Content area
Full Text
Abstract The paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of rule-based engines and optimisation techniques in supporting marketing communication decisioning.
INTRODUCTION
In the past, determining which marketing communication a customer received was easy as the choice of channel was very limited. With the growth in active (eg e-mail) and passive (Web) communication channels and the increase in the volumes of campaigns facilitated by marketing automation technologies, however, this simple choice is becoming more difficult to make.
To address this complexity two new classes of technology are emerging optimisation and rules engines. This paper explores some of the advantages and disadvantages of rules-based engines.
RULES-BASED DECISIONING
This type of technology breaks the communication decision into one or more simple rules that when applied determine the most appropriate marketing communications) for a customer. It does not use any specific statistical process, although one or more of the variables used by the rules) may be behavioural model scores.
DEFINITIONS
The following section describes rule-based engines in more detail:
A rule is the smallest unit of business logic. It generally captures a test condition and identifies the action to take, based on the test evaluation, eg if a customer is male then send communication.
A rule set is a collection of rules, generally grouped together because they relate to a common task, eg if a customer is male and aged between 20 and 30 years then send communication.
A rule flow shows the order in which a particular rule set or series of rule sets are executed. These rule flows are normally represented graphically. The order in which rules or sets of rules are applied can significantly affect the outcome. For example, if gender is male, age is 25 to 30 years, marital status equals married (rule set 1) then if product code equals loan, and loan status equals open (rule set 2) send standard cross-sell communication.
Many of the new rule-engine technologies are based on object-orientated programming techniques, in which case the concepts of classes and objects are used to represent various business entities and ease rule definition. They also allow the rule developer to connect the rules with some outside calling application and pass information back and forth.
Variables are used to maintain and pass information...