Get started with profiles about-profiles

Profiles are centralized in the Adobe Campaign database. There are many possible mechanisms for acquiring profiles and building up this database: on-line collection via web forms, manual or automatic import of text files, replication with company databases or other information systems. With Adobe Campaign, you can incorporate marketing history, purchase information, preferences, CRM data, and any relevant PI data in a consolidated view to analyze and take action.

“Profile” means a record of information (e.g.: a record in the nmsRecipient table or an external table containing a cookie ID, Customer ID, mobile identifier or other information relevant to a particular channel) representing an end-customer, prospect, or lead.

In Adobe Campaign, recipients are the default profiles targeted for sending deliveries (emails, SMS, etc.). Recipient data stored in the database enable you to filter the target that will receive any given delivery and to add personalization data in your delivery contents. Other types of profiles exist in the database. They are designed for different uses. For example, seed profiles are made to test your deliveries before they are sent to the final target.

Understand the concept of profiles in video

Profile types profile-types

Adobe Campaign lets you manage profiles throughout their entire lifecycle: creation, import, targeting, action tracking, updates, etc.

Each profile matches a database entry. They contain all the information required for targeting, qualifying and tracking individuals.

Profiles can be identified based on storage space. This means that a profile can match: a recipient, a visitor, an operator, a subscriber, a prospect, etc.

Recipient profiles recipient-profiles

Delivery recipients are stored in the database as profiles containing the information linked to them: last name, first name, address, subscriptions, deliveries, etc. When you create campaigns, you can define the target of the deliveries to a selection of the profiles in the base according to simple or advanced criteria.

You can also create campaigns aimed at recipients whose profiles are stored not in the database, but in files. These are known as “external” deliveries. For more information about this type of delivery, refer to this page.

The main methods for creating recipient profiles are as follows:

Profiles and targets profiles-and-targets

The Profiles and targets link lets you display recipients stored in Adobe Campaign database. You can create new recipient, edit an existing recipient and access its profile. For more on this, refer to this page.

It also gives you access to:

The recipients page lets you perform frequent operations on profiles: edits, updates, adds, deletions, sorts.

For more advanced profile manipulations, you need to edit the Adobe Campaign tree. To do this, click the Explorer link on the Adobe Campaign home page.

By default, recipients are stored in the Profiles and Targets > Recipients node of the tree. You can create recipients from this view, as well as:

To access advanced functionalities and configurations, you need to click the Explorer icon.

The general layout of the Adobe Campaign explorer is presented in this page.

Active profiles active-profiles

Active profiles are the profiles that are counted for billing purposes.

Billing only concerns profiles that are active. A profile is considered active if the profile has been targeted or communicated with in the past 12 months via any channel.

A profile that has been targeted by several deliveries is counted only once.

Active profiles count is available for Marketing instances only. It is not available for Execution instances, meaning MID (mid sourcing) and RT (Message Center / Real-time messaging) instances.

Tutorial video create-profiles-video

Learn how to access profile data, sort and filter profiles and manually create and manage profiles.

This video also explains the compliance of Adobe Campaign Classic with General Data Protection Regulations.

Additional Campaign Classic how-to videos are available here.

See also