The optimization process involves generating a list of proposed contacts in Campaign and sending these contacts to IBM® UnicaOptimize to produce optimized contacts. Those optimized contacts are then retrieved by Campaign for use in a marketing campaign.

Generating a list of proposed contacts requires that you create a flowchart with one or more Optimize processes in Campaign. (This flowchart is referred to as the pre-optimization flowchart.) When configuring this Optimize process, you must select an Optimize session to associate with the flowchart. This Optimize session receives the proposed contacts that are generated when you run the flowchart.

Once you run all flowcharts (in all campaigns) that are configured to generate contact and offer information for a particular Optimize session, you can run that optimization session. The Optimize session then applies the rules you created to produce a list of optimized contacts that are retrieved by a post-optimization flowchart in Campaign. The post-optimization flowchart in Campaign may sample out a hold-out control group, generate the contact list, and populate contact history.