Win big with Personalization using Segment CDP with Conscia.ai's DX Orchestration Engine

Have you grown tired of treating your customers like just another number in your database? Do you want to create digital experiences that leave a lasting impression on your customers and keep them coming back for more? 

Look no further than the power of personalization. By delivering personalized experiences, businesses can create a deep emotional connection with their customers and foster a sense of loyalty that goes beyond transactional relationships.

At the heart of personalization is customer data. This is where Segment comes in. Segment's customer data platform helps businesses collect, unify, and analyze customer data from different sources in real-time, giving them a 360-degree view of their customers. However, having customer data alone is not enough. Businesses need to be able to activate this data to craft personalized experiences that truly resonate with their customers.  In a best of breed, composable, tech stack, content may reside in a variety of different sources and you may want to activate this data on multiple channels.  This requires orchestration.  This is where Conscia.ai's DX Orchestration comes into play.  By integrating Segment with Conscia.ai, businesses can unlock the full potential of their customer data and deliver the personalized experiences that convert on every channel including web, mobile, voice, digital displays, kiosks, email and more.

Step 1: Creating a connection between Conscia and Segment

This recipe assumes you have a Segment instance with customer data you want to leverage for personalization as well as a headless CMS that will serve as the source of content.  Also, we are assuming that you are creating a web experience for the customer.

To get started with enhancing your customers' personalized experiences, you'll first need to create a connection between Conscia.ai and Segment. This is a simple process that can be done in just a few clicks.

Generating an API Token

First, head over to Segment and create an API Token. This will give Conscia access to your Segment data. 

1. In Segment, navigate to the ‘Unify’ dashboard in the left side panel

2. From there, click on ‘Unify settings’ to get access to the API configuration

3. On the Unify settings dashboard, there will be a couple of tabs on the top. Click on ‘API access’

4. Click on the “Generate token” button to generate a new token for use by Conscia.ai

5. Once the token is generated, take note of:

   1. The Token key, and

   2. The Space ID 

Once you've generated your token and taken note of the Space ID, it's time to set up the connection in Conscia.

Creating the connection in Conscia

Using our connection information from Segment, we’ll create and configure a new connection in Conscia.

Here, you can input your API Token and other necessary details to create the connection between the two systems.  

1. In Conscia, navigate to the Settings > Connections dashboard using the main navigation at the top.  

2. Create a new connection by selecting the “+” button

3. In the new connection screen, enter the following information and press Submit

   1. Connection Code - unique name for the connection

   2. Connection Name - friendly name for the connection

   3. Connection Description

   4. Connector - select the Segment connector from the list of options

4. Once the connection is created, we can now configure it. Right click on the newly created connection and select Update.

5. Enter in the Access Token and Space ID from the prior section and hit Submit to save the connection configuration. 

Good news!  With the connection created, your Segment customer information is now ready to be used to orchestrate personalized experiences for your customers.

Step 2: Making the Segment customer information available as Context.

Now that our connection to Segment is set up, our next step is to make underlying customer information accessible as “Context”.  Real-time context is key to determining the right experience to present to customers.  Context can be anything we know about our customer including behavior, demographics, and brand preferences and is fundamental information that will serve as our triggers for returning a contextual experience.

In Conscia, our goal is to set up an Experience Component that will serve as the workhorse to take in a Segment customer identifier (such as email or customer ID) and use that to fetch the customer’s profile. The Segment Component will also be responsible for sharing this contextual information with other Experience Components that are responsible for returning personalized experiences to the client application. 

1. In Conscia, navigate to the Manage Experiences > Experience Components dashboard using the main navigation at the top.  

2. Create a new component by selecting the “+” button.

3. Similar to when we created a connection, give the component a code, name, and description.  For the component type, select the “Segment - Get Traits” component and hit submit.  

4. Once the component is created, we’ll go back and configure it. Right click on the newly created component and select Update.

5. In the configuration screen under Options > Connections, select the connection that we created early.  

6. Next we need to define how the Segment Customer ID will be made available to the component.

   1. Under the “Customer Session ID”, specify that the value will come as a “Context Field” and that the field will be called “externalId”.  With this defined, our component knows how to look up a customer profile in Segment. 

      

7. Our next step is to define what customer information is fetched when the call to Segment is made.  Here, we’ll fetch the ‘customer type’ the customer belongs to by putting in the Segment field ID and then setting it as a context field called ‘customerAudience’.

Now that our component has been created and configured, anytime a customer identifier is passed to Conscia’s Experience API call, Conscia will fetch the specific customer attributes from the customer’s profile, making it available for other downstream components as trigger conditions.  The door to personalization is now open and we can start to define unique personalization rules based on customer attributes. 

Step 3: Delivering personalized content and experiences using Conscia.ai and customer attributes

With our plumbing in place and our component set up to fetch customer information from Segment, we can switch gears and focus on personalizing experiences based on the different flavors of customer attributes.  In this example, we’ll use a CMS as our source of content and build a trigger condition that leverages customer context coming from Segment. 

1. In Conscia, navigate to the Manage Experiences > Experience Rules dashboard using the main navigation at the top. 

2. From the left navigation, select the CMS component.

3. Create a new personalization rule using the “+” button.

4. Once the basic rule information has been added, scroll down to the Trigger Condition section of the Experience Rule.

   1. Under “Real-time Context”, click the “Edit Filter” button.  This will bring up the drag-and-drop criteria builder canvas.

      

5. In the criteria builder, select an operation from the left hand side and drag it on the center canvas. 

   1. Dragging and selecting an operation such as ‘Equal to’ or ‘Greater Than’ will bring up a list of relevant context types that we can use to trigger the Experience Rule.

   2. Notice that the ‘customerAudience’ value we defined earlier is available.  Selecting this and giving a value of “millennial” will ensure this rule activates for any customers that are part of the millennial customer group.  

6. Click “Submit” to save the trigger condition. 

7. Under the “Target Experience” portion of the rule, select the content that should be returned when this rule activates. 

The customer context set by the Segment component we defined in Step 2 is available to all Experience components allowing you to activate and personalize any content from any content source using any customer trait available within their profile. 

Accessing personalization through the Conscia API

In addition to being built for business users, Conscia also supports API endpoints for retrieving personalized content. Once you've set up your trigger conditions and target experiences in Conscia, you can make API calls to retrieve content based on customer context coming from Segment. These API endpoints can be accessed from any channel, allowing for omnichannel personalization. By leveraging Conscia's API, you can ensure that each customer receives a personalized experience, tailored to their specific interests and needs.

Here’s a sample query that fetches personalized information by passing the Segment customer ID as context. The query will return all components grouped as part of the template, each with personalized content.

Wrapping Up

Here’s what we accomplished in this recipe:

• Connected your Segment account with Conscia.ai.

• Created a Component to surface customer profile in Segment making it available as trigger context for Experience Rules.

• Activated personalized customer experiences by activating customer data in Segment in a completely channel-agnostic way.

With Conscia.ai and Segment, businesses can deliver the personalized experiences customers have come to expect based on their unique needs and traits (such as behavior, demographics, and preferences).  Businesses can ensure that their personalized messages reach customers at the right time and on the right channels, creating a seamless and delightful customer experience. The result? Happy customers, higher conversion rates, and a stronger bottom line.