Auxiliary Data

Overview

Auxiliary Data helps you import supplementary user information to an existing database. Often, marketers send campaigns to users around specific events that may require additional short-term data that needn't be stored permanently. For example:

  • Businesses may wish to personalize campaigns with data about limited-time offers and discounts. Auxiliary data can be used for campaign personalization for the duration of the offer.
  • An organization that runs a monthly fantasy sports league (where users collect points and win rewards every week) may want to send campaigns to users based on their participation in the current month. The points accumulated by a user would expire at the month's end and cease to be relevant afterward. In such cases, Auxiliary data can be used to import the data to MoEngage and personalize campaigns.

Auxiliary data helps you ingest relevant information that is required only for a specific timeframe and needs to be stored temporarily into MoEngage using file imports and use the ingested data for campaign creation. Auxiliary data also allows you to mark the fields that need to be updated in the user profile permanently.

 

To enable Auxiliary Data feature for your account, reach out to your CSM or write to us at support@moengage.com.

 

Use Cases

Brands can leverage Auxiliary Data for varied use cases:

  1. Drive Dynamic Personalization: Enhance personalization effortlessly by uploading supplemental data through files. This data may include coupon details, transaction information, survey data, limited-period contest data, and offline engagement data to craft tailored communication and engage customers.
  2. Hassle-free and Targeted Engagement: Simplify targeted engagement by swiftly uploading your customer segments using files. This eliminates the need to upload new customer data as primary data or concatenate and permanently store these segments.
  3. Auto-Refresh Recurring Campaigns: Automate recurring campaigns with frequently changing content through Auxiliary Data. Instead of creating new campaigns every time, brands can periodically upload campaign content using files for automatic triggering.
  4. Incorporate Custom Recommendations: Brands utilizing in-house or external recommendation engines can upload tailor-made recommendations using files and then promptly deliver them to customers.
  5. Legacy Data Integration: Organizations using legacy platforms can efficiently ingest data for engagement by uploading files. This streamlines the engagement process, eliminating the need for complex integrations and thus preventing disruptions to existing workflows.

By utilizing Auxiliary Data in these ways, brands can enhance their marketing strategies, improve customer engagement, and streamline their operations.

Supported Sources

  1. S3 Imports
  2. SFTP Imports
  3. CSV imports

For information about preparing your file for import, refer to File Naming Conventions.

Importing Auxiliary data to MoEngage

To import Auxiliary data:

  1. Navigate to the Import management dashboard (Segment -> S3/SFTP Imports) and click on the Data tab.
  2. Click on the AuxData_ImportOption.png option available at the top right corner of the screen.
  3. Choose Auxiliary data from the available options.
  4. Select the S3 or SFTP option in the popup that opens.
  5. Click continue to go to the Auxiliary Data Import UI.
  6. The Auxiliary Data Import UI has three main steps, and they are:
  7. Once imported, you can see the import-related information on the Auxiliary data tab of the Import Management Dashboard.
  8. You can view the Auxiliary data, duplicate it, or delete it from the dashboard.

Please note that MoEngage maintains historical logs of Auxiliary CSV files imported in the last 60 days. Although files uploaded beyond 60 days will not be visible in the Import logs in Data Imports -> Auxiliary data section, the data in those files will be retained in MoEngage based on the set Data retention period.

 

Step 1: Configure Source and Format

The following fields are available in this section.

  • Import Name - This field lets you specify a name for this import. You can identify this import using the name specified here on the Imports Dashboard.
  • Specify S3/SFTP Details
    S3 SFTP

    In this section, you can specify the details of the S3 Bucket where the file to be imported. The following fields are available here:

    Field Description
    S3 bucket name The name of your S3 bucket
    S3 access key

    The Access Key ID of the account you want MoEngage to connect to your S3 bucket.

    S3 secret key

    The Secret Access Key corresponding to your S3 bucket's Access key ID.

    Region This is the region in which your bucket is hosted.
    Folder Path The path of the folder in which your files will be present.

    For more information, refer to adding your S3 credentials.

  • File Encryption - If you upload an encrypted file, you can specify the encryption details by checking the Is your file encrypted? checkbox. MoEngage supports PGP encryption. For more information about how it works, refer to PGP encryption.

    Once the checkbox is checked, you can provide the following details:

    Field Description

    Decryption Key

    This is your Private PGP Key.

    Signing Key This is your Public PGP Key.
    Key passphrase This will be used to encrypt your private key.
    info

    Note

    • File names must adhere to the file naming conventions specified for data imports. For information about this, refer to Naming Conventions.
    • For information about the supported date and time formats, refer to Date and Time formats.
    • For information about structuring the columns in your CSV file, refer to File Structure
  • File Name Configuration - You can specify the prefix, date, and time format that will be present in your file name. This will fetch the files from the specified S3 bucket/SFTP Folder. The Filenames should have a prefix and datetime separated by "_". Prefix should preferably consist of alphabets, numerals, and "_". The default prefix is "aux_data_". Sample File Name: registered_userdata_20220131.csv
  • Enter the prefix name of your file and the time format, and click Fetch Files. The list of files in the S3 bucket with the specified name will be fetched and populated in the file to preview the dropdown.
  • Select the file of your choice from the dropdown to preview the top 5 rows of the file.
  • Click Next to move to the second step.

Step 2: Map your data to MoEngage Attributes

In this step, you can specify the file's primary key (the column containing a unique value in each row of the file). To set the primary key, choose the column name that contains the unique field from the Primary key dropdown. The dropdown contains the list of all columns in the file chosen in the previous step.

You can do the following optionally after choosing the primary key:

  • Save as custom segment - This option lets you create a custom segment from the user base in the imported file. To save a custom segment:
      • Turn on the Save as custom segment toggle.
      • Provide the segment name. The custom segment name has to be unique (two segments cannot have the same name).
      • Map the column that contains the user ID to facilitate custom segment creation. This column would be the ID field in the user profile of the users in MoEngage. For more information, refer to ID in MoEngage.
  • Update user profile attributes - This option lets you update the Auxiliary data in the User Profiles of the respective users in MoEngage. To update user profile attributes:
      • Turn on the Update user profile attributes toggle.
      • Map the column that contains the user ID so that the user can be identified in MoEngage. This column would be the ID field in the user profile of the users in MoEngage. For more information, refer to ID in MoEngage.
      • Once the ID column is specified, the user attributes dropdown is enabled. Select the attribute from the dropdown if you use a custom attribute to store the ID value.
      • To map other fields, click the Update column checkbox at the end of the row to enable the user attribute dropdown. Select the attribute to which the column name should be mapped.
      •  Any column that is not mapped will be treated as Auxiliary data, and the data storage policies for Auxiliary data will apply. When columns are mapped to user attributes, they would be updated permanently, and the rate limits for user data imports would apply. For more information, refer to User Data Imports.
  • Send import status - You can send the status of the user imports by turning on this toggle. You can send the import status to a maximum of ten email IDs. Once the toggle is turned on, the Email ID dropdown will be available with the list of email IDs.

Please note that all Auxiliary data will be type-casted to String datatype.

 

Click Next to schedule the import.

Step 3: Import Schedule and Frequency

In this step, you can schedule the frequency of imports and the expiration time of the Auxiliary data.

Import Frequency

The following options are available here:

  • One Time - You can schedule the import once as soon as possible or at a fixed time using this option. The following options are available here:
    • As soon as possible - This option will start the import immediately.
    • At fixed time - This option helps you import the data on a specific date and time and contains the following fields:
        • Timezone - the timezone in which the import would happen.
        • Start Date - the date on which the import would start.
        • Send Time - the time at which the import would start on the specified date. Select am or pm depending on the time of day the import should begin.
  • Periodic - You can schedule the import periodically using this option. The following fields are available here:
      • Timezone - the timezone in which the import would happen.
      • Start Date - the date on which the import would start.
      • Send Time - the time at which the import would start on the specified date. Select am or pm depending on the time of day the import should begin.
      • Periodic - the periodicity of the import. You can choose from three options: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly, from the radio buttons available to the left of the screen.
        Periodicity Description
        Daily Repeat every - This option lets you specify the number of days after which the data import should be repeated.
        Weekly

        Repeat every - This option lets you specify the number of weeks for which the data import should be repeated.

        Repeat on - This option lets you specify the day(s) of the week on which the import is to be repeated (For example, if you wish to import the data every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, select these days in this option).

        Monthly

        Repeat every - This option lets you specify the number of months for which the data import should be repeated.

        Repeat on - This option lets you do the following:

        • Days of the month - Choose this option for repeating the imports on specific dates. Select the date(s) of the month when the data should be imported. (For example, to import dates on the 5th and the 25th of a month, select the 5th and 25th in the calendar widget.).
          Note: If the selected date(s) doesn't exist in the month specified (as it is a shorter month), the import will be scheduled on the last date of the month. (For example, if the 30th and 31st are selected and the month is February, an import would be scheduled on the 28th of the month).
        • Days of week -  Choose this option to specify the day(s) of the week on which the import has to be scheduled (For example, if you wish to import data every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, select these days in this option).

    ImportFrequency.gif

Data action

You can define the Auxiliary data expiry in the Aux data expiry dropdown.

Import Frequency Auxiliary data Expiry
One Time You can choose one of the following values in the Auxiliary data retention period dropdown - 1, 2, 7, 15, 30 days, 2 months, 3 months,.., 1 year, and Infinite retention. For One Time imports, you can define the Auxiliary data expiry / retention period.
Periodic

For periodic imports, you can choose one of the following values in the Auxiliary data retention period dropdown - 1, 2, 7, 15, 30 days, 2 months, 3 months,..., 1 year and Infinite retention. It is recommended to set the retention period longer than the periodicity of the import. 

If a daily import is set with a retention period of 30 days, the new data flowing in the second day would have a retention period of 30 days whereas the auxiliary data imported in the first day would now have retention period of 29 days. 

Click Done to import the Auxiliary data. Once you've imported successfully, you can see the import added to the import management dashboard.

 

Editing the retention period - You can edit the retention period of an existing Auxiliary import by clicking on the specific Import action 3 dot menu -> Edit 

Editing the retention period is only allowed when:

1. The data has not expired yet

2. The periodic import has not run and processed in MoEngage yet.

 

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Note

Auxiliary data is available for Email, SMS, Push, Whatsapp, InApp, Cards, Connectors and Web-personalization.

 

Actions that can be performed on Auxiliary data

To perform an action on an Auxiliary data import, click on the actions icon at the end of the row that contains the import and select the desired action. You can perform the following actions for your import here:

  • View Details - You can view the details of past imported Auxiliary data here. The following details are available: date and time of when the import was scheduled, file name, status, number of users created, number of users updated, and number of successful and failed uploads.
  • Edit - You can edit all the fields except the import and segment names.
  • Duplicate - You can duplicate an import using this option.
  • Delete - You can delete an import using this option.

 

File Limits

File Size Limit

The maximum file size we support is 200MB per file. In case of a bigger file, the file needs to be split into 200MB file sizes each.

Other Limits

  1. Rows: We allow a maximum of 1M rows in a CSV file.
  2. File size: The preferred file size should ideally be <200MB  (per CSV)
  3. Import limits: Please refer to the table below.

Import Type

Auxiliary Data 

Default Hourly

600K/hr

Default Daily

14M/day

 

 

Next Steps

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