You can use relational tables to store and organize complex customer data beyond basic contact fields, enabling more sophisticated audience targeting and personalized email campaigns. This structured data approach helps improve subscriber engagement by enabling you to create segments based on purchase history, behavioral patterns, or custom business metrics, thereby enhancing your marketing effectiveness.
Relational tables enable you to establish connections between different data sets, creating a comprehensive view of each contact that supports more relevant messaging and better campaign performance. Additionally, it can be used to store data held in a structured format within a database. You can use SQL Queries to add and retrieve data from the tables.
To learn about using the Maropost application interface to write SQL queries, read our SQL Queries article.
Note: By doing a quick one-time setup, you can use a MySQL client for creating and managing Maropost’s relational tables. For information on how to set up relational table access and the limitations of using a MySQL client, read our Relational Tables Access article.
Managing Relational Tables
The Relational Tables index page lets you create new relational tables and manage existing ones. For step-by-step instructions on how to create a relational table, read our Creating Relational Tables article.
You can access this feature via the navigation panel, under CDP > Relational Tables.
From the index pages, you can perform the following actions on the existing relational tables:
- Export Table: Use this action to export the relational table. You can select the table columns that you want to export. You can also select the "Convert email to secure email (MD5 Hash)" to export the data in the MD5 Hash format.
- Import Table: Use this action to import data into the table. You can choose from the File Import and FTP Import options to import data.
- Edit Table: Use this action to edit the relational table.
- Delete Table: Use this action to delete the relational table alongside its data permanently.
- Truncate Table: Use this action to delete the data from the relational table.
- Duplicate Table: Use this action to create a duplicate relational table.
- Refresh Table: Use this action to refresh the table and see the latest record count.
Establishing a Relationship Between Relational Tables
You can add as many relationships as you wish between multiple relational tables. For example, if you have three separate tables: contact information, purchase information, and product details, you can establish relationships to connect all three tables so you can pull and utilize the data within them.
To establish a relationship between two relational tables, perform the following steps:
- Click on a table name on the Relational Tables index page.
- On the Relational Tables Dashboard, click on the Relationships tab.
- Click on the New Relationship button. Remember, this button becomes available only when there is no email data type or no sendable column in your relational table. If your table doesn't have either of these columns, you must manually specify the links.
- In the dialog box, the first drop-down list shows the columns from your current table. The second drop-down list shows the other relational tables from which you can choose one to establish a connection. Finally, the third drop-down list shows the columns present in the other relational table. By choosing the columns that will bridge the relational tables together, you can establish a link between the two tables. Click on Create to build a relationship between columns from two relational tables.
Note:Only tables with sendable columns will appear in the second drop-down list.
Usages of Relational Tables
In Maropost, relational tables can be used in campaigns, content, segments, journeys, and data journeys.
Using Relational Tables in Campaign
You can use relational tables as the source of contacts when sending a campaign. When doing so, remember to utilize your own unsubscribe mechanism and sync the unsubscribes within a relational table. Relational tables give you flexibility with writing your own SQL queries to modify the contact data within tables, but you cannot utilize Maropost's unsubscribe mechanism directly.
To utilize our unsubscribe mechanism within relational tables, you would need to import the same contact emails (from the relational table) into a Maropost contact list and then create this segment:
In List: List A
AND
Table: Table A
Always send to this segment (and similar segments based on different lists & tables). By doing this, contacts can unsubscribe from List A, and segments only fetch subscribers; therefore, unsubscribes will not be included in campaigns.
Using Tables in Segments
Active contacts can be fetched from segments using the Tables filter. In segments, columns for the corresponding table can be selected to add contact specifications.
Note: When creating a segment and selecting the In Table filter, only tables with a sendable column, as well as tables linked to tables with sendable columns, will appear.