Automation without orchestration leads to chaos and the spamming of customers who receive too many communications. Even if you get lucky and customers don’t opt out, how can you ensure that you are consistent and balanced in your communications with each customer? And how can you measure the impact of campaigns in terms of attribution?

In order to optimize, it is critical to run “clean” experiments. A basic building block of clean experimentation is making sure that customers will be excluded from other communications during a campaign’s measurement duration. And once you’re making sure that each customer is only receiving a single campaign at any given time, it’s important to ensure that you are always sending the single most relevant one. This leads to the great importance of campaign prioritization.

Campaign & Target Group Prioritization

If an individual customer is eligible for two separate target groups, which both have campaigns scheduled for the same day, the system will only send the customer one of those campaigns.

To instruct Optimove as to which campaign takes precedence, use the Priority View.

To change the priority of any campaign, simply drag and drop the campaign’s target group to a higher priority OR type in the desired priority number directly. Your campaigns will be sorted in the Mission Control based on the target groups’ priority order:

|| Prioritization applies for a campaign scheduled for the same day. For campaigns sent on separate days, prioritization has no effect.

Inclusion or Exclusion at the Campaign Level

Target group prioritization allows you to instruct Optimove as to which campaign takes precedence when a customer is eligible for more than a single campaign.

You have three options when setting up your campaign:

Exclude All - Selecting this option will ensure that customers that receive a campaign with a higher priority are excluded from this campaign. This is the recommended setting by Optimove.
Include All - Selecting this option will ensure that customers receive this campaign regardless of whether they also received a campaign with a higher priority.
By Channel - Selecting this option will allow you to determine the exclusion or inclusion rule at the channel level. Read more below.

Each campaign has a set duration. Duration is the number of days that Optimove will consider a campaign to be in effect.

During this period:

Optimove prevents customers from receiving other campaigns, in order to prevent uplift measurement ambiguity.
Optimove measures the results of the campaign.

That means that if, for example, you have a campaign with a duration of 3 days, during these 3 days the customers that were included in the campaign’s target group will not receive other campaigns.

If you would like to override this setting and send an additional campaign to these customers, you should select the “Included in this campaign” option, when building the additional campaign for that target group.

Exclusion or Inclusion by Channel

When considering whether to exclude customers who are engaged in other ongoing campaigns from receiving an additional campaign, you may prefer to exclude customers only if the ongoing campaign uses the same channel that you’re planning on using for your new campaign.

For example, you may want to exclude customers from receiving a new email campaign only if the campaign that they’re currently locked in, uses the email channel.

To exclude or include customers who were targeted by a campaign that used a specific channel, choose the “By channel” option.

Upon selecting this option, you’ll be asked to choose a channel from the list of channels available on your Optimove site.

|| Please Note:

Exclusion or Inclusion by Channel is always performed on the campaign level.
For example, in A/B test campaigns, where 50% of the customers are targeted through Optimail and the other 50% are targeted through Mobile Push, the campaign will be treated as if 100% of the customers were targeted by both channels.
When choosing “All”, as shown in the screenshot below, Optimove will treat the campaign as if “Exclude All” was chosen.
Same for Choosing “All” and “Include”. Optimove will treat both as “Include All”.

Screenshot_-_2023-02-08T155753.998.png

How are auto-priority campaigns with 'By channel' exclusion types prioritized?

If a campaign’s exclusion type is Exclude by Channel and is set as auto-priority, the campaigns a customer receives will first depend on how Optimove prioritizes each campaign using self-optimizing journeys.

For example, let’s say a customer is eligible for 3 auto-priority campaigns.

Campaign A is an SMS campaign. Exclusion Type: Include Optimail
Campaign B is an Optimail campaign. Exclusion Type: Exclude All.
Campaign C is a Push campaign. Exclusion Type: Exclude All.

Optimove first prioritizes the campaign each customer should get. Next, our models will examine the exclusion type of each following campaign in order of prioritization to determine which campaigns the customer is eligible to receive.

Scenario A: The SOJ algorithm determines the following prioritization of campaigns for an individual customer:

1. Campaign B

2. Campaign A

3. Campaign C

Results:

1. Customer receives Campaign B, as it generates the highest uplift

2. Optimove examines the exclusion criteria of Campaign A – Customer receives Campaign A as customers that are receiving OptiMail campaigns are still eligible for the campaign.

3. Optimove examines the exclusion criteria for Campaign C – Customer will not receive Campaign C as the exclusion criteria is Exclude All.

Scenario B:

The SOJ algorithm determines the following prioritization of campaigns for an individual customer:

1. Campaign A

2. Campaign C

3. Campaign B

Results:

1. Customer receives Campaign A

2. Customer will not receive Campaign C or B, and they exclude all customers

Always Exclude Groups

Exclusion by Target Group is another exclusion option, which is available in the target group list as a separate target group category named “Always-Exclude Groups”.

Once this target group is set up, the Batch Data Update will first exclude all customers included in the exclusion groups, and only then continue to assign customers to the other defined groups.

To exclude customers from all campaigns, add one or more selection criteria to the exclusion group defining the customers that you want to exclude.

|| You can restrict editing of the Always-Exclude target group to admins only.
Contact your Customer Success Manager for more information.

Example Use Cases

Complete Target Group Overlap

Campaign A (named 15% Off) is sent out on the same day as Campaign B (named 30% Off). Campaign A is prioritized above Campaign B (as seen by their order in the Mission Control screenshot below). If the “Excluded from this campaign” option is selected in Campaign B, overlapping customers will receive only Campaign A.

In the example below, we have 100% overlap and therefore campaign B has no customers (they are all excluded).

If the “Included in this campaign” option is selected for Campaign B, overlapping customers will receive both campaigns A and B.

Partial Target Group Overlap

Campaign A is sent out on January 24th with a two-day duration, and Campaign B is sent out the following day, on January 25th. In this case:

Campaign A will not be affected by prioritization and exclusion rules, since it has already been sent with 3,000 customers, locked in for two days.
Campaign B will be affected by prioritization and exclusions rules:– If in campaign B the “Excluded from this campaign” option is selected, the 150 overlapping customers will be excluded and only 2350 customers will receive Campaign B (2,500 minus the 150 that overlap).

If in campaign B the “Included in this campaign” option is selected, all 2,500 customers in Campaign B will receive Campaign B. The 150 overlapping customers will receive both campaigns (A+B). Campaign A on January 24th, and Campaign B on January 25th.

“Exclude/Include per Channel” Example Use Cases

“Exclusion by Channel” With Other Campaigns' Priority Demonstration

The following is an example of how the Exclusion by Channel would function in a scenario where, for example, you’d like to avoid customers receiving more than a single email that same day.

Campaign A is prioritized above B and C.
All three campaigns will be sent on the same day.
Campaign A is a multi-channel campaign that will be sent out via the Optimail and OptiMobile Push channels.
Campaign B is prioritized above C and will be sent out via the OptiMobile Push channel.
Campaign C will be sent out via the Optimail channel, with a rule to exclude the channel Optimail only.

Assuming these are the only three campaigns customers are eligible for:

Customers in the target group for campaign A will receive campaign A. Since this is the highest priority campaign, its inclusion/exclusion settings are irrelevant.
Customers in the target group for campaign B will receive campaign B.
Customers in the target group for campaign C who are not in the target group for campaign A will receive campaign C.

In other words, campaign C will exclude only customers who were locked in previous or higher priority campaigns that used Optimail as a channel (in this example, campaign A).

“Include by Channel” and Duration Demonstration

Below is an example of how the “Inclusion by Channel” would function, for example, in a scenario where you’d like to include customers who received a campaign via one channel, in a campaign that takes place a few days later via a second channel.

Campaign A is scheduled for May 24th, via the Facebook Custom Audience channel, with a 7-day duration.
Campaign B is scheduled for May 26th, via the Email channel, with a rule to include the channel Facebook Custom Audience.

In this case,

Campaign B will include customers who were part of campaign A, even though campaign A has a 7-days Duration.
Campaign B will target customers that are eligible for campaign B, as part of its target group.

In other words, campaign B will include both customers who are locked in higher priority campaigns for the Facebook Custom Audience channel (in this example, campaign A), as well as customers in its target group that are not in an overlapping target group/campaign.

“Exclusion by Channel” and “Run Now” Demonstration

Campaigns executed using the “Run Now” functionality behave similarly. Below is an example of how the “Exclusion by Channel” would impact a campaign sent via the “Run Now” functionality.

Campaign A is scheduled as an A/B test campaign, where 50% of the target group receives an email via Optimail and the other 50% receives a mobile push notification via OptiMobile Push.
Campaign B is scheduled for the same day, prioritized below campaign A, and will be sent via the Web Push Notification channel.
Campaign C is an ad hoc campaign, sent using the Run Now capability, with a rule to exclude both the OptiMobile Push and Web Push Notification channels.