As discussed in Article 17 of the GDPR, the right to erasure, also known as “the right to be forgotten”, obligates data controllers to erase the personal data of individuals upon request, without undue delay. To this end, Optimove provides two options that you can use to completely and permanently delete all data related to a particular individual from all Optimove systems:

By using the RemoveCustomerPII function of the Optimove API.

By manually uploading a CSV file using the Settings page. This single-column CSV file (which does not require a column header row) should contain only a list of the Customer IDs used in Optimove that you wish to erase.

|| Important note

It may take up to 72 hours from the original erasure request until all data related to a particular customer is completely removed from all Optimove systems.

Deleting a customer’s data will erase all personally identifiable data from Optimove (both current and historical data). However, to maintain the integrity of campaign and application usage analytics, aggregated anonymous data will not be amended when a customer is deleted (for example, a campaign’s “increase in” metric value will not be recalculated once a customer is deleted). This is not a problem vis-à-vis the GDPR because this aggregated data cannot be connected back to an individual.

You are obliged to make sure that no data from any such customers are delivered to Optimove in the future (e.g., as part of the Optimove Daily Process).

Learn more in the accompanying document, Optimove GDPR compliance.

Automatic Control Group Percentages for New Campaigns

It is very important that control groups are a representative sample of the overall population receiving each campaign. When the control group size is large enough, the process of random selection will always result in a control group that effectively represents the entire group.

As a rule of thumb, campaigns targeting fewer customers require a larger percentage of the recipient population to generate a valid control group, whereas campaigns targeting more customers can set aside a smaller percentage. In addition, the campaign’s expected response rate is also a relevant parameter for determining the ideal control group size.

Optimove can determine the ideal control group size for each iteration of your campaigns, taking into consideration all the factors just mentioned.

This option is now the default for all new campaigns created within Optimove – the ideal group size option is set by default, allowing Optimove to determine the ideal control size for each iteration of the campaign.

You can override this option by manually typing the required percentages for the action(s) and control groups.

Always-Exclude Target Groups

You can now define groups of customers/visitors that will always be excluded from the entire marketing plan and will never receive any campaign. This is useful in many scenarios where you know in advance about specific groups of customers/visitors that you are not allowed to target or should be excluded from all marketing actions.

You will find two default exclusion groups already available on the Manage Target Groups page (under the “Always-Exclude Groups” category). These groups are empty by default; you can use them to build your exclusion criteria.

In order to exclude customers/visitors from the marketing plan, add one or more selection criteria to the exclusion group defining the customers/visitors you want to exclude. Once this is set up, the daily process will first exclude all customers that fall under the exclusion groups, and only then continue to assign customers/visitors to the other defined groups.

Note that exclusion groups have no priority – they will always take precedence over every other target group so that the selected customers will never receive a campaign.

Auto-Archive Target Groups

Optimove will now automatically archive target groups that have not been recently used, in order to assist with decluttering your target groups list.

Groups will be automatically archived when all the following conditions are met:

The target group is not included as a selection criterion of any other target group (for example, it is not included in any Campaign History criterion).

More than 90 days have elapsed since any campaign was sent to the target group.

More than 90 days have elapsed since the last time the target group was modified.

Auto-archived groups are moved to a folder named, “Auto Archive” which is within the Archived Groups category.

In the event that all the target groups in a particular folder are auto-archived, then the folder itself will be archived as well.

Edit Target Group Priorities Manually While Filtered

In the Target Group Priority view, you can now manually edit the priorities of target groups while a filter is applied to the list, or while the list is filtered to show a specific folder.

Manual editing of priorities is done by typing the desired priority number in the priority box of the group.

New Optibot Insight – Campaigns with Long-Term Impact

A new type of Optibot insight is now available, highlighting campaigns that significantly impacted the Future Value of the targeted customers, as compared with the control group.

Campaigns with long-term Future Value impact are generally considered to be better than campaigns affecting only shorter-term metrics, such as login days or short-term spending.

OptiMail

New Manage Templates Page

The Manage Templates page has been redesigned and now includes the following new functionality: The channel, brand, and template type filters are located at the top of the page (when relevant).

The Run Campaign option is available for saved templates, in order to quickly generate a new campaign for the selected template. This option will launch the Run Campaign wizard with the relevant channel and template already selected.

Template Validation for Optimove Channels

All Optimove channels (OptiMail, Optipush, and the Webpage Pop-up channel for triggered campaigns) now include an option to validate templates and prevent invalid templates from being selected for campaigns.

When editing a template in the template editor (from the Manage Templates page) for one of the specified channels, Optimove will validate the correctness of the content and notify you about any issues found, each time the template is saved.

You can also validate the template manually at any time by clicking on the Validate button at the top of the template editor.

As long as any template is invalid, it will not be available for selection in a campaign, and an “invalid” indication will appear next to the Validate button in the editor.

Template Editor for the Webpage Pop-up Channel

The triggered-campaigns channel Webpage Pop-up now includes a template editor in the Manage Templates page, where you can upload and edit HTML pop-up templates.

The HTML editor includes a preview option, HTML source view, upload full HTML, upload images, and more.

Preview and Test Email with Personalization Data

In the new Manage Templates page, the template preview and send test options now include customer/visitor personalization data, either from a specific customer or random data. Any personalization tag or conditional clause included in the template will be rendered using the data available for the selected customer, and the result is a sample version of the template, as that specific recipient will see it.

This helps you get a deeper understanding of how the template will appear for different customers, in different scenarios.

When customer data is not available, the template preview/test email will include unpopulated personalization tags.

Automatic Plain Text Generation

Plain text is now generated automatically for all new Optimail templates. Every change made to the HTML version of the template will be automatically applied to the plain-text version of the template when the template is saved.

You can still manually edit the plain-text version of each template by clicking “Edit plain text” in the template’s details section:

Once the plain text is manually edited, it will no longer be automatically generated by Optimove. You can always click on “Generate from HTML” to realign the plain text with the HTML version of the template and return to automatic updates by Optimove.

Content Customization Using Conditional Clauses

The ability to customize Optimail templates using IF/THEN/ELSE clauses was made available in the previous version. This version adds two new features:

You are now able to use IF clauses without an ELSE definition. The HTML section included in the IF clause will only be displayed if the clause is true, and will be hidden in all other cases.

The clause format to use is: [%IF:YOUR_TAG%]Content to display[%END:IF%]

For example:

[%IF:FAVORITE_CATEGORY==’Cosmetics’%]

[%END:IF%]

Conditional clauses in the Subject line: Use the advanced button next to the Subject line field in order to create conditional subject lines. For example, create a conditional subject line showing “Hi, [%FIRST_NAME%]” for all recipients whose first name is known in the system (not empty), but show “Hi there!” for all recipients with an empty first name value.

Only a single conditional block can be used for the subject line.

Multiple Product Recommendation Algorithms

You can configure Optimove to work with multiple product recommendation algorithms to find alternative sets of recommendations. You can use Optimail (or the Optimove API) to send different recommendation campaigns, each using different logic. Contact your CSM for additional information.

GDPR Compliance – Supporting the Right to be Forgotten