Examples of data lookup usage

Data lookups allow you to retrieve contact, visitor, or custom object data. Implementing a data lookup on your website allows you to personalize web pages with contact or visitor information.

Creating a custom preferences center

You can use the web data lookup to create a customized email preferences center. In this case, a form is used to show the email group options. When a subscriber follows a subscription management link in their email, the form is pre-populated with their group membership.

To use a web data lookup in a custom preferences center:

  1. Create a data lookup that uses Contact Group Memberships. In this case, both the email address and contact ID are used to identify the contact.

    An image showing a contact group web data lookup

  2. For each email group, retrieve the subscribe and unsubscribe data lookup IDs. You can get these IDs by opening the email group (Assets An image of the Assets icon, which is represented by a black pencil.> Email Setup > Email Groups) and clicking An image of the info icon.

    An image highlighting the button to click to retrieve the email group lookup IDs

  3. Implement the data lookup scripts on your web page. The web page must also have the Oracle Eloqua tracking scripts implemented.
  4. When you implement the data lookup, you'll use the group subscribe or unsubscribe lookup IDs.
    var strContactGroupGUID = '{<group_subscribe_or_unsubscribe_lookup_ID>}';

Pre-populating a form

You can use data lookups to pre-populate a form. The form must exist in Oracle Eloqua to use this example

Tip: If you want to pre-populate an Oracle Eloqua form, it is recommended that you use field merges to populate the form field. Learn more about pre-populating a form.

To pre-populate a form with a web data lookup:

  1. Create a contact data lookup. In the image below, the contact data lookup uses the email address to identify the contact. The Restricted option ensures that contact data is only returned if contact has a visitor profile. 

    Important: The Restricted option is a legacy feature not available to all clients. As of release 23C, existing restricted or newly created web data lookups do not have the option to uncheck the Restricted checkbox. If this box is not checked, Web Personalization Settings will not be respected and data will be displayed to all visitors. Learn more about Web Personalization Security.

    An image of a web data lookup set up to retrieve contact information

  2. Get the sample implementation code by selecting Data Lookup Options > Get Data Lookup Scripts.
  3. On the Data Lookup Script page, choose the Form Auto-Population Script option. Choose the form and then click Generate Script for Form. This generates sample code specific to selected form.

    An image highlighting the button to click to generate scripts for a web data lookup

  4. Implement the data lookup on your web page. The web page must also have the Oracle Eloqua tracking scripts implemented.
  5. When the web page is loaded, the contact's email address must be passed to the page. This could be achieved, for example, by linking to the form from an Oracle Eloqua email.

Personalizing your website using visitor information

You can use a web data lookup to customize your website with visitor information from Oracle Eloqua. You can retrieve any of the fields available from the visitor profile.

To personalize your website with visitor information:

  1. Create a visitor data lookup. Visitors are always identified using the Oracle Eloqua cookie global unique identifier (GUID).

    An image showing a visitor data lookup

  2. Implement the data lookup scripts on your web page. The web page must also have the Oracle Eloqua tracking scripts implemented.
  3. After implementing the data lookup scripts, the visitor data lookup will return the visitor profile fields configured in the visitor profile view.

Learn more

Creating web data lookups

Using data lookups