In B2B marketing automation, a large part of the strategies are still based on a simplified view: one contact and one company. But in reality, your customers aren’t just a profile. They have contracts, subscriptions, purchases, products they use… in short, a whole story that your standard data can’t capture.
That’s precisely where custom objects change the game. By adding a “multi-table” logic, they help you structure this complex data—and above all activate it in your campaigns—so that marketing actions align with the real behaviors of your prospects and customers.
What are Custom Objects?
A custom object is simply an additional data table based on a key criterion, which can be linked to a contact or a company.
Concretely, where your contacts and companies contain “standard” information about demographic data (name, email, industry…) and behaviors (clicks, page views), a custom object allows you to store more specific and often multiple business data (for example: contracts, subscriptions, orders, or projects).
The key difference between custom objects and a standard table is how the data is structured:
- A standard table works with a simple logic: one record = one person. Each contact has one record, where you add information (email, phone, etc.).
- On the other hand, a custom object makes it possible to store multiple pieces of information for the same contact or the same company. You create a dedicated table (e.g., “Orders”), where each row corresponds to a real instance (an order, a subscription…), linked via a key criterion.
This gives you a much cleaner, more flexible, and easier-to-use structure, without overloading the software or complicating contact records.
Why use custom objects in your marketing automation strategy
By integrating custom objects, you fully leverage your business data. You’re no longer limited to behaviors—you contextualize your actions based on each customer’s real situation. In other words, you can send the right message at the right time.
So you can:
- Identify and target the most promising customers: easily spot high-potential contacts using concrete data (purchases, frequency, engagement) and focus your efforts where the impact is highest.
- Create personalized scenarios and a tailored experience: adapt your messages, automations, and content based on behaviors (what, how much, and when they buy). You segment your audiences more precisely and offer truly relevant interactions—improving both engagement and conversions.
- Automate your entire sales funnel: don’t stop at the purchase. Your existing customers are your most valuable resource—they already know you and trust your products. You can keep engaging them with retention, upsell, or cross-sell scenarios, and maximize their value over the long term.
- Align marketing and sales: share structured, unified data across teams to better coordinate actions, automate more intelligently, and accelerate the sales cycle.
Where do custom object data come from?
Custom objects become the true receptacle of your digital ecosystem—they automatically get fed from your business tools, ensuring data is always up to date and usable in your marketing scenarios.
- E-commerce / customer portal flows: data such as orders, subscriptions, or carts is synchronized automatically. Every new action on the customer side enriches your custom object without any manual effort.
- CRM / ERP flows: you receive key information such as invoicing, customer status, or the status of an equipment fleet (machines, licenses…). This makes it possible to align your marketing actions with commercial and operational reality.
- File imports (Excel / CSV): for one-off data (partner sales, event participants, …), you can enrich your objects without overwriting your contacts. Each import creates new rows, letting you keep a clean, structured history.
For further steps, the CSV flow can be automated via a regular drop on an SFTP server, so your data is continuously updated without manual intervention.
What to keep in mind here is that with Webmecanik Automation, your custom objects can connect to all your data sources (via APIs, connectors, or regular imports). This gives you centralized data to activate your campaigns at the best moment, with no manual action.
A concrete B2B example
To illustrate the benefits of custom objects, let’s look at the case of a B2B car dealership that sells and leases vehicle fleets to businesses.
In this type of business, the customer relationship is much more complex than it seems. A company doesn’t have just one vehicle, but often several—under different contracts, with various end dates, and specific uses depending on the teams.
So the challenge for this company isn’t only knowing the contact—it’s accurately tracking each vehicle and each contract.
What we’re going to set up
The dealership will structure its database by creating a custom object called “Contract”. This object includes key information such as:
- vehicle type (vans, sedans, electric…)
- contract start date
- end date or renewal date
- type of arrangement (purchase or lease)
- contract status
Each contract is then linked to a company, because the company is truly the customer. This makes it possible to precisely track every element of the vehicle fleet—not just the customer’s overall picture.
The marketing need
To support the sales team, marketing wants to launch a dedicated campaign for contract renewals, highlighting new vehicle models. Rather than communicating to the entire database, the goal is to target only companies where there is an immediate issue—for example, those where some contracts are due to expire soon.
Thanks to custom objects, the marketing team can precisely identify contracts due to renew within the next 3 to 6 months, then refine targeting based on vehicle type, brand, and even engine type. It can thus adapt its messages and highlight the most relevant arguments for each company.
Concretely, this makes it possible to combine multiple levels of data: on one side, the standard information of contacts or companies (industry, size, location), and on the other, business data coming from the “Contracts” objects. This results in very precise segments that you can easily activate in your campaigns.
The result
This structure enables much more relevant marketing by:
- triggering campaigns at the right moment, when the need really exists.
- adapting messages based on the type of vehicle or the contract concerned.
- having better visibility of the accounts to activate—both for marketing and sales.
In practice, this makes it possible to anticipate renewals instead of having to deal with them, increase commercial opportunities, and provide a far more consistent customer experience.
Conclusion
As you’ll have understood, custom objects are not just a technical feature—they’re a strategic lever to structure and activate your entire B2B funnel. By centralizing your business data and making it usable in your marketing automation tool, you move from a logic of generic campaigns to an approach driven by concrete, actionable signals.
From acquisition to retention, you finally align your marketing actions with the real business needs of your prospects and customers. It’s the ability to structure, cross-reference, and activate data that makes all the difference—and turns your marketing automation into a real growth engine.
Want to learn more about Webmecanik custom objects? Click here!
