Segment-Based Response Tracking Codes in Multi-Segment Audiences

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Overview 

This document explains how Response Tracking Codes (RTCs) are used in CI 360 email tasks and why segment-based RTCs are important when an Audience contains multiple segments. Multiple RTCs are currently supported only for Direct Marketing Tasks and Email tasks. The document covers the purpose of RTCs, single segment task-level behavior, the segment-based attribution enhancement, and its expected impact on reporting and analysis.

Understanding Response Tracking Codes (RTCs) 

A Response Tracking Code (RTC) is a unique identifier that CI 360 uses to connect outbound communications with inbound customer actions, such as email opens, link clicks, conversions, or external events. RTCs help CI 360 attribute each response to the correct marketing task. 

Key Terms

Before moving into RTC behavior, it is useful to clarify two related terms: 

• Segment: A segment is a group of individuals who share common characteristics, behaviors, or qualification criteria. Advanced segmentation techniques is also available to identify and organize specific audiences based on data such as demographics, preferences, or interactions. 

• Audience: An Audience consists of IDs and a set of attributes like contact details and personalization attributes that can be used in task. An audience can be based on one or more segments. 

Use Case: Evaluating a New Product Launch by Segment 

For example, a new product launch email campaign may target an Audience made up of multiple segments. The marketing team may want to analyze each segment separately, such as loyalty tiers like Gold, Silver, and Bronze, or regions such as North, South, East, and West. 

When the bulk email task is executed, each segment receives its own RTC. Sends, opens, clicks, and configured conversion events are then associated with the RTC for the recipient’s segment. This lets the team compare engagement and conversion performance across segments while managing the communication as one email task. 

These insights can show whether Gold-tier customers engaged more than Silver-tier customers, or whether one region generated more product-interest conversions than another. The findings can then guide targeted follow-up messages, segment-specific offers, and future audience strategy.

Single-Segment Behavior: Task-Level RTC Generation 

If the audience for a task is created from only one segment, CI 360 generates a single RTC during task execution. This RTC is applied to the task output and is sufficient for tracking and attribution since all activity originates from the same segment. 

Enhancement: Segment-Based RTC Generation 

CI 360 Audiences can contain multiple Segments, we are introducing an enhancement that assigns a separate RTC to each segment within an Audience during task execution. This allows responses to be attributed to the segment that generated them, rather than only to the overall task. 

Note: Response Tracking Codes are generated only during task execution. Running a segment or an audience by itself does not create an RTC. 

With this enhancement, opens, clicks, conversions, and response analytics can be associated with individual segments. This improves the granularity of tracking data and makes the resulting insights more useful for analysis and optimization. 

How Segment-Based Attribution Works 

During a bulk task execution that uses a multi-segment Audience: 

• Each segment is assigned its own RTC. 

• The RTC is available in contact history and in email send events streamed or downloaded from UDM data. 

• Email open and click events are automatically recorded with the correct RTC. 

• For sales-based conversion tracking, an external event configured as the task’s primary metric is automatically attributed to the correct RTC. 
   

Conclusion 

Segment-based RTCs provide more accurate attribution by assigning a unique Response Tracking Code to each segment within a multi-segment Audience. This enables segment-level reporting for opens, clicks, conversions, and other response metrics, helping marketers gain deeper insights and make more informed optimization decisions.