Overview of using Contact Optimization

The following steps outline how to use Contact Optimization to determine the overall optimal communication strategy across campaigns.

(Optional) If you would like to optimize across values in categories you define, create an Contact Optimization template table in the Campaign system table database.

For example, if you have loyalty points for your customers, you might want to include a loyalty point column in your Contact Optimization template table.

Create an Contact Optimization session that contains the rules and constraints to apply.

You can create a single Contact Optimization session to handle all campaigns you want to optimize. Or, you can create separate Contact Optimization sessions to handle different types of campaigns, such as campaigns for different communication channels, or campaigns for different lines of businesses. The broader the scope of a single Contact Optimization session, the more opportunity you have to truly optimize across your business. By specifying business rules and constraints, and by using scores such as response likelihood, you can determine the optimal communication strategy for maximizing the value of each customer contact.

Set up at least one campaign that has a flowchart with one or more Optimize processes.

When you configure the Optimize process, you select an Contact Optimization session to associate with the process. The eligible contacts are written with their associated offers to the PCT of the selected Contact Optimization session.

Set up another flowchart in the campaign that is mentioned in the previous step.

This flowchart retrieves the optimized contacts from the Contact Optimization session and can send marketing communications to the list of contacts. This flowchart is called the post-optimization flowchart.

Run the flowchart that contains the Optimize processes.

When you run the flowchart, Campaign writes to the PCT. Contact Optimization accesses this list of proposed contacts and offers. If you have multiple campaigns, each campaign manager must run the Campaign sessions to create a complete proposed contact list for optimization.

Perform a production run of the Contact Optimization session to generate the optimized contact list.

Reviewing the rules and the optimization results is an iterative process, especially in the beginning. During the review process, you can change rules or the initial selection criteria to address the goals of each campaign manager. If adjustments are required, you can edit the definitions, rules, and scoring for the session (if you are using the internal scoring table within Contact Optimization). Campaign managers can also modify the flowcharts that submit contacts or scores to Contact Optimization and then run the flowcharts again.

Trigger or manually run the post-optimization flowchart to retrieve the optimized contact list from the Contact Optimization session and send the marketing communications.