When a visitor/user gets assigned a pattern card, does it stay with that visitor across multiple sessions?
ex: If a carded visitor leaves and returns days later, are they still assigned that card, or do they start over with no cards?
Version: Sitecore 8.2
In brief, the pattern card stays with the contact even if the user comes to the site after several days.
How it works?
When a pattern card is assigned to the contact, Sitecore places the card in the contact session. At the end of the session, those data are flushed into the Sitecore MongoDB.
In the Contacts collection, the respective contact is updated with the pattern card. The next time the user comes in, Sitecore will check the cookie SC_GLOBAL_ANALYTICS_COOKIE from the user browser. If the cookie is present, Sitecore will load the contact into the session from the MongoDB collection.
So, as long as the cookie is present, Sitecore will be able to identify the user even if the user is anonymous.
Point to note
Let’s say there is more than 1 user using the same browser and accessing the same site. If the user is anonymous, the users will still be the same. But if the user has registered on the site, you can use the Identify method so that Sitecore knows which contact to load.
Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Session.Identify(yourIdentifier)
I need to add to Hishaam's answer that the answer is yes and no. In Sitecore personalization you can target the contact and the visit's pattern card.
The visit is the current visit, meaning anything that happened in this current visit, excluding the past visits.
In the personalization rules it is called:
where the current visit matches the specific pattern card in the specific profile
The contact is the current contact and all of its history since the dawn on time. This includes all of the past activity that put the contact is certain pattern cards.
In the personalization rules it is called:
where the current contact matches at least one of the profile pattern card
Just for extra points, in Sitecore 8.2 the data for this is stored in the KeyBehaviorCache. In 9.1 this is stored in the ContactBehaviorProfile facet.
