Contacts in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Contact Builder

What are “contacts” in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Contact Builder?

A “contact” is a data record that contains contact information (like an email address or phone number) and to which other relevant data may be related (like personal details, demographic information, behavioral data). A contact ideally refers to a single person, although there may be situations where you end up with several contacts representing the same person. For instance, you may know a person by two email addresses for which two contacts exist. 

However, one of the advantages of Contact Builder is that it can help you build a single view of your customer. So ideally, your contacts represent one person. You may need to connect different pieces of contact information (like an email address or phone number) to the same contact in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Because of this, it is a best practice to use a unique identifier, defined by a system or potentially by the business, as the Contact Key.

How to identify contacts in Contact Builder?

You can identify each contact in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Contact Builder with a unique Contact Key and Contact ID. The Contact Key and Contact ID are two sides of the same coin: You can define the Contact Key while Salesforce Marketing Cloud automatically generates the Contact ID.

Using Contact Keys

A contact is managed across different channels (like email or SMS) using a single Contact Key. Let’s say you have a contact in Email Studio that you identify using her email address, and in Mobile Studio, you use her mobile phone number. Without the Contact Key, it would be difficult for Salesforce Marketing Cloud to relate these two pieces of contact information. The Contact Key identifies a contact within a Salesforce Marketing Cloud account across business units. It ties different pieces of contact information across your interaction channels with that contact. 

Ensure you are consistent across all channels when assigning a Contact Key to a contact. Ideally, a given contact has the same Contact Key regardless of the channel you use to communicate. The Contact Key is essentially a Subscriber Key in Email Studio. So to be consistent, use the Subscriber Key value in Email Studio as your unique Contact Key in Contact Builder. Note that you will generate a Subscriber Key automatically when you send an email to the subscriber through Email Studio.

Using Contact IDs

As mentioned, the Contact Key and Contact ID are two sides of the same coin. The Contact ID is a number Salesforce Marketing Cloud uses to identify a contact in the backend uniquely. As a user, you will typically not use the Contact ID and hardly even encounter it throughout Salesforce Marketing Cloud. However, as a developer, you may rely on it when you use the SFMC API to integrate with the platform.

Contact Keys across different Studios in Salesforce Marketing Cloud

You use a Contact Key across different channels in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which means it will appear across various “studios” in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For instance, when importing contacts in MobileConnect, you also use the Contact Key. To import data in Mobile Push, you must specify the Contact Key. 

You might use a mobile number as a Contact Key for MobileConnect or email as a Contact Key for Mobile Push. However, the best practice is to create a Contact Key using a unique digit code (unique Id/ customer id) that you can use throughout different studios in SFMC. 

Where can I find my contacts?

It’s possible to find contacts through the All Contacts tab within Contact Builder. Here, you can choose to view your contacts coming from different sources and channels.

You’ll also find contact information stored in data extensions. These are tables that contain a variety of data. Data Designer within Contact Builder uses data extensions, which we will explain in a follow-up article. You can read a lot more about data extensions in our previous article about Email Studio. 

Data extensions in contact Builder are also known as “attribute sets.”

All Contacts and All Subscribers: What’s the difference?

Differentiating between contacts and subscribers is essential when using multiple Marketing Cloud channels. 

A contact is a person you send messages to through any marketing channel. A contact appears in the All Contacts section.