---
schema_version: "1"
id: 2aa008e915774ecbb4c5e0d26b4b7f4fdbfab58b7733ee95ed348cec9896dfec
title: Create an Activation for Marketing Cloud Engagement Target
collection: admin
version: current
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/data/264-0-0/c360_a_create_marketing_cloud_activation.md
canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=data.c360_a_create_marketing_cloud_activation.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5
source_site: help.salesforce.com
content_type: documentation
content_hash: 7a9322ff26a77fdce89678372db6c4238079f0222c07457f29793a0c9ec3c661
description: After you create a segment in Data 360, you can publish it to an activation target.
products:
- Data 360
release: "264"
---
# Create an Activation for Marketing Cloud Engagement Target
After you create a segment in Data 360, you can publish it to an activation target.
### Required Editions
- From Data 360 Setup, make sure that **Allow Profile Business Unit Mapping Data** is enabled.
- Segments are filtered by the business unit (BU).
- Make sure that the segment that you want to activate is in an active or published state. If you create an activation with a segment in a processing state, the activation can remain in an error state until the segment completes processing.
## Create an Activation
1. In Data 360, click the **Segments** tab, and then select a segment.
2. In Activations, click **New**.
3. Select an activation target.
4. For Activation Membership, select a data model object (DMO).
5. Click **Continue**.
6. To include contact points in this activation, click **Select** next to the contact points.
1. When you map the contact points, select an existing path, or click **Edit** to add, reorder, or delete sources and change source types and priority for each contact point. Marketing Cloud is selected by default.
2. Change the source priority order to Marketing Cloud and update the source priority based on the EID and BU configured in the activation target.
3. To prevent the activation from introducing new contacts to Marketing Cloud Engagement from other sources, remove **Any Source** and **Any Type** from your source priority.
To allow the activation to introduce contacts from other BUs for the activation target, keep **Any Source** and **Any Type** in your source priority.
7. Click **Next**.
## Configure Activation Attributes
1. To activate more attributes, click **Add Attributes**. You can add these types of attributes to your activation:
- Direct Attribute—Attributes of the Activation Membership DMO.
- Related Attribute—Attributes from any object in the DMO if a path to that object from the Activated On object exists and all the relationships along that path are either 1:1 or N:1. When you use a Data Cloud activation in an activation-triggered flow, flows support related attributes only up to two levels deep.
- Calculated Insights—Add your Calculated Insights metrics to the activation, and apply dimension filters for more granular insights.
Datetime values in a segment that’s activated to Engagement always convert from your Data 360 org’s time zone to Engagement server time, which is CST (UTC-6).
2. Drag up to 100 additional attributes to the canvas. If you select different columns with similar information, all the unique combinations are added to the output.
3. To provide a unique attribute name, click the Edit icon.
4. Save your changes.
## (Optional) Refine the Audience
1. To include campaign-specific data, expand Campaign Data, and click **Add Campaign Attribute**.
You can include up to 20 standard attributes (Activation Name, Activation ID, Segment Name, Segment ID, Activation Run ID, and Activation Publish Start Time) and custom attributes. Each campaign attribute forms a new column in activation output.
Note For a waterfall segment, when you include the Segment Name and Segment ID standard attributes, the activation output displays the parent segment name and ID.
1. You can modify or remove campaign attributes when editing an activation. To remove all campaign attributes, choose the **Delete All** option from the **Add Campaign Attribute** dropdown menu.
You can also manage campaign-specific data through the [Activation Connect APIs](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/data/connectapi/references/spec?meta=Summary).
2. To use the same audience for multiple fixed-size campaigns across different channels with varying budgets, expand **Provisional Audience Limiting**, then click **Rank Attributes**.
1. Drag up to three attributes to the canvas in your preferred hierarchy for ranking. You can rearrange the attributes by dragging them up or down.
2. Select the sorting order (ascending or descending) for each attribute and the attribute path, then click **Save**.
3. To remove an attribute, select the dropdown menu, then click **Remove Attribute**.
To rank attributes, you can include direct attributes and calculated insights.
3. To limit the audience for this activation, enter a number from 1–10,000. The audience is selected randomly. If you’ve ranked attributes, the audience is prioritized based on the ranking.
4. Click **Next**.
## Save the Activation
1. Enter a name and description for your activation.
Important Don’t include these characters in the name field: + ! @ # $ % ^ \* ( ) = { } \[ \] \\ . < > / " : ? | , \_ &
2. Click **Save**.
Your segment publishes on the next publish scheduled for the selected activation target. When the segment publishes for the first time, and if the activation count is greater than zero, a data extension is created in Marketing Cloud Engagement, and the segment records are added to it. To check if your activation has run, review the [Publish History of Your Activation](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=data.c360_a_activations_publish_history.htm&type=5&language=en_US). The related attributes are stored in a field of the activated data extension of an Engagement.
Every time the segment publishes and activates to Engagement, the data extension is updated with the records currently in the segment. As a result, the data extension contains the records in the segment from the most recent successful activation, and the records from the previous activation are removed. To use the attributes and values in email personalization, parse the JSON from the data extension using AMPscript, GTL, or SSJS.
Note Activation include only known profiles. The final audience automatically excludes any anonymous profiles within your segment.
#### See Also
- [_Salesforce Help_: Find Segments in Marketing Cloud](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=data.c360_a_segments_in_marketing_cloud.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "After you create and activate segments to Marketing Cloud Engagement, view them in Contact Builder. A Data 360 segments subfolder is created when you publish your first activation.")
- [_Salesforce Help_: Business Unit Aware Integration: Marketing Cloud and Data 360](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=data.c360_a_create_marketing_cloud_activation.htm&language=en_US)
- [_Salesforce Help_: Activation Type and Target Compatibility](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=data.c360_a_publish_schedule_activation_target_compatibility.htm&language=en_US)