B Only With A rule

Use the B Only With A rule to ensure that you do not send a follow-up offer unless you send the original offer.

Contact Optimization cannot send Offer B unless it also sends an offer A. When Contact Optimization uses an offer set for offer B, the rule applies to any offer that matches the set. When you use an offer set for offer A, any offer within that set satisfies the requirement for all proposed offer Bs. In other words, a single original offer allows any number of follow-up offers. This rule allows you to control sequencing of related offers. For example, to specify that you send offer B to a recipient only if offer A is also sent to the recipient. This rule allows you to manage follow-up waves of communication within your optimization strategy.

Marketing studies show that the lift achievable with two linked communications can be more successful than either individual communication. For example, a direct mail piece followed by a service representative call. The B Only With A rule allows you to propose linked offers and ensure that offer B is only given to a recipient if they also receive offer A. Therefore, allowed combinations would include giving out offer A only or offers A and B together, but not offer B alone. For example, to first make an offer using direct mail and then follow up using a telemarketing call, create the telemarketing call as Offer B and the direct mail as Offer A. If Contact Optimization determines that the customer cannot receive the direct mail, then this rule automatically eliminates the telemarketing call that was paired with it.

If you have two offers, Offer1 and Offer2, which must be sent together or not at all, you can create two B only with A rules. Create one rule as Offer1 only with Offer2 and the other rule as Offer2 only with Offer1. Contact Optimization delivers both of the offers or neither of them. In this scenario, Contact Optimization ensures that sufficient contact opportunities exist on the required channels to send both Offer1 and Offer2. Contact Optimization also ensures that the combination of offers (as opposed to other alternative offers that can be given on those channels instead) together are optimal.

Use this rule when one offer must always precede another.

The scope of the B only with A rule is always the current optimization period. That is, Contact Optimization considers only the proposed contacts within the Contact Optimization session. Contact Optimization does not give out offer B if offer A was given out in the past. This rule ensures that offer B is selected only if offer A is also selected within the proposed transactions that are considered during the current Contact Optimization session. This rule does not look at contact history to see whether offer A was received in the past.