Pull Marketing and Streams

Support for Apache Kafka Message Streams

Apache Kafka is a widely used, high performance message queuing system designed to provide information flows between applications. It is often used as part of an enterprise information architecture to enable data to be shared and events to be triggered. See Apache Kafka.

Apteco now support Apache Kafka message streams as a method to pass data to, and trigger, Apteco PeopleStage campaigns in real-time. A PeopleStage campaign triggered by an event on an Apache Kafka message stream can use data from that event. The event can be optionally enriched with data from a pull marketing data store to deliver campaign output in seconds. These real-time event-triggered campaigns are therefore not restricted to the existing data loaded into your Apteco system, but can process new registrations etc. The data output from the real-time campaign is retained for subsequent loading into your master data stores (single customer view or operational systems, etc.).

The definition of the Apache Kafka message streams that you wish to trigger realtime campaigns is performed in the Apteco FastStats administration suite. Once defined, the Apache message stream appears in your Apteco PeopleStage library as an Audience segment and as a set of fields available for use in the Content step:

Improved support for the Pull Marketing database

We have enhanced our support for simple high-performance databases such as MongoDB and other NoSQL products used to store limited data for real-time access. We previously provided the Pull Marketing database to enable users to prepare data for access on demand when a somebody interacts through the web site, point of sale, app, contact centre, etc. In each case, that interaction ‘pulls’ the pre-prepared data from the database and uses it to inform the interaction, hence the name.

This enhancement promotes the Pull Marketing database to a full output channel and makes the data fields held in the Pull Marketing database available as values to output from a campaign. This means that you can now use Apteco PeopleStage campaigns run on a schedule or triggered by an Apache Kafka event to write data into a NoSQL pull marketing database. That data might be model scores, or segments or aggregations or best next product details, etc. calculated using the wide-ranging techniques in Apteco FastStats. That same data may then be used by scheduled or real-time campaigns triggered by Apache Kafka events. Real-time campaigns triggered by Apache Kafka events can only use data from the event message payload and optionally from the Pull Marketing database (and not from the FastStats data store).

Note: The Pull Marketing database is administrated using the Apteco FastStats administration suite.