What this is
Customer Engagement Channels are the communication channels and touchpoints through which you interact with your customers — email, push notification, SMS and in-app messaging platforms. As a source category in Zeotap CDP, they bring the data those platforms already hold back into the CDP: the subscribers you can reach, the channel identifiers you reach them on, the attributes and segments the platform keeps about them, and how they responded to your campaigns. That engagement data is what makes this category distinct from the other source categories. A Website Events source describes what a customer did on your own properties; a Customer Engagement Channels source describes what a customer did with your messaging. Both resolve onto the same unified profile, so campaign response becomes available as audience criteria alongside everything else you ingest.Prerequisites
Before you create a Customer Engagement Channels source, confirm:
- You have permission to create sources in your Zeotap CDP tenant.
- You have an account on the engagement platform. Where Zeotap CDP fetches data from the platform, you also need the credentials that platform requires — the source’s creation guide lists exactly which.
- Your catalogue has the target attributes defined, or you are ready to add them during mapping.
- Every record you ingest carries at least one identifier that refers to a specific customer — for these sources that is normally the platform’s own subscriber or channel identifier.
What these sources bring in
The data a Customer Engagement Channels source ingests falls into three groups:- Subscriber and channel identifiers — the identifiers the messaging platform uses to reach a person, such as an Airship Named User or Airship Channel ID, or a Cleverpush subscription ID and channel ID. These are the identifiers that let an engagement record resolve onto a customer profile, so map them to catalogue identifiers first.
- Subscriber attributes and segments — the profile fields the platform holds about a subscriber, such as country, creation date, preferences, custom attributes and the segments the subscriber belongs to.
- Campaign engagement events — how people responded to your messaging. Dotdigital supplies contacts, campaigns, preferences, campaign opens, campaign clicks and campaign page views. Emarsys supplies the contacts behind a given behaviour on a given campaign, such as opens, clicks and bounces. Braze Currents and Moengage Streams supply a continuous export of engagement events.
Choose a source in this category
First pick the platform your engagement data lives in, then the variant that matches how fresh you need that data to be. The integrations deliver in three shapes:- Continuous event export — the platform exports engagement events continuously, and Zeotap ingests them as batched JSON payloads. Braze Currents and Moengage Streams work this way. Choose these when you want an ongoing feed of campaign response rather than a periodic snapshot.
- Real-time — the integration delivers subscriber and channel data in real time rather than in a batch run. Airship Real-Time Data Streaming and Cleverpush Real-Time Source work this way. Choose these when you want subscription and channel changes delivered in real time.
- Batch fetch — Zeotap retrieves the data set from the platform and ingests the response. Batch, Dotdigital, Emarsys, Airship (Batch) and Cleverpush (Batch) Source work this way. Choose these when a periodic refresh of subscribers, attributes and campaign engagement is enough.
Batch is the name of a mobile marketing automation platform, not a delivery mode. Batch Source is the integration with that platform, and it is unrelated to the (Batch) in Airship (Batch) and Cleverpush (Batch) Source, which does mean a fetch rather than a stream.
Available Customer Engagement Channels sources
Zeotap offers the following Customer Engagement Channels source integrations. Each card opens that platform’s overview page.Batch Source
Braze Currents
Dotdigital
Airship (Batch)
Airship Real-Time Data Streaming
Cleverpush (Batch) Source
Cleverpush Real-Time Source
Emarsys Source
Insider Webhook
Moengage Source
FAQ
Why is Batch Source listed under Customer Engagement Channels?
Why is Batch Source listed under Customer Engagement Channels?
Batch is a mobile marketing automation platform that engages users through push notifications, email, SMS and in-app messages, so it belongs with the other engagement platforms. The name is a coincidence — it does not describe how the source delivers data. See Create a Batch Source.
Can a Customer Engagement Channels source bring in Non-Customer Entity data?
Can a Customer Engagement Channels source bring in Non-Customer Entity data?
No. Every source in this category carries Customer Data (CE) only. To ingest Non-Customer Entity data such as a product catalogue, an order feed or account data, use a Flat Files or Data Warehouse source, both of which support CE and NCE data.
Do these sources fetch only the records that changed since the last run?
Do these sources fetch only the records that changed since the last run?
Not for the sources the reference covers. Source Integrations (Batch+Real-Time) records delta fetch as not supported for Batch, Braze Currents, Dotdigital, Airship and Cleverpush sources; it does not list Emarsys Source, Insider Webhook or Moengage Source. The Source Integrations (Batch+Real-Time) reference records delta-fetch support for every source Zeotap offers.
Which identifiers do these sources send?
Which identifiers do these sources send?
The engagement platform’s own subscriber and channel identifiers — for example an Airship Named User or Airship Channel ID, or a Cleverpush subscription ID and channel ID. Every record ingested into Zeotap CDP must carry at least one identifier that refers to a specific customer, so map these identifiers to their catalogue counterparts before you rely on the source in an audience. See Map the Catalogue.