Ecen Based marketing

1. White PaPer
Expanding the Power of Data:
Event-Based Marketing in Financial Services
OPPOrtUNitY aND iMPaCt Detect provides a revolutionary new approach to Event-Based
As financial services rapidly embrace mobile computing, one-to-one Marketing that empowers financial services providers to take
customer service, broadband information access, and always-on immediate action based on financial transaction records and other
communications, increasingly large amounts of information are being customer behavior data. This new solution allows the detection
generated and transmitted. Nonetheless, computing costs continue of a wide range of behavior-significant patterns of interaction—
to drop as computing power increases, allowing financial services patterns that can be simple or complex in structure; triggered by
providers to capture and retain an unprecedented amount of infor- single events, or extended over (widely variable) periods of time.
mation about their customers—most notably regarding their specific These trigger structures allow you the room to grow your under-
transactional activity as well as interactions with branch offices, call standing and effectiveness as increasingly subtle or complex
center personnel, and electronic delivery channels. behavior patterns are detected, measured, and acted upon. Our
This large-scale increase in data assembly, as witnessed by the pattern-detection and comparison capabilities can take you beyond
rapid growth of data warehouses and data-marts in back-end simple “pattern matching” triggers, and into behavior-based analysis
corporate systems, provides the foundation for a giant leap forward and response to execute these kinds of focused tactics:
in managing customer relationships. There is great potential for
• Reducing churn by distributing attrition triggers to your sales/
advances which benefit both the firm and the customer. Yet crucial
service force when a customer shows “signs of dissatisfaction”
customer and business data often go ignored, and service and
• Creating cross-selling and needs-analysis opportunities from
product offerings are generally not optimally targeted—in part due
relevant dialogue you initiate with customers, triggered by trans-
to the informational riches we have described here—which often
actional behavior and product-use changes
constitute an overload on mission-critical business and communica-
tions systems. • Modeling and executing a failsafe “on-boarding” experience
for new customers by closely monitoring product adoption
An acute need has developed for solutions that can empower finan-
and usage
cial services firms to make more immediate and accurate use of the
data assets they are rapidly accruing. • Detecting complex or subtle patterns in on-line banking use that
may signal high risk or unauthorized activity
Competition (and for most financial services firms, regulation) has
created imperatives for increasing scrutiny and rapid response to • Monitoring account usage to proactively fit customers into the
changes in customer behavior. For most companies, these demands most appropriate product and service bundle
reach across the enterprise, creating a need for robust, intelligently • Triggering execution of one-to-one or “right-time” campaigns
designed, and cost-effective solutions which can be implemented
• Reporting upon the deeper, more meaningful information that
quickly and used without significant IT “overhead” cost.
lies hidden in your enterprise’s transaction streams
Unica’s event-Based Marketing Capability enables
Behavior-Based action eVeNt-BaSeD MarKetiNG: iSSUeS aND ChaLLeNGeS
Unica Detect for Event-Based Marketing empowers your firm to The goal of responsive—or even better, anticipatory—action is
turn the vast amounts of information it has captured in the form of shared by many financial services firms today. However, even
daily financial transactions—ie. disbursements, deposits, trades cutting-edge providers are finding significant technical challenges as
and purchases—into customer behavior insights. “Awareness” of they attempt to make this objective into a reality.
these behaviors can then be used to generate responsive actions
Making Sense of Data Originating from a Myriad of Sources
that are specific and highly relevant to your customers—and to your
Your customers interact with your firm through a multitude of
organization’s business goals. Unica Detect is fast, open, easy to
systems, and these systems were typically not designed to interact
use, and has vital applications in many domains, including attrite risk
with each other. (This heterogeneity of systems can develop over
identification, cross-sell, customer text and email alerts, fraud detec-
time, through acquisitions, or through organic growth, but few
tion, and web and call center interaction monitoring.
Unica Corporation | www.unica.com 1

2. companies are spared from the problem of “technology-diversity.”) a multitude of non-business rules to control basic functions and
It’s very likely both you and your competitors are faced with making to prevent malfunctions. And since an expert system is really just
these diverse systems and data work together so that you can a software library, it will require extensive IT expenditure to open
formulate a whole picture of your customer and respond in a coher- your code and integrate the library into your environment. This
ent way. Two common approaches for addressing this problem are: may require rethinking your entire architectural framework.
• Neural Network. In order to build a system that quickly detects
• enterprise application integration: In this approach, you tie
patterns within your volumes of transactional data, you might
your applications together using something like Web Services
consider a neural network. This technology has the drawback of
or Enterprise Java Beans. This involves intricate planning and
being the ultimate black box—it either gives an answer (without
complex programming with the possibility of skewing the end
result towards the desired outcome. Future changes can also be explanation) or it does not—which can be frustrating to market-
time consuming and expensive. ing users who want to be reassured that the customer indica-
tions are accurate, reliable, and reproducible. A neural network
• Data Warehouse: In this approach you build a single repository
for all your corporate data with the goal of creating a consistent can also be intolerant of the addition of new input feeds, thus
data environment for all your enterprise applications. The ware- failing to meet your requirement that the system be able to adapt
house is invaluable for storing data, but there may be, because to a constantly evolving data environment.
of its size and structure, limits to the speed with which your • Data Mining. In order to take advantage of your data ware-
various applications can mine and make timely use of this data. house, you might consider data mining. Data mining is useful
With either approach, there is the constant demand to keep your for the discovery of new behaviors, but it has limitations when
framework current with new sources of data and new destinations used for the real-time detection of the patterns underlying those
for its output. The ongoing challenge of these integration efforts is to behaviors. Data mining often works upon data that has been
keep pace with the rapid evolution of your customer-facing business removed from its transactional business structure, and it typically
strategies. What is required is a flexible mechanism for intuitively requires experts to translate marketing requirements into results.
manipulating and acting on your integrated information. Operationally, data mining is almost always an off-line activity, so
it is not able to deliver a quick turn-around of results.
Choosing the right technology
“Action-enabling software”—which detects customer events as they Unica Detect extends the rules-based, expert system approach
happen and triggers actions that are on-target for your business— with a unique “state-engine” paradigm which facilitates exceed-
creates some unique requirements. If the system is to be adopted ingly efficient provisioning of transactional data, indexed to a single
and used by your marketing group, it must be intuitive and relatively subject (generally, an individual household, customer or account)
easy to navigate and control. Since the system will have to manipu- and allows the rules to be developed and executed to use time and
late the vast amount of transactional (e.g., DDA, loan, card and time-bounded aggregates, as variables. Our solution can also treat
trading; on-line activity and call center) data that arrives each day— patterns as “ranges,” which reflect typical behavior (or, outside of
and do so in very small processing windows, it must also be power- the ranges, atypical behavior) in regards to the individual subject
ful. Since you already have made a huge investment in technology and the specific variables being analyzed. Maintaining the custom-
that executes all of its specific assignments, the new component ers’ “state” eliminates significant data bottlenecks, and significantly
must also be non-intrusive and non-replicative. And most important- expands the logical flexibility of the solution, without surrendering
ly, because you will rely on this solution to “feel the pulse” of your simplicity of control for users. The result is a flexible, fast capability
customers, and provide or execute recommended response-actions, that allows you to optimally leverage your transactional data assets.
it must be fast and accurate with transparent business rules.
In evaluating the current state of the art, you might consider any of the UNiCa eVeNt-BaSeD MarKetiNG PLatFOrM:
the following technical alternatives: UNiCa DeteCt
Unica Detect is a powerful Event-Based Marketing (EBM) Platform.
• rules-Based “expert” System. In order to build a system
This power is easily harnessed through its rules-based user inter-
that is flexible and meets the needs of the marketing users,
face, which allows the user to define sophisticated patterns of
you might evaluate a commercial expert system as a technical
foundation. But while promising a methodology for building pre- activity in an incoming stream of transactions. Each pattern can be
determined (declarative) business rules, expert systems require configured to fire appropriate triggers to systems external to Detect
Unica Corporation | www.unica.com 2

3. to achieve the desired event-driven functionality. The rules are the CritiCaL DiMeNSiONS OF eVeNt-BaSeD MarKetiNG
capable of capturing and responding to rich and complex behavior The three key aspects of an Event-Based Marketing platform are
patterns, yet they are easily created by aggregating simple subcom- speed, openness, and ease of use.
ponents into the desired detection patterns.
Speed
This event and pattern detection process can be applied in a wide
Unica Detect is fast because:
variety of situations ranging from the triggering of cross-sell op-
portunities and attrite risks to fraud detection and customer alerts. • It is highly efficient in how it analyzes the incoming transaction
Unica Detect’s unique strengths lie in: data: it never analyzes the same transaction twice.
• It only retains information about the customer that is relevant to
the existing rule set; hence, the product is efficient in maintaining
state across sessions. (An explanation of the significant benefits
realized from this capability appears below.)
Unica Detect is engineered to solve two performance related
problems:
• restoration of rule state: Detect saves state within the rules,
and it saves that state in such a way that it can be quickly
restored when a customer returns to interact with the enterprise.
This creates huge performance benefits when compared to a
system that must continually reprocess old information when
new information arrives. One may consider it in this way: a
system that continually reprocesses its knowledge store gets
slower as it accumulates more information, whereas Detect
shows no such decline. The Engine holds various pieces of
information such as history, profile information, and product
information within a database and retrieves that information as
efficiently as possible. Its real innovations, however, are within
the dimensions of data handling, not database retrieval.
• Manageability: Because Detect saves transactional information
in a way that is relevant to the rules using this information,
it does not need to generate additional information about already
• Its ability to rapidly detect complex patterns in customer
consumed data. In traditional rules-based systems or any
transaction streams
system that holds all relevant information within a database,
• Its ability to rapidly detect complex trend and pattern restraint mechanisms need to be put in place to prevent the
aberrations in customer transactional data over time system from continually reproducing the same conclusions.
• The ease with which it can be configured for any type of trans- Open architecture approach
actional input, and also for any type of existing product package
The current emphasis on systems that are built upon a multi-tiered
and customer profile data
architecture has shifted the focus away from data-centric applica-
• Its intuitive browser-based interfaces that allow the business tions and toward applications that exhibit a flexible and adaptable
user to easily create and modify the rules which control the
business purpose, thus allowing organizations to preserve their
Engine’s detection and response behavior
investments (time, money, and knowledge) resident in existing tech-
nologies. The emergence of XML as a standards-based vehicle for
The following sections provide a more in-depth introduction to these
sharing data within the enterprise and beyond is a significant indica-
and other distinctive features of the product.
tion that current architectures require a broad and open approach to
data usage.
Unica Corporation | www.unica.com 3

4. Consistent with this open approach, Detect makes minimal assump- reasons-to-call for your bankers, brokers, sales and service staff,
tions about the nature of the data that it uses. Through the use of you’ll drive a greater volume of high quality leads, and establish a
intuitive graphical interfaces which allow the user to map raw post- proactive dialogue with your customers. The improvement you gain
ing data to a business-centric vocabulary, Detect can be configured in the quality, responsiveness, and relevancy of dialogue with your
to simultaneously accept inputs from various databases, flat files, customers is a significant benefit in itself. Upgrading the accuracy
open input streams, and other information sources. and quality of opportunities delivered to your frontlines provides
Detect readily accepts external data sources in their native formats: both intrinsic benefits (better quality opportunities), and comple-
relational databases, XML feeds, text files, etc. This flexibility mentary improvements: heightened engagement and buy-in at the
eliminates the IT overhead required for conformance to a rigid data front-line with your marketing programs. Together these improve-
model. The “meanings” of the fields in the external data sources are ments will usually drive better follow-up activity—and success rates
defined within Detect at installation time. From that point forward, on both retention and selling opportunities will improve as a matter
the content of external data sources appear to users as relevant of course.
business objects (“account,” “customer,” etc.)
CUStOMer BehaViOr aND triGGer CreatiON
ease of Use Unica Detect discovers significant behaviors in transaction data as
Unica Detect’s unique data-flow architecture naturally partitions the it happens and uses historical information to generate triggers for
work of configuring the system into different stages designed for high-value interactions.
different users—users with varying degrees of domain expertise and
The activity of building and managing these trigger rules is carried
decision-making responsibility.
out within the graphical rule development environment described
Unica’s ability to refine this relatively broad problem-space into below. The process is simplified by being broken down into a series
manageable components has produced a system that can be of discrete steps that involve first characterizing customer behavior
configured, modified, and monitored with minimal intervention of and then transforming it into business-significant actions.
IT personnel. To a significant degree, the solution can be used and
The customer behavior identified by Detect consists of business-
controlled by a marketing analyst who wishes to implement revenue-
relevant activity that can be inferred from the current and historical
generating processes and programs.
calling habits and known characteristics. Customer behavior
All Detect user interfaces are browser-based and provide remote- consists of events, patterns, and attributes.
update capability to all users. The user interfaces are easily custom-
ized to reflect the structure of a specific business domain, e.g.,
deposits, loan, credit card or web channel. End-users can graphi-
cally select from intuitive transaction types, data attributes and
values to construct rules using a vocabulary of expressions naturally
familiar to them.
Contrary to the traditional rule-based system that becomes clut-
tered with too many rules, Unica’s system is focused expressly on
the business problem being modeled. In other words, rules built
with Detect are keyed to business content and not on “rule-control”
thus preventing misfiring, defining suppressions, and the like. This
• Events are occurrences within a transaction stream, such as a
greatly reduces the number of rules required and makes the installed
card purchase, a paid check, a log-on, or an equity trade. An
system more manageable.
event meets a set of predetermined conditions relevant to your
accuracy and effectiveness customer’s behavior.
The combined effect of Detect’s unique approach to pattern detec- • Patterns are business-relevant groupings of current and histori-
tion, its flexibility and speed, along with its ease-of-use, is much cal events that contribute to a characterization of customer
greater accuracy for detection of circumstances relevant to your behavior. They include not only what a customer has done,
business and to your customers. Whether you’re using the solution but what he or she may not have done. Complex patterns may
to generate text messages directly to your customers, or to provide include in their input simpler patterns that are already defined.
Unica Corporation | www.unica.com 4

5. • Attributes are collections of ascribed customer characteristics • Ramp-up new rules to allow them to enter the system with
gathered and derived from existing data sources, such as a pre-existing state information
customer profile database. An attribute is an aspect of customer
behavior which serves to qualify transactions. Within the prototyping environment, the user has full control over the
set of triggers, test data, target environment (test/production), and
Detect highlights significant changes in customer behavior and the actual results. The user can change any of these elements, rerun
sends action triggers to external customer management systems, the system, and compare the varying outcomes. As a result, the
which perform the relevant actions, e.g., the creation of a lead or an test environment can be used to test various “what if” scenarios on
email, appropriate to the trigger type. a predefined targeted population. The outcomes of these “what if”
Every aspect of the creation of triggers is supported through the scenarios can be analyzed and compared using Detect’s built-in re-
configuration environment, which presents an organized way for porting capabilities to determine which strategy to use in production.
using lower-level rules as building blocks for higher-level activities.
Downstream Manipulation of triggered actions
The program’s organizational facilities allow a rule creator to restrict
Actions that are triggered by Detect move to a dispatching compo-
use of specific “building blocks” to rules that meet specific criteria
nent where they can be targeted to a variety of downstream sys-
(such as campaign-type, priority, rule author, rule start date, etc.)
tems. The current destinations supported include databases, files,
Detect offers a variety of other features that make the activities of email, or messages to a downstream process.
rule creation, maintenance, and reuse much easier. Specific to the
Targeting of actions is done in the action editor, which supports ei-
activity of rule identification and reuse, a multitude of structured
ther static or dynamic routing. Dynamic routing entails using trigger
methods are provided to tag rules and then selectively access them
attributes in conjunction with real-time parameters and a history of
using flexible criteria. For example, a rule creator is able to indicate a
past firings to dispatch actions to multiple channels with great flex-
rule’s intention (detect cross-sell opportunities, asset retention risk,
ibility. Some of the capabilities enabled by dynamic action routing
etc.) and then utilize that information both to access that rule when
include:
using it as a building block and its performance when doing reporting.
• Suppression of action triggering based upon the history of past
trigger Libraries triggering
To assist you in developing your trigger processes quickly, Unica
• Prioritization of action triggering based upon the entire set of
also provides a variety of prepackaged trigger libraries for specific
actions that have triggered
industry verticals and processes. Our libraries for financial ser-
• Delay of triggering based upon geographic area
vices, like our libraries for telecommunications, reflect the common
terminology and use-cases for the industry. Of course the library is
Taken together, these capabilities provide the means of managing
flexible and can be modified and augmented as you implement the
all interactions with the customer to avoid needlessly replicated
solution to reflect your firm’s specific processes and procedures.
notifications across different channels, or excessive contacts result-
ing from different pattern activities that are detected closely in time.
eFFeCtiVe USe OF eVeNt-BaSeD MarKetiNG
envisioning Your results
Maximizing the effectiveness of Your trigger rules
Unica Detect includes a comprehensive package of reports providing
Once the triggers have been created, Unica provides a prototyping
value to all areas of your organization. Using a browser-based
environment that enables the user to cycle through the process of
reports interface, users can customize queries with any one or all of
building, testing, and modifying trigger rules. The prototyping
a number of available filters, delivering a high degree of flexibility for
environment offers the ability to:
report results in any one of the following areas:
• Create and modify trigger rule sets
• Measures of Effectiveness provide a means for management to
• Run sample data through the trigger rule set
determine effectiveness of specific triggers and their potential
• Verify the results of running sample data using the reporting impact upon target populations. Used in conjunction with the
mechanisms and the output of Detect test environment, these reports can also be used to analyze the
• Restore Detect to a certain past state with the intention of feasibility of new test strategies. Equally important is the ability
rerunning sample data of these reports to identify which customers or target populations
Unica Corporation | www.unica.com 5

6. have not yet generated triggers, sometimes signaling faulty
rule definition, an overly ambitious campaign, or sluggish target
population.
• Transactional Verification provides a means for operations
personnel to verify that engine processing has occurred.
Because these reports include transaction volume, processing
start and stop times, along with overall processing performance,
this information is also useful in developing peak and off-peak
metrics and may be used in performance planning and optimization.
• System Verification provides a means to monitor rule manage-
ment activity, such as when rules were created, changed, or
deleted for active processing use. This information is useful for
tracking rule author, rule intent, and rule applicability at any given
point in time.
aBOUt UNiCa
Unica Corporation (NASDAQ: UNCA) is the recognized leader in
marketing software solutions. Unica’s advanced set of enterprise
marketing management and on-demand marketing solutions
empowers organizations and individuals to turn their passion for
marketing into valuable customer relationships and more profit-
able, timely, and measurable business outcomes. These solutions
integrate and streamline all aspects of online and offline marketing.
Unica’s unique interactive marketing approach incorporates cus-
tomer analytics and web analytics, centralized decisioning, cross-
channel execution, and integrated marketing operations. More than
1,000 organizations worldwide depend on Unica for their marketing
management solutions.
Unica is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts with offices
around the globe. For more information, visit www.unica.com.
Unica Corporation
Worldwide Headquarters
Unica is a registered trademark of Unica
Corporation with the U.S. Patent and Trade- Reservoir Place North
mark Office. The Unica logo and MARKETING 170 Tracer Lane
SUCCESS STARTS WITH U are trademarks of Waltham, MA 02451
Unica Corporation. All other trademarks are the USA
property of their respective owners.
t +1.781.839.8000
WP-EBMFINANCE-1009-PDF F +1.781.890.0012
e unica@unica.com
© Unica Corporation, 2007-2009.
All rights reserved. www.unica.com
Unica Corporation | www.unica.com 6