Data Modeling14% of the exam
Contact keys, populations and contact counts
How Contact Builder identifies one person with a single Contact Key, what adds to the contact count (populations, synchronized records, statuses, Enterprise 2.0 child business units) and how Data Designer relates data extensions with populations and cardinality.
Configure account Contact model in Marketing Cloud.
~7 min read · 9 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Choose and format a Contact Key that identifies one person across every channel, and predict what happens to records that arrive without one.
- Decide whether an individual, a status or a synchronized record adds to the account's contact count, including in Enterprise 2.0 accounts.
- Lower an inflated contact count with the documented lever for each source.
- Relate data extensions in Data Designer with populations, cardinality and compatible data types.
- Explain the one-way switch from an older subscriber data structure to the Contacts structure.
- Key terms: Contact Key (the one value identifying a contact, equal to the subscriber key); contact count (contacts from every source, deduplicated on ContactKey); population (a data extension linked 1:1 to the contact on ContactKey); cardinality (how two linked data extensions relate).
Key facts
Contact Key
- Detail
- Identical to the Email Studio subscriber key; one per contact
No ContactKey value
- Detail
- Defaults to the sending channel's address
Converted synchronized lead
- Detail
- New ContactKey, separate contact, no merged attributes
Journey Builder
- Detail
- Processing someone in a journey makes them a contact, even with no send
Unsubscribed and deleted
- Detail
- Unsubscribed stay counted; deleted don't appear
Synchronized records without a channel
- Detail
- ContactKey and 01/01/0001 12:00 AM only; disable sync to prevent
Enterprise 2.0
- Detail
- All Contacts count includes all child business units
Populations
- Detail
- 1:1 on Contact Key or Contact ID; avoid more than three per account
Contacts structure switch
- Detail
- Can't return to the previous data structure
Sources for this section (5)
- Contact Builder Best Practiceshelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Contact Counthelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Create a Populationhelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Data Designerhelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Get Started with Contact Builderhelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Why should a numeric customer number become a string before it serves as the contact key?
- Which data type can a Phone, Email Address or Date attribute link to in Data Designer?
- Why can changing a link's cardinality stop a scheduled send from reaching someone?
- Where does the Contacts Without Channel Addresses extract put its results?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
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