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
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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 your users and are unique to them. These attributes persist over time, and some examples are name, email address, sign-up date, role, or browser type. Chameleon captures some properties (non-identifying) by default, but you'll likely send specific ones from your product.
💡 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 similar to user properties but attached to a company (group) of the user ("nested"). These are attributes that describe a property attached to a group of users instead of being linked to an individual. Some examples we see often include plan, account name, company name, company size, or industry.
This comes in handy when you want to target many users with the same renewal date, users coming from larger marketing events, or specific-sized companies.
💡 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
Events represent the actions your users take in your product and can be anything you set up to track, like clicking specific buttons, inviting other team members, making payments, or visiting certain pages of your app. Events are attached to each user and you can leverage these to target and trigger Experiences.
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.
In Chameleon you'll find 2 types of events:
Imported -- all events that you send to Chameleon via our events API (JavaScript, backend, integrations, or via segment.com)
Custom -- events that you create in Chameleon based on an Imported event and a filter on the event properties
As Chameleon receives your Imported events, it will also keep track of the properties that have been sent for that event. For example, a Button clicked event might have properties for type, page_url, utm_campaign etc. Chameleon will keep a running list of these properties, their type, and a recent sample of the values.
All events in Chameleon will appear as either "Tracked" or "Untracked" in your Dashboard.
Tracked -- means that it is being actively ingested and added to your users, and can be leveraged in your Segments
Untracked -- means that while it is being accepted by our API and processed for the right categorization of its properties, it will not be saved to the user that tracked it
If an event is Tracked in your Dashboard (marked as on), Chameleon then processes that event onto the respective user that tracked it. Depending on your plan, you can have multiple Tracked Events (that can be Imported or Custom).
ℹ 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.
You can leverage events in various places in Chameleon:
to define Segments
as Tour Goals
as a Completion Criteria for Launcher Items
Other data types
Aside from these, there are other data types you can access and work with, in Chameleon:
Chameleon Experience events
Chameleon will automatically track and collect events associated with users interacting with Chameleon Experiences. This will include events such as Tour completed, Launcher opened, Step completed, Microsurvey submitted, and so on.
👉 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 to you for targeting Experiences; simply look for it when creating a Segment:
Chameleon user Tags
You can add Tags to your users manually from the Dashboard or via CSV uploads. This is more effective and performs best when you want to target a specific group of users rather than adding a long list of emails to the "within list" filter.
💡 User Tags are different from Experience Tags, which are here to help you organize your Experiences.
To manage individual user Tags, click on any user in the Dashboard and click the 'Tag User' button from the slideout that opens up.
👉 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.
Cohorts
This refers to the data coming from integrations (e.g. member of 'new_users' from Mixpanel). Chameleon can connect to a host of other tools, and receive data about whether a user is a member of a cohort/list as defined in that tool. This includes the following:
Technically these are received as user properties but can be used distinctly when defining a Segment; you'll find them as filters.
Webhooks data
Webhooks are a simple way to send data to Chameleon from another tool or system (that is able to send webhooks, or supports outgoing webhooks). This will directly update user, company properties, or user events.
👉 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 events in your product, such as when a user engages with specific features or when he does not complete critical actions, you can engage them to help them succeed. Create a Tour to guide blocked users, make help docs accessible, or connect with them as they try to accomplish tasks in your product.
Leveraging user data in Chameleon
Any user data that Chameleon collects or you send to Chameleon will be available to create contextual, personal, and relevant Experiences. You'll be able to put your user data to work, in the following ways:
Defining the audience for an Experience (by creating a Segment with filters that rely on the user data you have available)
Personalizing content within Experiences (e.g. referencing a user's name or their account manager within the message of your Experience)
For specific URLs/links (e.g. opening a unique URL from a button)
Tracking the success of your Tours by leveraging custom events as the 'Goal'.
What user data should I send?
You can send in any information that enables you to create unique and helpful Experiences for your users. 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
In the case of user events, they will be specific to your product and your goals. Consider the actions that you want to drive with Chameleon and how you will measure the impact of your Experiences within your product. Here are some examples of events that you can send:
Button clicks |
|
Activity events |
|
Specific actions |
|
💡 Send in any product click or page view that enables you to deliver better guidance.
ℹ Note that when sending data to Chameleon, null-valued properties will not be sent and, are removed as a matter of cleanup and consistency.
How do I send my user's data to Chameleon?
You can send more user data from your own back-end or from third-party software to power your efforts. This will provide you with a richer set of targeting options, to help deliver the most relevant and engaging product Experiences to your users.
All data collected by default by Chameleon, or user data that you send directly or via our integrations, will be available to you in Chameleon.
There are several ways to send data to Chameleon:
Via our integrations
Directly via our API
With a CSV import from the Dashboard
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. You can also send in enriched data from your entire stack with Hightouch or Census.
Next, leverage all this data when defining your custom Segments and enjoy a deeper product engagement.
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:
🧑💻 Developer 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
This is to help you when you can not immediately import all the user data you need to build contextual in-product Experiences by using our existing methods to dynamically import user data.
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.