The Customers section can be configured to work with several workspaces. While it can only operate with one at a time, a user can switch to a different workspace as and when required.

Key features and functionality

The Customers section includes a wide range of features, such as:

• Authentication and access permissions management.
• A rich set of REST API-based tools that enable interaction between your customer data and external sources.
• An intuitive UI to organize and configure customer data collection and analysis.
• Storage of customer-related personal data as well as customer events and actions.
• The ability to track all brand activities for a specific customer, even if they use different identities.
• Centralization of data in a single location.
• Individual customer data aggregation, based on predefined rules.
• An initial standardized data structure for tracking customer profiles and events, which can later be customized and extended, according to your requirements.
• The ability to expand upon information that is linked to a specific event or action.
• The ability to have different views of the same customer database.
• Detailed analysis tools, dashboards, and reports, highlighting customer base growth and composition.
• Seamless integration with Send.
• SDKs and plug-ins to simplify integration with a range of e-commerce applications such as CRM, Analytics, Digital Direct Marketing, and Customer Success management software.

Authentication and authorization

Customers, together with the whole Contactlab Marketing Cloud sections, deploys a centralized Oauth2 service to authenticate and authorize users to access resources and information. Only authenticated users can access the UI or the REST API.

Once a user is authenticated, a user profile determines the set of permissions and authorizations that are to be applied. These Roles represent the operations that a user can carry out and the system resources they can access.

The default user profiles are:

• Admin
• User
• Guest

Note:
Specific permissions are required to view, for example, the timeline of consent changes. See Viewing customer consents for more details.

SDKs & plug-ins

Hub provides SDKs for the most common server/client and mobile programming languages, to facilitate integration and data exchange. Plug-ins that have been specifically developed to allow integration of, for example, e-commerce, CRM and similar third party software, ensure that the time required to set them up is almost zero.

REST API

The REST API is the software layer that interacts with the customer data, providing both read and write functionality. All Customer section features and available assets are accessible through the REST API.

User Interface

The UI makes use of the REST API in the background, without your involvement.

See the Marketing Cloud guide for more about the UI.