Creating personalized promotions

A personalized promotion is a set of promotions selected by the AI engine for a particular customer. The promotions are managed by creating any promotion type, which provide settings for the AI engine. When a promotion is generated for a customer, the AI retrieves the promotion available to the customer and selects the most relevant ones.

Business advantages

• High quality mechanisms of selecting items for a personalized promotion:
  • Checking the group of customers to whom the promotion is assigned.
  • Selecting the promotions whose start and end date covers the activity time of the personalized promotions.
  • In-built mechanisms that prevent overlapping items included in general promotions and advertising flyers with the items in personalized promotions.
  • In-built mechanism that prevents overlapping active promotions.
• The great flexibility of promotion sets allows users to create relevant promotions that will apply in the distant future (in a year and longer).

Prerequisites

• Create a catalog that will be the source of items from the promotion. This can be your item feed imported to a catalog.
  The product identifiers (for example, sku) in the feed in the catalog must be consistent with product identifiers from transaction and interaction events.
• Your transaction data history must be at least three months long.
• Optionally, create a catalog with items you don’t want to show in the personalized promotions.
  The product identifiers (for example, sku) in the feed in the catalog must be consistent with product identifiers from transaction and interaction events.
• Optionally, if you want to consider only specific promotion candidates, create a filter on the list of (regular) promotions to be reused while preparing the personalized promotion.
  Click here to see how to build the filter

  1. Go to Communication > Promotions.
  2. On the right side of the screen, click

     

  3. Click Define.
  4. On the pop-up, define the conditions by clicking Choose filters. The list contains all parameters from the product feed.

     

  5. To add a new condition, repeat the previous step.
  6. Save the filter by clicking Save filter.

Create promotion candidates

Required actions:

• create a promotion of any type, define the discount types and redemption settings
• schedule how long the items are available as candidates for the personalized promotion
• select the items for the promotion

Create a personalized promotion

1. Go to > Personalized promotions > New promotion.
2. Select the type of promotion:
   • Check-in - Example of use: If you have an interactive kiosk in your point of sales, your customers can register their loyalty card before they enter the shopping area. Then, they receive a print out of promotions available only for them.
   • Check-out - A promotion is generated based on their current transaction.
     Important: It’s the only type that allows you to prepare a personalized promotion for an anonymous customer.
   • Mobile app - You can apply promotions dedicated only for the users of your mobile application.
3. In the A/B test settings add variants of the personalized promotion by clicking Define. You can define variants of the promotions and set up a control group. The control group is a part of the customer base that doesn’t receive the promotions, so you can measure the effectiveness of your actions.
   
   Note: You must add at least one variant to continue creating the promotion.
   1. Click the plus button to add the first (and/or more) variants.
   2. If you want to set up a control group, select the Enable a control group checkbox.
   3. Adjust the size of each variant and the control group by using the slider.

      

   4. In the Advanced options, select how items are selected for the promotion.
      • AI Engine - By selecting this option, the AI engine chooses the items to be included in the promotion.
      • Randomization - By selecting this option, the items included in the promotions are chosen randomly.
   5. Confirm by clicking Apply.
      Result: The remaining configuration options become available.

Defining limits and order of discounted items

In the Filters and limits section, you can:

• From the Types dropdown, select the types of promotions that can be selected.
  If you apply changes to this section without selecting a promotion type, Handbill is selected as the default option.
• With the Avoid overlapping promotions toggle, choose what happens when an item is already part of an assigned promotion:
  • Enabled (default): A new promotion for this item is NOT generated.
  • Disabled: A new promotion is generated.
• With the Keep slot order toggle, choose how items are ordered:
  • Enabled: Promotions are grouped by slot and the slots are returned in the order you set.
  • Disabled (default): Promotions are returned in an order personalized for each customer by the AI. They are not grouped by slots.
• If you want to add slots, click Add another.
• With the Promotions in slot field, for each slot, define the number of returned promotions.
• With the Filter selector, for each slot, select an item filter created earlier
  
  Click to see example

  

  You can prepare a discount for 3 items of a defined brand, for example.

• Check-out promotions only:
  • If you want to add a basket condition, click Add condition.
    The conditions apply only to anonymous profiles.
  • With the Minimum requirements for basket fields, set the minimum value and/or number of items in the basket required for triggering this promotion.
  • If you want to add more conditions, click Add condition.
    At least one condition needs to met for the promotion to apply.

Excluding items from promotions

You can exclude items from the personalized promotion. You can either pick the items from a catalog or exclude an entire catalog.

Defining promotion schedule

In the Activity section, you can schedule the personalized promotions.

• Relative - Select the activity time of the promotion, it is counted from the moment of generating a promotion for a customer (for example, if you distribute personalized promotions through a mobile application, the moment of generating a promotion is entering a section where the promotions are displayed). When the activity time of a personalized promotion expires, it is replaced with another one (if there are promotion candidates available).
• Absolute - Select the exact date when a personalized promotion expires. The start date is the moment of generating a promotion for a customer (for example, if you distribute personalized promotions through a mobile application, the moment of generating a promotion is entering a section where the promotions are displayed). After it expires, the promotion won’t be replaced by any other candidate.
• Recurring - Define the days of the week when a personalized promotion is active. After it expires, it is replaced with another one (if there are promotion candidates available)

AI engine boosting settings

• If the items to your personalized promotion are selected by AI engine, in the Engine settings section, define the following parameters:
  • Adjust the variety of offered products by using the Variety factor slider.
  • In the Group size field, enter the maximum number of similar products that can be offered as promotions.
  • Adjust the frequency of delivering the same items in a promotion by using the Redistribution frequency factor slider.
  • Adjust the importance of a product’s popularity by using the Popularity boosting slider.
• To be able to assign multiple sets of promotions to customers, create a filter on the list of promotions.