using our API.
Learn more about OrderInsight.
Wishlist
The Dotdigital for Magento connector provides the facility to map and synchronise customer wishlists against contacts in Dotdigital. Wishlists are synced and batched once they are created but are also updated within Dotdigital when any modifications are made to the wishlist after their creation.
Learn more about Wishlists.
WebInsight
Web behavior tracking is a powerful advanced module that provides greater insight into how customers and prospects interact with your website, meaning you can deliver even more relevant and effective content.
ConsentInsight
Consent is an agreement between you and your contacts about your intentions with their personal data. You can also store a contact's marketing preferences when using them in combination with ConsentInsight - for instance, either in a survey or in a signup form, or when uploading contacts in a file that contains both consent and preferences. The contact's preferences, as given at that point, get recorded as part of the ConsentInsight record.
Learn more about ConsentInsight.
CustomInsight
You can store anything that's serialisable to JSON. While you can store any JSON structure as Insight data, it's not strictly schemeless.
Insight data requires that you store similarly structured data in a collection. Each collection may have a different scheme, allowing you to store a variety of different data against contacts. Schemas are defined implicitly upon uploading data via the API for the first time. Furthermore, schemas are extendable but not editable.
CustomInsight is useful when there is a need to store structured information, especially when there may be duplicate sets of that information (as a contact can have an infinite number of Insight records). For example:
Memberships or subscriptions: You might be a magazine company that sells yearly subscriptions, and a contact may be subscribed to more than one magazine. CustomInsight could be used to store the magazine, subscription start and end dates, and other information for each of the subscriptions. This information may then be used to trigger automatic renewal notifications and personalise content based on subscriptions.
Insurance plans: You might sell car insurance plans to your customers, and a customer could by more than one plan if they have several cars. CustomInsight may be used to store the details for each plan for each car.
Quotes: Your company may issue quotes or estimates to contacts, especially in a B2B environment. CustomInsight could be used to store all the details for every quote a contact requests, and the information stored can the be used to trigger and personalise content.
Further information
Non-developers' guide
If you're not comfortable with technical jargon, we have an Insight data guide that's more beginner friendly. This guide covers:
What Insight data is
Dataset examples
What you can do with the Insight data you collect
How Insight data is stored
How to delete an Insight data collection
Retention Policy
Planning ahead advice
Developers' guide
If you're comfortable with technical jargon, we suggest reading our developers' guide. This guide covers:
What Insight data is
Dataset examples
What you can do with the Insight data you collect
How Insight data is stored
Key-value pairing
Data that's stored against a contact or as account-scoped data
Key restrictions
JSON data representation
Restrictions on names
Restrictions and extensions on values
JSON in schema-bound collections
Collection schema being defined 'on the fly'
Immutable types
Extendable objects
Bulk importing Insight data
Plan ahead
Data schemas for Product Insight (AccountInsight) and Order Insight
Use Insight data for segmentation
Learn more about using Insight data in segments.