Training: Understanding Your Data in Journey Builder

A journey requires contact data to inject into a journey. Understanding your contact data is essential for creating a successful journey. All journeys start with an entry source that brings in data from other applications in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. In this section, you will learn all possible entry points and how to bring in a filtered set of contacts through filtered data extensions. There are four possible ways to filter a data extension in Salesforce Marketing Cloud: add a filter in Journey Builder, add a filter in Email Studio, add a filter in Automation Studio, and add a filter using an SQL Query. The SQL Query feature in Automation Studio is used by global support to create synchronized data extensions ready for affiliate use. Therefore, it will not be covered in this section. Filtering using Email Studio allows you to filter based on criteria other than attributes. However, it does not align with synchronized data extensions due to it only injecting contacts once. Therefore, it will not be covered in this section. Synchronized data extensions are made possible by the Marketing Cloud Connector which allows patient information to be pulled from CRM. While data extensions are the predominant entry source used by affiliates, the Salesforce and API data entry sources are a possibility as well. Configuring an API entry source will require assistance from global support.