Unica Interact workflow for implementing the marketing plan

When you configure Unica Interact, you use a workflow to outline the process from an idea to deployment in detail. Configuring Unica Interact is a multi-step, multi-person, iterative process. The process from an idea to deployment involves: design, configuration, testing, review, and deployment.

Workflow process

There are several steps in the workflow to implement the marketing strategy in Unica Interact:
  1. Design the interaction. During the design step, the team identifies the interaction points, zones, events, and categories in the interactive channel. The Unica Interact administrator uses the names of the interaction points and events and configures the touchpoint with the Unica Interact API. The Unica Interact user uses the user interface to enter the components into the system.
  2. Configure the interaction. The design is configured in Unica Campaign and Unica Interact. The using interactive flowcharts in Unica Campaign, the Unica Interact API, and the Unica Interact user interface. The Unica Campaign and Unica Interact users are involved in the configuration as sell as the Unica Interact administrator, who works with the Unica Interact API.
  3. Test the interaction. The Unica Interact user and administrator create the interaction components in Unica Interact. Then, the Unica Interact administrator deploys them to a staging server for testing.
  4. Review the interaction. After the interaction is tested, review it again before deployment.
  5. Deploy the interaction. The administrator deploys the interaction to the production server.

Design the interaction

During the design phase, you brainstorm about what kinds of interactive marketing strategies you would like to use. When you have a strategy for how you want the visitor to interact with your touchpoint, you need to determine how to implement that strategy with Unica Interact.

This brainstorming is a cooperative effort between the person who:
  • Manages the touchpoint with the Unica Interact API
  • Works with the Unica Interact user interface
  • Designs the marketing plan
Using business goals and target metrics, they can create a list of interaction points and zones, and a rough list of segmentation and suppression strategies. These design meetings also identify the data that is required to do the segmentation.

Configure the interaction

During the configuration phase, the touchpoint administrator and an Unica Interact user implement the design. The Unica Interact user defines offer-to-segment assignments and configures the interactive channel with the user interface in the design environment. The Unica Interact administrator configures the Unica Interact API to make the touchpoint work with the runtime server. The data administrator configures and creates the data tables that are required for both testing and production.

Test the interaction

After the interaction is configured in the Unica Interact design environment, you mark the various components for deployment to staging runtime environments. The Unica Interact administrator deploys the configuration to the staging servers and the testing can begin.

All members of the team that is involved with designing the interaction review the results to confirm that the:
  • Configured interaction is working as designed
  • Performance of the runtime environment is within tolerable limits for response time and throughput

The designers might need to change the design and more testing might need to be done. After everyone is pleased by the results, the manager can mark the configuration for deployment to production servers.

Review the interaction

After testing, the touchpoint manager can review all the results as well to ensure that the configuration will have no adverse effects on the customer-facing system.

Deploy the interaction

After the configuration has approval from all parties, it can be deployed to production runtime servers.

Design workflow diagram

This diagram shows a sample design workflow.


Unica Interact workflow in the design environment

While this diagram shows a linear progression, in practice, many people are working on different components at the same time. It is also an iterative process. For example, to use Unica Interact API to configure the touchpoint to work with Unica Interact, the administrator must reference events that are created in the interactive channel. As the Unica Interact administrator configures the touchpoint in the runtime environment, the administrator might realize that more events are needed. After they are approved by the design team, the Unica Interact user creates these events in the design environment.