Weighting Offers in Adobe Campaign

What is Offer Management?

Within Adobe Campaign, the Interaction Module is an installed package that allows a Campaign user to respond in real-time during a communication with a recipient (either a customer/contact or prospect/lead) by leveraging and presenting that individual with one or several offers. An offer can be associated to a product or service and can be applied in nearly every vertical to incentivize a recipient to engage with your brand either via a purchase or conversion. Offers can also be applied in several forms and through various channels, whether through a content block on your website (i.e. an advertisement, CTA or image) or a coupon code within your email, direct mail or SMS.

Examples of Offers:

• Half-off coupon for a local pizzeria
• Free shipping for an e-retailer
• Special introductory APR on a credit card for a financial institution

These are only a small handful of cases, but the opportunities and implementation scenarios are vast. For example, you could have a simple need to present specific web content during an active session (think blogs or white papers) tailored to what you know about that individual and their interests or with default rules in place to enhance your chances of advancing that individual down your funnel.

Adobe Campaign allows you to create a multitude of offers, which are stored in an offer catalog. Here, you can sort all that you have available by product, service, holiday, user interest etc. as you would normally with a standard campaign workflow folder structure. Additionally, you can enhance your offers with static or dynamic personalization, increasing your probability of generating additional customer loyalty.

What is the goal of weighting offers?

The goal of applying weights to offers is to prioritize which offer – among all those you have active – a recipient should be presented with if he/she is eligible for more than just one. For example, let’s say that you are a financial services institution, and you reserve one content block on your home page in which an offer can reside at any given time. You notice that you have an abundance of customers who are eligible for both a new credit card offer as well as a home refinancing offer. The credit card offer is the shiny new object with an anticipated high yield, while the refinance option is something the company has presented for many months with declining results.

In order to present the credit card offer automatically to the end user, you can utilize the offer weight by applying a greater value within this field. For example, an offer with a weight of ‘50’ will supplant an offer with a weight of ’20.’

You also have the ability to can configure multiple weights for the same offer. Let’s say that you have a seasonal offer. You can apply separate weights among the months of that season.

How to implement

Before beginning, it is important to know that you do not need to conceptualize all potential offers to then apply weights that will be used forever. Within the module, you have the ability to add, edit and remove offers at any time. This allows for a large amount flexibility with the way in which you employ your offers.

To implement offers, here is a quick step-by-step guide:

1. In the Explorer view, scroll down to the ‘Offers – design’ section
2. Right click on ‘Offer category’ and select ‘Create a new Offer category folder.’ Here is where you will create your first offer under an internally agreed upon organization structure.
3. Click the ‘New’ icon to begin creating the offer itself. Select the appropriate Offer template from the dropdown (assuming you have created one or more templates) and label the offer as appropriate
4. Click ‘Save’

Now that you’ve created the offer, let’s apply the appropriate weight(s):

1. Open the newly created offer and navigate to the ‘Edit’ tab
2. Navigate to ‘Eligibility’
3. There are 3 main focus areas within Eligibility – date range, filters on the target and managing offer weight
   1. Date range – select a start and end date if the offer has a defined shelf life. For example, if you have a holiday offer that you only want active during a particular time, make sure you apply the appropriate dates
   2. Filters on the target – create filters on the population who is eligible to receive this offer similar in the way you would when created a query within a campaign workflow
   3. Managing offer weight – label your weight, apply a weight value, input eligibility dates if required, limit the weight to a given space (email, direct mail, etc.) if required and place additional filters on the target for this offer weight.

Next steps

Implementing and utilizing weighted offers within Campaign can address a number of scenarios, and we at Celerity would like to hear how we can help address your business needs with this functionality. Whether it be straight out-of-the-box utilization or a customized approach, we would love the opportunity to discuss how our people and services can support you and really help accelerate your marketing and sales strategies.