User data includes user and group properties or specific product events that help you tailor your audience and Experience content to fit specific user journeys. Chameleon supports different types of data that you can leverage and sync back to your stack.
👇 Check out an interactive demo on how to send and leverage your data in Chameleon.
Availability & Usage
🔐 Startup: 5 Tracked Events
🔐 Growth: 20 Tracked Events
🔐 Enterprise: 50 Tracked Events
📍 Ready to power your Tours, Tooltips, Embeddables, Microsurveys, Launchers
⚙️ Manage from your Dashboard
What user data can I use in Chameleon?
There are different types of user data you can send to Chameleon: user properties, company properties, and user events.
User properties
User properties are attributes that describe individual users and remain consistent over time. These characteristics help you understand who your users are and create targeted experiences based on their specific attributes.
Common user property examples:
Name and email address
Sign-up date and account creation details
User role or job title
Browser type and device information
Subscription plan or account status
Chameleon captures some properties (non-identifying) by default, but you'll likely send specific ones from your product.
ℹ️ If you install Chameleon via a CDP such as Twilio Segment or Freshpaint, user properties are sent directly to Chameleon; you can also send them manually via our JS API.
Company properties
Company properties are attributes attached to a company or group of users rather than individual users. These "nested" properties describe characteristics that apply to multiple users within the same organization or account.
Common company property examples:
Subscription plan or account tier
Company name and account name
Company size or number of employees
Industry or business vertical
Account creation date or renewal date
Company properties are particularly useful when you want to target multiple users based on shared characteristics, such as:
Users with the same subscription renewal date
Users from companies attending specific marketing events
Users from companies of particular sizes or industries
💡 Chameleon supports Group calls via Twilio Segment or Freshpaint; if you are sending company properties manually via the JS API, one of the user properties sent must be the company or group, as per below:
chmln.identify(USER.ID_IN_DB, { // Unique ID of each user in your database, must be a string (e.g. "23443" or "590b80e5f433ea81b96c9bf6")
email: USER.EMAIL, // Put quotes around text strings (e.g. "jim@example.com")
company: { // For B2B products, send company / account information here
uid: COMPANY.ID_IN_DB, // Unique ID of the company / account in your database (e.g. 9832 or "590b80e5f433ea81b96c9bf7")
created: COMPANY.SIGN_UP_DATE, // To enable targeting all users based on this company property
name: COMPANY.NAME, // Send any data that appears within URLs, such as subdomains (e.g. "airbnb")
trial_ends: COMPANY.TRIAL_ENDS, // Send data about key milestones (e.g. "2017-08-01T03:21:10Z")
version: COMPANY.VERSION, // If your software varies by version then this will help show the correct guidance (e.g. "1.56")
plan: COMPANY.PLAN, // Send null when no value exists (e.g. "Gold", "Advanced")
...
spend: COMPANY.CLV // Send other properties that will help in targeting users (e.g. sales rep, source, stage)
},
});
User events and event properties
User events represent the specific actions your users take within your product. These can include any trackable behavior such as clicking buttons, inviting team members, making payments, or visiting specific pages in your application.
Events are attached to individual users and can be leveraged to both target and trigger experiences. This allows you to create dynamic, behavior-based guidance that responds to user actions in real-time.
Chameleon supports real-time updates for events, so as soon as an event occurs, the audience Segment that depends on it will see the Experience in your product. You can also leverage event properties to refine your audience even more.
💡 If you install Chameleon via a CDP such as Twilio Segment or Freshpaint, user events are automatically synced to Chameleon. But you can send events via other integrations as well, or our JS API.
Imported vs Custom Events
Imported events
These are all events that you send to Chameleon through various methods:
JavaScript API
Backend API
Third-party integrations
Twilio Segment or other CDPs
Custom events
These are events you create within Chameleon based on imported events and specific filters on event properties. Custom events allow you to create more sophisticated targeting rules without additional development work.
As Chameleon receives your imported events, it automatically tracks the properties sent with each event. For example, a "Button clicked" event might include properties for type, page_url, and utm_campaign. Chameleon maintains a running list of these properties, their data types, and recent sample values.
Event Status: Tracked vs Untracked
All events in Chameleon appear as either "Tracked" or "Untracked" in your Dashboard, giving you control over which events count toward your plan limits.
Tracked events
Actively ingested and added to user profiles
Available for use in audience segments
Count toward your plan's tracked event limit
Process onto the respective user within 5 minutes of being marked as tracked
Untracked events
Accepted by the API and processed for property categorization
Not saved to user profiles
Do not count toward your plan limits
Not available for targeting or segmentation
Default behavior and management: By default, all events start as untracked, allowing you to choose exactly which events you want to use. You must manually mark events as tracked to use them in Chameleon targeting.
⚠️ By default, all your events will be Untracked, so you can pick exactly what you want to use. Ensure you mark as Tracked any new events you want to use in Chameleon.
After an event is marked as Tracked, it can take up to 5 minutes for a specific user to be recognized as "countable". New events will be processed right away and will show up on your Data Management page immediately.
Ways to Use Events in Chameleon
You can leverage events in multiple ways throughout Chameleon:
Segment definition: Create audience Segments based on user behaviors
Tour Goals: Set specific events as success metrics for your tours
Event-based Recurrence: Trigger experiences based on repeated behaviors
Launcher Completion Criteria: Define what constitutes completion for launcher items
Additional Data Types
Aside from these, there are other data types you can access and work with, in Chameleon:
Chameleon Experience Events
Chameleon automatically tracks and collects events when users interact with your Chameleon experiences. This includes comprehensive engagement data such as (but not limited to):
Tour completed and Tour started
Launcher opened and Launcher item clicked
Step completed and Step dismissed
Microsurvey submitted and Microsurvey dismissed
👉 Read this article to get the full list of events, and learn more about the analytics you can access with Chameleon.
This data will also be available for targeting Experiences 💪; you can find these events when creating a Segment in your Dashboard:
Chameleon User Tags
User tags are custom labels you can apply to users either manually from the Dashboard or via CSV uploads. Tags provide an efficient way to target specific groups of users without using complex filter combinations.
💁 User Tags are different from Experience Tags, which are here to help you organize your Experiences.
User tags perform better than using long email lists in "within list" filters. They're particularly effective for:
Targeting specific user groups identified outside of your product
Creating segments based on external criteria
Managing users who don't fit standard property-based targeting
Tag management
Individual tagging: Click on any user in the Dashboard and use the 'Tag User' button
Bulk tagging: Use CSV uploads to tag multiple users at once
👉 Check out this section on managing your user Tags for more, or this section, on tagging with CSV uploads to learn how to Tag multiple companies.
Cohort Data from Integrations
Cohorts refer to data coming from integrated third-party tools where users are members of predefined groups or lists. Chameleon can connect to various tools and receive data about whether a user is a member of a cohort/list as defined in that tool.
This includes the following:
While cohort data is technically received as user properties, it appears as distinct filters when creating segments, making it easy to target users based on their external tool classifications.
Webhooks Data
Webhooks provide a simple way to send data to Chameleon from any external tool or system that supports outgoing webhooks. This integration method directly updates user properties, company properties, or user events.
This method enables real-time data synchronization between Chameleon and your existing tools, ensuring your targeting stays current with user changes across your entire tech stack.
👉 Learn more by reading this article on creating custom integrations with Webhooks.
👉 Check out how you can send enriched data from your tool stack to Chameleon, with Hightouch or Census.
Why should I send user data to Chameleon?
Chameleon's powerful capabilities include targeting highly contextual Experiences to your users based on who they are or what actions they take in your product.
For example, you may want to target your trial users, and you will need to know the sign-up date, or active product managers for which you will need to know their account created date and role; you can send these to Chameleon and ensure they will get the experience they deserve.
By tracking specific product events, you can create experiences that respond to user behavior:
Guide users who appear blocked on specific features
Make help documentation accessible when users struggle
Connect users with support when they attempt complex tasks
Leveraging user data in Chameleon
Any data that Chameleon collects or that you send becomes available for creating contextual, personal, and relevant experiences across your product.
You'll be able to put your user data to work in the following ways:
Audience definition: Create Segments with filters based on your available user data
Content personalization: Reference user names, account managers, or other personal details within experience messages
Dynamic URLs: Open a unique URL from buttons based on user properties
Success tracking: Use custom events as goals to measure tour effectiveness
What user data should I send?
Below is a list of required and recommended ideas for user data that you can send and use in Chameleon.
Necessary properties
The
user IDis the only thing that you must ensure you pass to Chameleon to be able to deliver Experiences to the right users.
Recommended properties for targeting & personalization
| You can leverage this to identify users in Chameleon. |
| Use this to know when individuals became users and target them based on product access. |
| Use this property to deliver the right upsell opportunities. |
| Target users based on their |
| Send in details about the state of your users to deliver specific guidance for different customer groups. |
| Leverage flag/feature properties to reach users with access to specific features. |
| Use these properties to deliver unique & personalized Experiences for users. |
💡 You can also send in enrichment data from a service like Clearbit.
Recommended events
Your events will be specific to your product and goals 👨🔬. Consider the actions you want to drive with Chameleon and how you'll measure the impact of your experiences.
Button clicks |
|
Activity events |
|
Specific actions |
|
💡 Send any product click or page view that enables better guidance delivery. The more behavioral data you have, the more precisely you can target your experiences ✨ .
ℹ️ Note that when sending data to Chameleon, null-valued properties will not be sent and, are removed as a matter of cleanup and consistency.
Sending User Data to Chameleon
You can send user data from your backend systems or third-party software to power your targeting efforts. This provides richer targeting options for delivering relevant and engaging product experiences.
There are several ways to send data to Chameleon:
Via integrations with third-party tools
Directly via Chameleon's API
CSV import from the Dashboard
👉 You can see the data collected by default by Chameleon here
Sending data via integrations
If you already use Twilio Segment or Freshpaint, then this is the best way to send data to Chameleon. You can enable both of these integrations from the Dashboard and Chameleon will automatically receive all the user data you already collect.
If you don't use these tools, but do use one of our data-source integrations (Amplitude, Mixpanel, Hubspot, Salesforce, etc.) you can pull data into Chameleon.
Sending data via our API
You can also send user data (properties or events) via our API. To learn more about this please visit the following articles:
🧑💻 Developers can help: ask your technical teammates to help you if you're not comfortable doing this alone. You only need to do this once, so gather the list of user data you want to use in your segmentation and ask your developers to send it all!
Sending data via CSV imports
CSV imports help when you cannot immediately import all the needed user data through dynamic methods. This method is particularly useful for one-time data uploads or when working with data that's not easily accessible through APIs.
You can send user and company properties with a CSV import from your Chameleon Dashboard; or Tag users and leverage those Tags when delivering Experiences.
How do I manage my user data in Chameleon?
All the data you send to Chameleon will be available to you in the Data Management section in your Chameleon Dashboard.
Here, you switch between the different types of data and can do things like:
Review what data your team is already sending to Chameleon
Filter through properties in your account
Rename and add descriptions to your properties and events (to help team members understand and leverage data)
Archive events or properties that aren't relevant (this will hide them within any lists when creating a target audience or setting a goal)
👉 See how to manage your imported data in Chameleon for the steps to do these.
💡 Read more about managing user Tags or Experience Tags which you'll also do in the Dashboard.