Events – Cordial Knowledge Base

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Overview

The event data collection, which is referred to as contactactivites in the database, contains behavioral data records for all contacts in the system. These include reserved message events, system events, and custom-named events associated with website behavior such as browse, order, and cart activity. The event data collection also contains external events captured by IoT devices such as opened door or triggered alarm.

Each event is associated to a contact using the contact's primary or secondary identifier. You can leverage this data to to personalize message content, build audiences, trigger messages, and build analytics reports. For a complete list of events supported by Cordial, visit our system events reference page.

Reserved message events

message-sent
open
click
optout
bounce
complaint
message-stopped

How Cordial stores events

The following is an example of JSON-formatted event data stored in the contact activities collection. This example shows three events associated with the same contact:

A browse event
A message sent
A message open

[
   {
    "cID": "58c6dae96e05abd5fef72184",
    "_id": "58c7170250c860b711c3af04",
    "properties": {
      "category": "Shirts",
      "url": "http://cordial.io/demo",
      "description": "Really cool shirt.",
      "price": 10.5,
      "title": "Red Shirt"
    },
    "action": "browse",
    "time": "2025-03-13T22:02:42+0000",
    "email": "fredgarvin@example.com"
  },
  {
    "cID": "58c6dae96e05abd5fef72184",
    "mcID": "45:dfd5c31449b9fb9f42da7bb0a79f94ee:d170313:58c6dae96e05abd5fef72184:1489445319",
    "mdtID": "56e85788733462ca899bc891",
    "_id": "58c721c867b929236e8b4567",
    "action": "message-sent",
    "time": "2025-03-13T22:48:40+0000",
    "bmID": "45:dfd5c31449b9fb9f42da7bb0a79f94ee:d170313",
    "email": "fredgarvin@example.com",
    "properties": {
      "stp": "dyn"
    }
  },
  {
    "cID": "58c6dae96e05abd5fef72184",
    "mdtID": "58c839b36e05abd5fefc63aa",
    "mcID": "45:f2a318f9a064d93760c4beaa39970d72:d170323:58c6dae96e05abd5fef72184:1490308322",
    "first": true,
    "_id": "58d44d7d5c90d40c7992ca66",
    "action": "open",
    "time": "2025-03-23T22:34:37+0000",
    "bmID": "45:f2a318f9a064d93760c4beaa39970d72:d170323",
    "email": "fredgarvin@example.com"
  }
]

Available events

Message events

Message event data like send, open, click, and bounce is created and stored automatically in the Cordial system when a message event takes place.

Message events are inherently system-generated events associated with message sending activity.

System events

Similar to message events, these events are predefined and capture corresponding activities as they happen. System events have a crdl_ prefix. You can view the available system events on our system events reference page.

Custom events

Custom events are created by you according to your marketing strategies and business needs.

Use case

In order to send your subscribers a cart abandonment message, you need to create a custom-named event like cart to be used as a trigger to send an email when a contact adds an item to their cart. In this scenario, you would likely create another custom event called order that would be used to cancel the cart abandonment message if the customer completes the purchase.

Track browse behavior

You can also create custom-named events to track browse behavior on your website. Browse events can be used to trigger a browse abandon message when a contact leaves your site without purchasing anything. This is only one of many possibilities.

The sky is the limit with custom events

There are countless opportunities to trigger personalized messages based on custom events. Custom events can be created for when a contact views a video, downloads a file, or likes an article. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Custom events can also be created based on IoT behaviors such as triggering an alarm, opening a door, and many others. The options are limitless.

Regardless of the event name, all custom events are passed to Cordial using JavaScript Listeners embedded on your site, or via an API call. Custom events contain the name of the event (such as browse, cart, or order) as well as the optional properties associated with that event such as a URL, images, or descriptions.

The default maximum number of properties an event can have is 1,000.

View custom events

Navigate to Data > Custom Events to view the custom events you've created in Cordial.
Click an event to view it in JSON format.
You can also view event data via API by making an API call to view all events or filtered events.

Event Data Reports

To visualize event data in a chart, navigate to Analytics > Event Data Reports. Filter the report results by event type, contacts, audience rules, and date ranges.

Export events

You can export event data by creating a Data Job in the UI or using an API call.

Export events via UI

Log in to Cordial and navigate to Data Jobs > Create New Data Job.
Under Export, select Events.
Fill in the Name and Tags fields. For Type, choose either One-time or Recurring. Assign a Priority for the job and click Continue.
From the Data Job page, click Edit in the Data Source pane.
In the Events pane, configure the events you'd like to export: specify the actual Event (opens, clicks, opt out, message sent, or any other system event), Contacts who triggered the event, and the Date range for when the event was triggered.
Select Edit under Data Mapping and enter the required fields:

Export file name: give your file a unique name.
Export file type: choose CSV or JSONL.
Column key(s): Select or manually enter the list and attribute keys you want to use to map the data in your export.

Select Edit under Data Destination and choose the destination for your exported events file. You can select Local, FTP, SFTP, AWS S3 bucket, Google Cloud, or Azure Blob.
In the On Completion pane, enter an email address where you'd like to receive a notification once the job is complete. This step is optional.
If your Data Job is recurring, Publish the Data Job then select Recurring under Settings on the left. From here, set the Schedule for your data job and then Enable it.
Run the export events Data Job. Once completed, you can find the job under the Jobs widget.

Export events via API

Use events in message content

You can personalize message content based on a contact's event behavior using the Smarty getEventRecords method. With Smarty, you can query event data per contact, filter and sort records, and then display the event and its associated properties in a message.

Use case

Personalizing message content based on event behavior is useful in browse abandon campaigns where a contact viewed items on your website but didn't add anything to the cart or make a purchase. You could trigger a message with a browse event and display the last items they browsed in the message.

Build audiences using events

Using the Audience Builder, you can create audiences based on message events and custom-named events.