Recommendation rules are used to match the right offers and custom behaviours to the right contacts. This ensures that your customers get the best offers based on what you know about them.
Creating recommendation rules
When you setup Offers or Custom behaviours, you will have the option to create tags. Once you have created these, you'll find the tags under the Offer management tab, then 'Recommendation rules', found in the left-hand menu.
- In the 'Recommendation rules' page, you'll find a list of all the tags you've created.
- If you haven't added any recommendation rules to a tag yet, this will be offered to all customers.
- To add recommendation rules, click
by the tag you wish to update.
- Select from the 'Relevance' drop-down list, whether the rule 'Must be', 'Must not be' or 'Weighted towards'.
'Must be' means the rule has to match the recommendation rule. E.g. Gender is Male would find any male customers.
'Must not be' means the rule shouldn't match the recommendation rule. E.g. Gender is Male would find anyone who isn't a male.
'Weighted towards' means the rule doesn't have to match, but they are close (or not, depending on the rule score) to matching the rule. E.g. Total orders greater than 10. You may set a 'Weight towards' of '5', meaning that people close to that number (such as 9 or 11) may see the offer/behaviour. If you select this option, the 'Relevance weighting' option will be available. Set it to 5 for the rule to be close to the rule. Set it to 0 for the rule to be far from the rule.
- The 'Use as a category' option turns the offer tag into a category. This allows you can group together the offers customers see better e.g. Family offers.
- You can click the 'Check rules' to see how many contacts match the rules.
When Horizon calculates a contacts best offers it adds up the points for all tags per offer and then, based on the highest score, determines the contacts ‘best’ offers.
Testing offer recommendations
You can test what a contact would be recommended using the buttons at the bottom of the 'Recommendation rules' page. There are three different tests you can use, offers, tiered rewards and behaviours.
- To do so, click which option you want to test.
- Find the contact you want to test on by clicking
- Select from the 'Number of offers' field how many offers you want to see.
- Use the 'Recommend offers available at' field to set the time you this to calculate at. For example, you may wish to see if a contact was recommended an offer a few days ago.
- Click 'Recommend'
You can also find the test buttons at the bottom of the Contacts page.
Alternatively, you can see how many contacts would get a recommendations when editing a offer or custom behaviour, going to the 'tags' section and clicking 'Check rules'.