Adding zones for your interaction points to the interactive channel

When you define interaction points for your visitors, you can further specialize those interaction points by adding them to zones. Each zone can have its own set of rules that determine how offers are presented to visitors. Use the Add zone icon on the Interaction points tab of the Interactive channel window to add a zone.

Procedure

  1. Click the Add zone icon on the Interaction points tab.

    The Add/edit Zone dialog is displayed.

  2. Enter a Name for the zone.
  3. Enter a Description for the zone.

    This description that you enter here is displayed on the Interaction points tab of the Interactive channel window after you save the zone.

  4. Optional: Click the Advanced features link to display more settings that you can apply to the zone.

    If you display the advanced features, you can determine the following settings for the zone you are adding or editing:

    The Learning mode section specifies the rules by which learning is applied to the zone you are creating or editing. You can choose any of the following settings:

    • Inherit from interactive channel is the default setting, and tells Unica Interact to use the learning mode that is specified for the interactive channel.

    • Use marketer's scores only indicates that Unica Interact uses only the marketer's scores for offer weighting.

    • Use custom learning model uses a custom learning model that you can specify from the drop-down by name. If no custom learning models are defined for this interactive channel, this option is dimmed and cannot be selected.

    There are many different levels in Unica Interact through which learning is enabled or disabled - globally for each interactive channel, for each zone, and for each treatment rule. There can be conflicts between how offers are sorted in a mixed-learning scenario, such as when some offers are suggested by sources in which learning is enabled and other offers are suggested from sources where learning is disabled. This is because each zone and each treatment rule can define its own learning rule and the model defined for a treatment rule can be different from the model that is defined for the zone.

    The following are the settings that determine how Unica Interact resolves conflicts in these situations.

    • Intermixing - Use Learning Mode for this zone (Default) indicates that the sequence of offers is selected based on the learning mode that is defined for this zone. This overrides the settings on individual rules.

    • Prioritizing non-learning offers indicates that the sequence of offers selects non-learning offers first, followed by learning-based offers.

    • Prioritizing learning offers indicates that the sequence of offers selects learning offers first, followed by non-learning-based offers.

    • Prioritizing non-learning offers: dedupe provides the same results as the Prioritizing Non-learning Offers option, but with duplicate offers removed when the same offer is provided by learning and non-learning sources.

    • Prioritizing learning offers: dedupe provides the same results as the Prioritizing Learning Offers option, but with duplicate offers removed when the same offer is provided by learning and non-learning sources.

    % Random specifies the chance that the returned offer is randomly selected, without considering scores. You can also use percentRandomSelection in Campaign | partitions | partition[n] | Interact | learning to globally configure the percent of the time the learning module presents a random offer. If you set % Random here, it overrides the global configuration.

  5. Click Save and return to go back to the Interaction Points tab or Save and add another to continue adding interaction points.

Results

To edit the name or description of a zone, click the name of the zone on the Interaction points tab.

To delete a zone, select the check box next to the zone on the Interaction Points tab and click the Delete icon. You cannot delete a zone while it is used in a treatment rule.

Example

For example, suppose that you have a zone with four rule groups:

  • Rule group Group1 has a learning module that is named LM1. LM1 contains offer1 with a score of 50%, and offer2 with a score 60%.

  • Rule group Group2 has no learning module.

  • Rule group Group3 is inheriting for the zone.

  • Rule group Group4 contains offer3 with a score of 65%, and offer4 with a score of 45%. No learning model is assigned to this rule group. The Use marketer score option is selected for this rule group.

In this example, offers for each particular zone have a mix of offers presented after evaluating the score, using learning or no learning, depending on the configuration. The following list describes some scenarios:

  • If you select Intermixing - use learning mode for this zone (default) for this zone, the sequence of offers to be selected are based on the highest score first, regardless of the built-in learning score. Using the rule groups above, the sequence would be Offer3 weighted at 65%, Offer2 weighted at 60%, Offer1 weighted at 50%, and Offer4 weighted at 40%.

  • If you select Prioritizing non-learning offers for the zone, the sequence of offers is based on non-learning offers being selected first, so the sequence that uses the example rule groups would be offer3 non-learning, offer4 non-learning, offer1 with learning, and finally offer2.

  • If you select Prioritizing learning offers for this zone, the sequence of offers to be selected are based on selecting the learning offers first, so the sequence that uses the example rule groups would be offer1 Learning, offer2 Learning, offer3 non-learning, and finally offer4.

  • If you select Prioritizing non-learning offers: dedupe for the zone, the results would be the same as when you select Prioritizing non-learning offers; however, the results would remove duplicate offers.

  • If you select Prioritizing learning offers: dedupe for the zone, the results would be the same as when you select Prioritizing learning offers; however, the results would remove duplicate offers.

  • If you specify a value for the Related to % Random field, offers other than the high priority would be prioritized according to the specified percentage.