Communication Channels
Communication Channels are the channels by which you provide the communication topics to the customers, such as email, SMS, social networks, can be any custom channels you’d like to offer your customer to be communicated by your brand. You can associate multiple channels to a single communication topic.
Communication Topics
Communication Topics represent the different types of interaction with your customers.
You can integrate the option to opt in to communication topics within your Registration, Login, and post-login flows. For example, right after the end user registers to your website, a subscription popup offers the end user to opt in to the available communication topics. The end user can then select the topics they would like to opt in to.
Note
Each topic must be associated with one or more channels.
Communication topics can be enabled or disabled at any moment. A topic that is disabled remains in the system, but it cannot be integrated in any flows.
Additional Communication Parameters
These are the optional information collected from your customers when they opt in to the communication topics. The collected information is saved with the communication topics.
Additional parameters can be fields where users provide information (i.e., postal address, email, social provider ID), or hidden fields where information is collected automatically upon opt-in (i.e., the web page via which the user opted in).
For more information, refer to Communication Topics in the SAP Help Portal.
Communication Topics Configuration Steps
To build trust with your customers, you need to offer them complete control over opt-in/out of your brand's communication channels and topics. To manage these preferences, you can:
Define which topics and channels your brand offers for communication with your customers.
Allow your customers to opt-in/out and adjust the channels and topics on which they want to get communicated by your brand.
Select which additional information is to be collected from the customers or directly from the channel during the opt-in and saved with the communication topics.
- Defining Communication Channels
You interact with the customers through communication channels, such as email, SMS, and social networks.
- Defining Communication Topics
Communication topics are the different types of brand communications to which your customers can opt-in, such as Newsletters.
- Defining Additional Communication Parameters
You can collect optional parameters from the customers or directly from the channel during the opt-in. You can define different parameters for each channel, giving you great control over the interactions with the customers.
- Associating the Communication Topics and Communication Parameters to the UI.
You can associate communications to the UI via dedicated widgets in the UI Builder or via APIs.
- Capturing and tracking Communication Consent using the Consent Vault.
Once everything in ready in the SAP CDC console, you can start capturing and tracking the communication consents when the customer opt-in from the UI screens.
Defining Communication Channels
- Schema field
You can manually enter the desired schema fields to map to the channel, and indicate if these fields are required.
You can enter more than one field. A custom channel can depend on any fields in the schema.
- Required checkbox
Require your customers to provide data in these fields to opt in to the communication topic. In this case, when on the subscription form the customer enters a value (that does not already exist in the user account), this value is saved in the account.
When the Required checkbox is not selected, customers can opt in without providing data.
Note
The SMS and Email channels are predefined in the system and cannot be edited or deleted.
Defining Communication Topics
- Mapped Channels
Select the desired channels by which to deliver your communication to end users.
- Topic-Channel Name
A unique identifier or name of the topic on this specific channel, unique for this combination of topic and channel.
Several Schema Fields are available for additional parameters of the communication topics including:
sourceApplication (string)
brand (string)
acceptanceLocation (string)
acceptanceEvent (string)
reason (string)
agentType (string)
frequency (string)
data1 (string)
data2 (string)
data3 (string)
Required on Opt-in
Select to require the customers to provide data in the field to opt in to the communication topic.
When the user enters a value on the Subscription form, this value is saved in the account.
Only activated parameters are available for consumption in the UI Builder widgets and by the API.
Adding the Subscription Widget to UI Flows
The standard Subscription widget can be associated to specific communication topics on the UI Builder. It displays to your customers their opt-in status to each of these topics and allows them to change it.
Opt-in requests for communication topics can be integrated into various flows, including:
Registration flow (Registration screen or Registration Completion screen)
Profile Update flow (Update Profile screen)
You can also add Textbox and Metadata widgets to UI screens to collect additional information during opt-in.
Textbox: Allows customers to fill in additional communication parameters.
Metadata: Automatically collects additional information when the user opts-in. This widget is not visible to customers.