Enabling Offer List in HCL Unica Interact

Offer is a marketer’s currency; it’s the hook that gets your customer to buy your product or service, aka lead generation. Marketing offers are great for building your customer base and understanding the people interested enough to view, download, or even purchase what you have to offer, allowing you to hone in on your target market and give them more of what they want. An offer is a single marketing message which can be delivered in various ways. And Offer lists are configurable groups of offers that you can use to manage offers. It is not uncommon to have similar offers grouped in a single offer list and use it in place of individual offers. In this way, marketers can update the offers in the offer list while keeping all the arbitration logic intact.

From Unica 12.1.1 release Interact enabled usage of Offer list in Strategy and in Unica 12.1.2 release Offer list is also enabled for FlexOffer and Trigger action. To use Offer list in Interact, there are changes in User Interface and in the Configuration.

In Interact Strategy Edit mode ‘Offer Lists’ tab is added. To list down Offer lists, click on the icon, and the marketer will get details about the offer list as shown below-

Once a marketer creates rules using an Offer list, an Icon will be displayed in front of the Offer list’s name to distinguish between Offer and Offer list.

A marketer can select offers from the Offer list by using the following offer selection policies:

• Most Recent Updated Offers
• Random
• Attribute
• Custom

Most Recent Updated Offers:

The most recently updated offer will be displayed if the marketer selects this policy.

Random:

If the marketer selects a Random policy, then Offers from the Offer list will be selected randomly.

Attribute:

Offers from the Offer list will be selected based on Attribute and its value in the sorted order.

Custom:

User can create their own Offer Selection policy and then use it in Interact.

Unica Interact Provide a sample Offer Selection policy, which will select Offers from Offer list based on Offer name or Offer Code. Sample java class SampleOfferTieBreaker.java is located under <Interact_Home>/samples/optimization folder.

To use Custom Sample policy, the marketer needs to define Custom Class details in the Configuration as below-

In Interact Configuration under offerserving node, click on ‘Tie Break’ node to add details:

1. Add a name for Custom Policy.

2. In class field put ‘com.unicacorp.interact.samples.tiebreaker.SampleOfferTieBreaker’

3. In the classPath field, add a path for the sample java class, including its name.

4. To sort Offers based on Offer Name or Offer Code, add Parameter Type under Custom Policy with value OfferName or OfferCode.

Now to set ‘a number of selected Offers’ from the Offer list and’ Offer Selection policy,’ the marketer can do this from the Rule’s General tab of Advance Option. Offer list options will be displayed for Rules with Offer list only.

For instance, If a ‘number of Selected Offers’ is set to 2 and for ‘Offer selection policy’ option ‘Offer fixed cost’ attribute is selected, then in this case Offers will be sorted in ascending order of ‘Offer fixed cost’ Attribute value and top 2 Offers will be selected.

In FlexOffer, a marketer can create Rules with Offer lists using input feed files or tables. For this Input feed file or table should contain OfferType field. If a value is not mentioned in the OfferType field, then the default value will be set as 0, which is for Offer. If the Offer list is used in the input feed file or table, then in OfferType, column 1 needs to be set.

Marketer can also import Offer Selection Policy for Offer list; otherwise, if Offer Selection Policy is not mentioned in the input Feed file or table, then default selection policy will be applied.

Sample Input Feed file with ! as delimiter:
OFFER ID!OFFER NAME!OfferType!selectionPolicy!OFFERCODE
6!Demo Dynamic offer list!1!{"num":2,"opt":2,"param":"OfferFixedCost","sort":"asc"}!
2!Demo Static offer list!1!!
1!Offer 000000001!0!!

Once Rules with Offer list is created in FlexOffer, then similar to Interact Strategy, a marketer can set ‘a number of selected Offers’ and ‘Offer Selection policy’ for Offer list on the General tab of Advance Option.

Suppose the Offer List is used in the Interact and the marketer introduces a new Offer and updates the Offer list. In that case, the marketer will need to re-deploy the Interactive channel with the ‘Mark for Deploy’ Strategy or FlexOffer.

On Interact RunTime, if Offer is served from Offer list, UACIOfferListID Offer parameters will be displayed with Offer List ID value. To track the response posted for Offers that is part of the Offer list, then, in this case, the OFFERLISTID column is added to UACI_CHStaging table and once a response is posted for the Offer, Offer List ID will be logged to the table.

This enhancement will be helpful in the case where new Offers are introduced in the System. In this case, the marketer will not need to add new Interact Strategy rules but now will just need to only update the Offer list keeping all the arbitration logic intact. To understand more about Offer list in Unica Interact, you can reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help.