Offer lists in optimization rules

Use offer lists in optimization rules to apply a single rule to more than one offer.

An offer list is a grouping of related offers that you can create for organizational purposes. Offer lists are defined in Campaign and are available within Contact Optimization when defining offers. There are two types of offer lists:

• Static offer lists. A pre-defined list of offers that does not change unless it is edited.
• Smart offer lists A dynamic list of offers. The content of a smart list changes when new offers that meet the criteria of the smart list are automatically added to it. Using a smart offer list allows you to specify the criteria that define the key characteristics of the offers that are important to the optimization rule.

For most cases, use smart offer lists in Contact Optimization. Smart offer lists are evaluated at the time the Contact Optimization session runs. Smart offer lists resolve to any offers within Campaign that currently satisfy the offer query. Static offer lists contain only the exact offers that are specified by the user when the static offer list was created. Static offer lists do not change over time unless modified.

For example, you have an offer list that is called Holiday Travel, which contains all offers for discounted airfare in December and January. You can create an optimization rule that limits the number of Holiday Travel offers an individual can receive in December to two.

If this offer list is static (and all other rule criteria remain the same), the same offers are included with each run of the Contact Optimization session. If this offer list is a smart offer list, the offers that are included with each run of the Contact Optimization session can vary, depending on whether new offers were created that fulfilled the criteria of the smart offer list. In this case, a subsequent run of the Contact Optimization session would yield additional offers.

An example of a smart offer list might be "Loan offers". Define the smart list to include all offers in the folder "Loan product offers", and its subfolders. You can create a rule that limits any individual from receiving more than two loan offers in any given 60-day window. This rule would prevent the risk of individuals over-extending their credit by accepting multiple credit offers over a short time period. This smart offer list automatically includes any new loan product offers created. A Contact Optimization session run periodically using this rule would always have the most up-to-date list of loan product offers.

For more information about defining offer lists, see the HCL® Campaign User's Guide.