Data Modeling14% of the exam

Contacts across email, SMS and MobilePush channels

How one contact key ties email addresses, mobile numbers and MobilePush devices to a single contact, how devices and contact keys behave in MobilePush, how MobileConnect contacts are loaded, and why child business units see different contacts.

Official exam objective
Describe how contact records relate across channels.

~7 min read · 8 practice questions ·

What the exam expects

  • Explain how a single contact record holds the email address, mobile number and push device of one person, and what splits a person into several contacts.
  • Distinguish a subscriber from a contact.
  • Predict how MobilePush assigns and changes contact keys, and how devices move between contacts.
  • Prepare MobileConnect and MobilePush contact loads that join the same contact as email.
  • Explain why a contact visible in one Enterprise 2.0 child business unit is missing from another.
  • Key terms: contact key (also called subscriber key; the unique identifier that associates a contact's cross-channel addresses and subscriptions); device ID (a unique identifier for one mobile device); subscriber (a person who opted in to specific channels); single view of the customer (one contact record holding every channel address and its tracking).

Key facts

Contact key across channels
Detail
The same key can be used for email, SMS and push
No key at SDK initialization
Detail
MobilePush generates a UUID
Changing a contact key
Detail
Allowed at any time
Devices per contact
Detail
Many devices per contact, one contact per device
New login on a device
Detail
Device moves to the new key in about 15 minutes
MobileConnect import
Detail
.csv up to 20 MB with _MobileNumber, _Locale, _ContactKey
SMS subscriptions
Detail
Specific to each short or long code
Business unit visibility
Detail
Some contacts are available only to one business unit
Sources for this section (4)
  • Why can a push notification reach a phone that didn't meet the filtered list's criteria?
  • When does an SMS opt-out on one short code stop messages sent from another code?
  • Why shouldn't a MobilePush Device ID be treated as the identity of a physical phone?
  • What must be true to import MobilePush contacts from a data extension?

The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.

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