Unica Interact - Enhance Event and Event Pattern

An Event Pattern consists of series of events that occur in a particular way. Marketers can use event patterns to track and record the pattern of customers’ activities in real-time and act accordingly. The pattern’s state is updated by posting events to Interact at selected stages of customers’ activities. Event Pattern is an important component of Interact, and a marketer uses it to track changes in customers’ behavior in real-time and act accordingly.

From the 12.1.0.3 release, many capabilities have been added to Event and Event Pattern, and they are as follows: 

• A marketer can define Time Span to Event Pattern.
• Events in Event Pattern can be Qualifying or Suspending Events.
• Tracking of Event Pattern Inactivity.
• Delay the action triggering for Event and Event Pattern.
• New Event and Event Pattern actions, Suppress Offer and Qualify Segment.
• Define Condition for Events in Event Pattern.
• UI refresh for Event and Event Pattern List tab.

Let’s see the details of each feature:

1. In the earlier releases, the integration between Interact and Interact Advanced Patterns provides advanced pattern recognition capabilities for Interact implementation. An integrated environment provides enhanced time windows for the three basic Interact patterns.

From the 12.1.0.3 release, now a marketer can configure all three standard event patterns with more sophisticated time spans during which the pattern compares incoming events with its criteria. The following additional options are available for each basic event pattern. 

• Time bound 
• Rolling time

This effectively adds six pattern options to Interact by adding two new time span options to each of the three standard patterns:

1. Match all (time bound)
2. Counter (time bound) 
3. Weighted counter (time bound)
4. Match all (rolling time)
5. Counter (rolling time)
6. Weighted counter (rolling time)

Time Bound Pattern: A time bound pattern can be a “Match all,” “Counter,” or “Weighted counter” pattern, but all composing events must occur within a defined time window. When a composing event is posted to Interact Runtime, Interact checks the occurrences of the pattern’s all composing events in the time window starting from the current time point. If event occurrences do not meet pattern definition, the pattern state stays as “condition-not-met.” Otherwise, if all events occur within the time window, the pattern state is set to “Condition-MET” (may trigger actions if configured). 

Now Interact checks another setting called “Extend true state for an additional period of time” and keeps the pattern as a “Condition-MET” state for the additional period of time (no pattern evaluation in this period of time). When the additional time passes, the pattern state is reset to “condition-not-met,” and the evaluation starts another cycle. In other words, Time Bound Pattern allows patterns to pause for a certain time after condition-met. The setting “Extend true state for an additional period of time” is only applicable to Time Bound pattern.

For example, suppose a marketer wants to offer customers who view the Product X web page 2 times within the span of 3 days. You want to withhold further contact with this customer for an additional 7 days to avoid contact fatigue.

The following diagram illustrates how the time bound option works.

Rolling Time pattern: A rolling time pattern can be a “Match all,” “Counter,” or “Weighted counter” pattern, but all composing events must occur within a defined time window. When a composing event is posted to Interact Runtime, Interact checks the occurrences of the pattern’s all composing events in the time window starting from the current time point. 

If event occurrences do not meet pattern definition, the pattern state stays as “Condition-Not-Met.” Otherwise, if all events occur within the time window, the pattern state is set to “Condition-Met” (may trigger actions if configured). After that, the pattern’s state is continuously re-evaluated in the same way as above and is repeated on a rolling base. For example, suppose you want to make an offer to customers who view the Product X web page 2 times within the span of 3 days.

The following diagram illustrates how the rolling time option works.

2. Qualifying or Suspending Events in Event Pattern:

Events that are part of Event Pattern can be Qualifying or Suspending Events 

Qualifying Events: Qualifying  Events are those events that are considered in evaluating the pattern state.

Suspending Event: If we add any event to Suspending Events Section of Event Pattern, then on the occurrence of that Event, Event Pattern stops evaluating any further Qualifying Events for the set duration for Suspending Event, Duration for Suspending event can in Days, Hours, Minutes or Weeks. Once the Suspending Event Duration is over, then again, Event Pattern starts evaluating Qualifying events.

3. Tracking of Inactivity of Event Pattern:

For Marketer, along with the tracking of Active State of Event Patterns, it’s also important to track the Inactivity state of Event Pattern. Consider the case of an Online Shopping Website where the marketer wants to track the behavior of the Customer if he checkout added items from his Cart within 7 days or not. This behavior can be tracked using the New option on the Action tab of Events Patterns “Invoke action when pattern state Not Met.”

For example, a marketer can check the Pattern state after 3rd day of adding items to the cart; if the pattern state did not change to Met, then Action will trigger, which can be configured for the Outbound channel to send reminders to checkout items from his cart along with an additional discount.

Inactivity for Event Pattern can be tracked by using the below options on Event Pattern Action:

1. At the end of the cycle: On selecting this option, Pattern state will check at the end of the Defined Time Period for Event Pattern; if all qualifying events are not received in the defined Time Period, then Action will trigger.
2. After the first event occurs, wait: On selecting this option, Pattern state will evaluate after the set duration of the occurrence of the 1^st Qualifying event for the pattern. If, after the occurrence of the 1^st event, all qualifying events are not received before validating the Pattern state, then Action will trigger.
3. After the most recent event occurs, wait: On selecting this option, Pattern state will check after the occurrence of the most recent events, and the marketer can define the duration for checking events for pattern state.

4. Delay the action trigger for Event and Event Pattern:

From version 12.1.0.3 onward, Interact supports the delay of invoking Event and Event Pattern actions. This feature provides marketers the ability to control when to invoke Actions.  An action can be invoked in three ways: 

• Immediately: Sooner Event Pattern Condition MET or Not Met, Event Pattern Action Trigger.
• After a duration: Marketer can add Delay to Action Trigger, Delay can be in Minutes, Hours, Days or Weeks 
• At the scheduled date and time: Marketer can Schedule Event Pattern Action Trigger, Schedule can be in Date/Time of nth Calendar Day/Week/Month from the time when condition Met/Not Met.

5. Event and Event Pattern new actions Suppress Offer and Qualify Segment:

From version 12.1.0.4 onward, Interact supports two more actions Suppress Offer and Qualify Segment for Event and Event Pattern.

Suppress Offer: This Action triggers when the condition for Event or Event Pattern is MET. Using this Action Marketer can suppress Individual offer or Group of Offers based on the Offer Attribute value. The difference between offer suppressing action and existing suppression rules is that the former can be triggered without relating to treatment rules.

Qualify Segment: This Action trigger when the condition for Event or Event Pattern is MET. Using this Action Marketer can enable specific Segment.

6. Conditions for Events in Event Pattern:

This feature is available from 12.1.0.4 onward. Using this feature, Marketers can define conditions for events in a pattern. The conditions can be specified for qualifying events or suspending events of a pattern. Only when all conditions are met, then are events eligible for the pattern. A condition is a Name/Value pair that can be passed into PostEvent API as parameters in the runtime environment. This provides marketers another flexibility to control event patterns at runtime.

7. Updated UI for Event and Event Pattern List pane:

From version 12.1.0.3 onward, the UI of Events and Event Pattern list pane has been updated; also Action column will display all defined (enabled) actions for an Event or Event Pattern.

So by using these features, marketers can create sophisticated Event and Event Pattern, which will help in tracking change in the behavior of the customer and take require action timely. To learn more about Unica Interact, you can reach out to us, and we will be happy to help.