Profile Confusion Overview

Understanding the Links and Limitations of Implicit & Explicit Data

Note: Although the concepts and labels included in this article apply to all versions of Eloqua, the screencaps display the Eloqua 10 interface.

‘Profile confusion’ is actually not an issue that is specific to Eloqua itself. It is based on the general limitations that come with tracking implicit visitor information on the Internet.   
The first thing to note is that a Contact's form activity history (captured in the contact record activity log) and the actual data that is entered in the form (captured via the form submission itself) are referencing completely different tables:

  1. Contact Activity History                                                        2. Form Submission Data

Contact Form Activity

A Contact's form activity (and other web based activity) is pulled from the Visitor/Profile table, which is referred to as "implicit" data - it implies or assumes that the current cookie profile that is tied to a user's most recent web session should be linked to the matching contact record, if a record already exists.

So, if the current cookie profile (on my local computer) is ‘timo.reimann@eloqua.com’, and I submit a form, Eloqua will assume that my activity should be tied to the matching contact record (timo.reimann@eloqua.com), regardless what email address I entered in the form submission. When the form gets submitted, Eloqua will do a look-up for that email address on the Contact table, and if the record is found, a Profile-to-Contact linkage will generally be made.

Now, if I should submit the same form again, but this time with a different emailaddress (i.e. timo.reimann@gmail.com) and without clearing my browser cookies first, the activity will still be associated to my original contact record (timo.reimannn@eloqua.com) instead of the newly created contact record (timo.reimann@gmail.com). This is because the former contact record is what matches my current browser profile, which to this point, has not been changed or cleared from the browser. It is important to note that a Profile-to-Contact linkage works on a 'one-to-many' relationship: A Contact can have multiple Profile associations, but a single Profile can be linked to only one Contact.

1. First Form submission with email address ‘timo.reimann@eloqua.com’ is linked to the ‘@eloqua’ contact record:
   

2. Second Form submission with email ‘timo.reimann@gmail.com’ is linked to the same ‘@eloqua’ contact record:
   
3. The newly created ‘@gmail’ contact record has no Profile linkage, and therefore, no form submission activity:
   

Form Submission Data

The data in the Form Submission Data report, on the other hand, is captured from the form itself, which is referred to as 'explicit' data - the data that is provided to Eloqua explicitly by the Contact or Visitor, captured through the form fields. Taking the same example noted above:  We confirmed that after submitting the same form a second time with the ‘timo.reimann@gmail.com’ address, the activity would still get linked to the ‘timo.reimannn@eloqua.com’ contact record. If you look at the Form Submission Data report, however, you would see the ‘timo.reimann@gmail.com’ address in the report table, not ‘timo.reimann@eloqua.com’.  This is because the Form Data is explicit information that was provided to us in the form by the Contact directly. The Form Submission Data will include ALL form submissions in the report, regardless of the profile association.

1. First Form submission with email address ‘timo.reimann@eloqua.com’:
   
2. Second Form submission with email address ‘timo.reimann@eloqua.com’:
   

In summary, the Visitor Table (in this case the Form Activities log) should not be confused with the 'Contact' or 'Form Data' tables.

How does Profiling Work?

Now that we've clarified the difference between Form Activity and Form Data and how it is collected by Eloqua, I will expand a little more on Profiling as it pertains to specific scenarios.

Again, Profile data is pulled from the visitor's cookie information. In the case of a form submission, the Eloqua cookie will pull the aggregated visitor/profile information from the current session, and will then attempt to associate that profile to a contact record. If the current cookie session is associated to a different profile or if the browser cookies are disabled, it will mean one of two things:

1. In the case of former, the Form Activity is linked to a different contact record.
2. In the case of the latter, no profile association is made whatsoever.

Given the former scenario, it is possible that the Form Activity could be associated to a different contact record, if the look-up finds an existing email address that matches the current profile. This often happens when the form submitter has more than one Eloqua contact record or is testing with multiple email addresses. To get around this, the user would need to clear their browser cookies completely and start a new session. Alternatively, they could run multiple browsers with different cookie profiles (one browser for each profile).

Why is my Contact missing Profile Activity?

There are a number of reasons that you may not see form activity (or other types of Profile related activity) in the Contact Activities log:

1. The visitor (who submits the form) may be associated to a Profile that does not match the email address. In other words, the aggregated email address from the cookie profile may be different from the email address that was actually submitted in the form. For example:
   1. a. The Contact or visitor may submit the form with their personal email address, but the cookie session is associated to their work address. This can happen when two or more users share the same computer
   2. b. The Contact or visitor may be submitting the form on behalf of another person or is submitting back to back forms with different email addresses.
   3. c. The Contact or visitor has more than one Eloqua contact record and/or is testing with multiple email addresses.
2. The visitor could have their browser cookies or javascript disabled, in which case NO profile information can be tracked whatsoever. It is also possible that the user's company laptop could have other custom security restrictions that prevent cookie tracking.