Overview: Include powerful data in your platform integrations

This document provides an overview of the information Ion experiences garner and how to funnel meaningful data into your marketing technology and sales enablement platforms. 

Interactive content published in Ion engages respondents with quizzes, assessments, calculators, solution builders and more. These types of experiences generate incredibly powerful data!

We're here to ensure Ion is integrated into your marketing ecosystem in a way that optimizes your automation workflows and empowers your sales team. 

Powerful data

In addition to contact information and supplemental data traditionally collected through lead generation forms, Ion experiences enable you to collect data points that are relationship builders. Here are just a few examples of data points readily available to funnel into marketing automation and/or your CRM:

  • Quiz results
  • Assessment responses and findings
  • Calculator estimations
  • Solution Builder results
  • Survey/Poll responses
  • Engagement score or grade

Ion also generates a set of Core Fields when a respondent visits your interactive content experiences that can be used to further enhance the data exported from Ion to the tools and platforms your team leverages.

Your data flow

Ion integrates seamlessly with automation platforms, CRM's and custom databases. In order to get the most out of your Ion experiences, the first step is to determine what data will be valuable to extend to the various platforms your team currently uses. 

We often help customers establish an integration directly with their automation platform. Ion offers real-time integrations with Eloqua, Exact Target, Marketo and Pardot (just to name a few). Our customers then leverage workflows within their MAP to funnel leads into the proper campaigns and/or extend sales-ready leads to their CRM.

ion can also integrate directly with CRM's like Salesforce and custom databases your team may use. Conditional logic can even be implemented in your Ion experiences that enables you to export contacts to different platforms based on their qualifications.

It's good to begin thinking about the type of information and valuable data your Ion experiences will generate when kicking-off a new Ion campaign. You'll want to determine what data points will be meaningful to your marketing automation campaigns and what information you seek to have readily available for your sales team.

Field Mapping

Ion data fields are used to save information about the respondent as they engage with your interactive content. Data fields store form inputs, assessment/survey/quiz responses, calculator/solution builder results and any information collected as a respondent navigates through your experience. Core Fields are also generated once a respondent visits an Ion page.

Once your data flow has been determined and a data model is ready to implement, a Field Mapping is used to connect Ion data fields to corresponding fields in the platform(s) Ion will integrate with.

Your automation platform, CRM and/or custom database already has fields Ion can extend contact data to, but you may not be ready to receive supplemental data from Ion just yet. In order to reap the benefits from data collected in Ion, you may need to create new fields in the platform(s) Ion will integrate with. The value these data points will lend to your marketing and sales efforts is well worth taking these steps! 

Leverage Ion data for Marketing Automation

The powerful data points you collect in Ion can be used in marketing automation to auto-segment contacts and funnel them into your campaigns. You can also use these data points as a logical condition to deem a contact sales-ready, then funnel them into your CRM. There are a few ways to include new data points when integrating ion with your automation platform:

  • Create a 'results' field in your automation platform

    • A corresponding 'results' field will be created in Ion and included in the integration's field mapping
    • Each interactive content experience published in Ion that generates a result can save the value into the Ion field mapped to your automation platform
  • Create a set of generic question and answer fields in your automation platform

    • For example, Q1-Q10 and A1-A10
    • Corresponding Ion fields can be created and included in the integration's field mapping
    • Each interactive content experience published in Ion that collects question/answer fields you seek to export can save data under the generic fields mapped to your automation platform
  • Create a single field to receive multiple data points

    • Generic ion data fields can be created to save data points across your interactive content experiences
    • These generic ion fields can be plugged into a "mash-up" field in the integration that will map them to a single automation platform field
  • Create a User Timeline field to receive a link to the Sell-Side View
    • If contacts funnel into an automation platform prior to being distributed to your sales team, it's a good idea to create a User Timeline field to include the link to your sell-side pages
    • Sell-side (or the user timeline) becomes valuable when a lead is deemed sales-ready and pushed into your CRM or distributed to your sales team
    • Ion's Core Field for user timeline will be mapped to the new automation platform field you create so this field is always included each time the integration is run 

Empower your sales team with Ion data via your CRM

Whether Ion integrates directly with your CRM or leads are funneled through an automation platform first, you'll want to create lead record fields to receive the data points collected in Ion that are relationship builders for your sales team.

You could absolutely create a set of fields in your CRM to receive various data points from Ion, but Ion's Sell-Side feature makes it incredibly simple to empower your sales team with easily consumable, meaningful data - and it only requires a single field to be created in your CRM. 

When an integration runs, the lead record created will include a URL to the User Timeline enabling Sales to instantly view the prospect's interactive journey and Sell-Side page, providing them with every bit of relevant information available!

We're here to help!

If you're a new Ion customer, we are here to help set up your integrations and implement a strategic, sustainable data plan. If you're kicking off a program or project with Ion, we will help ensure the data garnered from your interactive content is funneled into the proper external workflows.

Please feel free to reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions at all!


If you have any questions, please contact us at help@rockcontent.com. 😀