User Profiles

First, a note about lists, which are groups of your known users. Natural Lists are managed through the direct adding and removing of specific users, whereas a Smart List’s membership changes dynamically based on criteria you have set for its membership in Audience Builder. A user can be a member of any number lists of both types.

You can use Natural Lists to organize your users for internal purposes and also to manage which users will receive which type of email subscription. For example, users may subscribe to a “Weekly Updates” list and you may create a corresponding “Weekly Updates” campaign that sends to that list.
However, you may also choose to manage user email subscriptions via Smart Lists. For example, setting fields on the user profile that specify who is subscribed to what type of email, and then sending to Smart Lists that identify all users who have a given field turned ‘on’.

 User profiles contain a default set of fields while also supporting your own chosen set of uploaded data as “custom profile fields”. These custom fields are also known as “vars”. There are also fields that the platform creates and exclusively manages, containing information about user interests and their engagement with your email, site, and/or mobile app, depending on your subscription.

Here is a look at a typical user profile.

Profile Data	Description	User/Client Provided	Auto. Tracked/Set	Accessible in  UI/API
Keys	Unique identifiers, typically email–the address submitted by you or the user–and sid, a unique ID created automatically. You may set an additional unique ID as an extid. Also available on request: SMS number, Facebook ID, or Twitter ID.	√²	²	√
Lists	The names of all Natural Lists for which the user is currently a member.	√		√
Smart Lists	The names of all Smart Lists for which the user is currently a member. Criteria for Smart Lists is typically set in Audience Builder, but may also be created via API.	³	√	√
Purchases¹ /Returns¹	Data about each purchase/return transaction and each item that it contains.	√		√
Incomplete Purchases¹	Data about each item currently in the user’s cart, in order to power abandoned-cart reminder messaging.	√		√
Custom Fields (a.k.a. Vars)	Custom profile fields and values that you have set for the user. Common examples include first_name, last_name, source, address, phone, loyalty_tier, etc. If you subscribe to Prediction Manager, the user’s prediction values are also stored under the predictions and itempred vars.	√	⁵	√
Activity	Timestamps of the user’s profile creation, first list signup, and most recent email open, email link click, site pageview, and purchase¹.	⁴	√⁴	√
Interests	The degree of interest in specific tags associated with items from your Content Library that the user has viewed or purchased. This is used by algorithms to power future content personalization.	√⁶	√⁶	⁷
Lifetime Data	The user’s total number of messages sent, pageviews, known email opens, clicks of links in email, purchases⁶, and the sum of all purchase prices⁶.		√⁸	√
Device	Devices and browsers used by the user, including their most frequent email-reading device or client.		√	√
Apps	IDs of any integrated mobile apps you may have that the user has installed.		√	√
Optout	Optout status/type. Null or no value: user is fully opted in. Optout ‘blast’: user opted out of campaigns (e.g. newsletters), but still available for individual transactional emails. Optout ‘all’: user will not receive any email messaging.The user’s optout ‘reason’ may also be specified.	√		√
Geo	The most common country, city, state, and zip that is recorded for the user based on IP when opening links in emails		√	√⁹

Footnotes:

1. For e-commerce clients only.
2. The unique user identifier “sid” is generated automatically.
3. Indirectly, by submitting data that meets Smart List criteria (as set in Audience Builder or via API), such as var values, natural list membership, purchases, etc.
4. Profile creation date is submittable–typically for clients who backfill historical client data when in implementation–and is generated automatically if not specified.
5. Clients who subscribe to Prediction Manager will have predicted values and items for each user stored as vars in each user profile.
6. Clients provide tags on content via the Content API and-or meta-tag use on-site, and attributes those interests automatically.
7. Each user’s top interests are accessible on their user profile in My Sailthru.
8. Aggregate purchase history is for e-commerce clients only, based on data you have sent via Purchase/Job API or JS functions.
9. Not available via API.

Additional notes:

• You may modify natural list memberships and var values using the API‘s user or job endpoints, JavaScript functions, URL query parameters, or Hosted Pages–for example, set a var if the user checks a box in your hosted user-management form or if they click a link with the query parameter ?sailthru_vars[source='contest201701'].
• When using the API, you may use the job API endpoint to perform a bulk update of user data (for an initial upload or even nightly updates, if needed) or the user API endpoint to perform reads and writes of individual user data on an ongoing basis. You should program your site to call the user API and post user data when a user is acquired or has updated their profile data, if this data is not otherwise synchronized. (For example, if the user is acquired through a Hosted Page, the API call is not needed.) As an alternative to the user API, if you do not have sufficient development resources, you may instead use a JavaScript function to set user data and lists. This function is powered by the same JavaScript tag that you will already have on your site.
• If you are using a single account to manage multiple sites/brands, be sure to discuss this with your Implementation Team before proceeding with a user management strategy.