New
Card management
In this release of Horizon we’ve considerably extended our support for card-based loyalty programs. As well as a single member being able to have multiple cards against their profile, it is also possible to capture more information about the card itself:
- Registration date; the date the card was registered against a member
- Card number: the number associated to the card
- Type of card: the type of card it is
- First swipe date: the first time the card has been used
- Last swipe date: the last time the card has been used
- Card issued date: the date the card was issued to a member
- Card request type: the type of card request
From a member profile, as the following screenshots show, Horizon also supports the notion of unregistered cards. This is important if the loyalty program allows members to use a card without the need to register it first. Once an unregistered card is linked to an existing member than all transactions associated to the card are linked.
Fig1. The loyalty card table displayed on a contact record
Fig2. Adding an unregistered card to an existing member
It’s also possible for members to request new cards. This can be done via the loyalty portal services (e.g. implemented within a loyalty portal and requested by the member) or by an admin user in Horizon.
Fig3. Adding a card request
If cards are fulfilled by a third party organisation/system then Horizon can be configured to produce regular exports of card requests as well as consume a fulfilment file to assign new, registered cards to existing member records.
Fig4. Card requests against a member record
The above screenshot shows how card requests are displayed on a member record. The different request statuses indicate the following:
- WAITING_FULFILLMENT: a new card request that is waiting to be fulfilled
- REGISTERED: a card request that has been fulfilled and registered against the member record
Letter sending
Paper-based marketing collateral still remains an important channel for some organisations and as a result we have extended our range of supported channels to include letters.
As seen in the screenshot below it is possible for an admin user to request a letter to be sent to a member; entries for all letters will be added to contact activity for that member.
Fig5. Sending a letter to a member from within the Customer Service Portal
Letter types can be created in the same way any other message content is, the difference being that rather than send the letter Horizon creates a file at the end of each day with a list of members who require a letter and the personal information that needs to be merged into the letter. This file can then be processed by a third party system responsible for creating the physical letters.
Fig6. Creating a letter type and the associated smart inserts to include in the daily letter file
Financial transactions linked to purchases
Within 3.2 we’ve made it possible for a Horizon user to see the details of the financial transaction that has generated points as a result of a purchase. This makes it easier to query points that have been earned against purchased that have been made.
Support for this has also been added to Loyalty Portal Services meaning a similar experience can be built into loyalty portal.
Fig7. Displaying the financial transaction linked to’ purchase points’ in a members loyalty transaction activity
GDPR compliance
With new GDPR legislation in force as of May 2018 we’ve introduced some enhancements around the management of personal data.
Permissions & preferences
An audit trail of a members changes in permissions and preferences are logged against their contact record and available in contact activity.
It’s also possible to search & segment on this across the whole of the contact database via the ‘Permissions & preferences group.
Fig8. Searching and segmentation based on permissions & preferences
The following actions are captured and stored for each contact:
- Confirming a new channel
- Opting in to opt-in categories
- Opting out of opt-in categories
- Subscribing
- Unsubscribing
- Enrolling in loyalty
- Withdrawing from loyalty
- Spam complaints
- Being excluded from/included in processing
- Changes in their state (i.e. unconfirmed -> confirmed)
For each of the above actions the following will be logged in contact activity:
- Created Date: the date and time the action occurred
- Source: the source of the action (i.e. Horizon, a link click, via web services)
- Activity: the type of activity that occurred
- Channel: the channel associated to the activity
- Description: a description of the activity which will include details of channels
- Author: who carried out the activity; the contact of an admin user
Exclude from processing
A new checkbox called ‘Exclude from processing?’ has been added to the contact record. If this is checked then the contact will be removed from any rule-based processing. This includes Personas, Lifecycle stages, rule, combined & map groups, tags and Relationship scores calculations.
It is possible to search and segment on contacts that are either included or excluded from processing.
Fig11. Advanced search for exclude from processing
Right to be forgotten
When a customer wishes to have their personal data permanently deleted this can be actioned by an admin user deleting the customer through the Horizon User Interface. Processes run every 24 hours to obfuscate the personal information associated to each customer recorded that has been deleted. An audit is kept meaning that we never end up restoring someone's personal data from backups.
Improvements
The following are some key improvements that have been delivered with HTK Horizon 3.2:
- Role-based point adjustment limits: it is now possible to specify point adjustment limits by role as well as having an overall set of limits for the account.
- Point calculations based on Quantity: via an account setting it is possible to specify whether the quantity or currency field in an incoming transaction should be used to calculate points.
- Account closure by admin users: Horizon users can now set a members account Closed as well as Suspended; this can be done via the main Horizon interface and through the Customer Service Portal.
- Handling of pending accounts: in an effort to reduce the number of member accounts that remain in pending it is now possible for Horizon to automatically trigger confirmation emails again to pending members. After 14 days, if a contact has not confirmed their membership then their record will be deleted.
- Exposing Ext. Ref. IDs in the user interface: External Reference IDs have now been exposed to the contact record and can be created from account settings. This is very useful for handling third party IDs without needing to store them in custom fields.
- Enhancing point expiry rule options: there are now two options available when setting point expiry rules;
Expire a members point balance if they have not earned points for the length of the expiry period or
Expire a members point balance if they have neither earned nor burnt points for the length of the expiry period - Home site management: we’ve improved “home site” so that it is possible to search and segment using members home site and present them in a more user-friendly manner. It is also possible for Horizon to consume site files and, if the data exists, populate each site with a Site number, Site name, Site address, Site postcode, Site county and Site city.
- Site-based promotions: utilising the site file mentioned above it is possible to run site-based promotions whereby the point uplift will only be applied to purchases at the site or sites selected for the promotion. We’ve also made it easier to multiplier point promotions.
- Configurable rules for ‘Suspended’ members: in 3.2 we’ve added configurable options within account settings which determine what a suspended member can do. It is mandatory that a suspended member cannot redeem but it is now possible to control whether they can or cannot log into a loyalty portal and whether or not they have the ability to earn points.
- Enrollment & Redemption on behalf of a member: users of the Horizon Customer Service Portal now have the ability to enrol members and also to redeem rewards on a member’s behalf.
Fixed issues
The following customer affecting issues have been resolved in HTK Horizon 3.2:
- We’ve fixed a problem some customers were experiencing with ‘paused out of credit’ broadcasts not starting again.
- Some contact imports were failing to complete due to missing fields; we’ve addressed this.
- We’ve fixed an issue with lack of visibility when errors occurred due to importing custom field data over the limit of 4,000 characters.
- When clicking 'Submit' multiple times on a publication form, the data was being submitted multiple times; we’ve fixed this.