Direct responses

A response is considered to be a direct response if:

  • The respondent returned at least one Unica Campaign-generated code (campaign, cell, offer, or treatment code) that exactly matches one or more of the possible target treatment instances generated by Unica Campaign.

AND

  • Any "attributes of interest" (that is, any offer attribute, standard or custom, that was mapped in the Response process for tracking) returned must have a value exactly matching the value of attribute in the treatment.

For example, if treatment code is a response code of interest and "Response Channel" is an attribute of interest, an incoming response with the values of "XXX123" for treatment code and "retail store" for Response Channel will not be considered a direct match for a treatment with the respective values of "XXX123" and "Web."

A response with a null value for an attribute of interest cannot match a treatment that has that offer attribute. For example, a response that is missing a value for "interest rate" cannot match any offer created from an offer template that contains interest rate as an offer attribute.

However, a response with a value for an attribute of interest that does not exist in a treatment does not prevent a match. For example, if a Free Shipping offer was created from an offer template without an "interest rate" offer attribute, and "interest rate" is an attribute of interest, the value of the "interest rate" attribute for an incoming response does not matter when Unica Campaign considers possible matches against treatments associated with the Free Shipping offer.

Response tracking considers whether the response was made within the valid offer time period (that is, after the effective date and on or before the expiration date), or whether the response was outside the valid date range. Unica Campaign tracks late responses for a configurable time period after an offer's expiration date.

Response tracking also identifies whether a direct response was from a respondent that was in the originally contacted group, that is, the target cell.

Note: If a direct response was not from the originally targeted group, then the response is considered a "viral" response or a "pass-along," meaning that the responder somehow obtained a valid response code although they did not originally receive the offer.

It can be valuable to understand how many of your responses came from your target group, especially if you are trying to cultivate high-value customers. These values can be broken out in performance reports to see how many direct responses came from the original target group and how many were viral responses.

Direct responses can be exact or inexact matches.