What's New in the 21.06 Release of CI360

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Recommended Method for Inserting the SAS Tag in HTML
In the user interface, the General Settings => Site Configuration => SAS Tag Instructions page is updated to describe how to insert the SAS tag in your HTML by using JavaScript preloading, which is now the recommended method.

Note: The updated instructions only describe the recommended method for how to insert the SAS tag in your site's HTML. This change does not modify the SAS tag or its functions. The SAS tag continues to operate normally when it is loaded based on previous instructions from the user interface or from SAS Customer Intelligence 360: Administration Guide.

JavaScript preloading can provide a performance boost on modern browsers, and it enables you to queue events through version 2 of the JavaScript Events API before the tag is fully loaded. Browsers that do not support preloading or the async attribute safely fall back to synchronous operations to load and execute the SAS tag.

(Available in SAS 360 Discover and SAS 360 Engage: Digital)

Use Default Text for Personalization Variables
Beginning with this release, you can substitute text for the personalization variables. In previous releases, when you used a creative in a task and that creative contained a personalization variable, you had to select a merge tag to use in place of the variable. Now, you can enter the text in the Default Value field without selecting a merge tag. This feature results in the task delivering the text in all instances of the creative that it delivers.

When you build a creative that contains multiple personalization variables, some of those variables can be replaced with merge tags and others can be replaced with static text. As a result, you can use one creative in multiple tasks where some of the content might be dynamic to the user and some of the content is based on the task.

The following types of creatives and tasks support default text substitution:

• HTML creative
• Plain text creative
• Web tasks (except Recommendation tasks)
• Mobile spot tasks
• External system tasks
• Email tasks (only content blocks with HTML creatives)

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital)

Add Attributes to Task Events
In this release, users of web tasks, mobile spot tasks, and external system tasks can designate attributes from targeting or triggering events to be forwarded to downstream task events such as impressions viewable, conversions, contacts, and responses.

For example, you can use an external event that contains a tracking code as a trigger for an external system task. You can pass that tracking code on the outbound event and attach the code to conversion events. The attributes are stored in the SAS 360 Engage detail tables in the properties_map_doc column that was added with schema 7. The attributes are available on the task events if the events are sent outside of SAS Customer Intelligence 360.

This functionality enables organizations to perform these actions:

• tie behavior to another system, including passing an external tracking code that originates outside of SAS Customer Intelligence 360, such as SAS Intelligent Decisioning or some other engine that makes an offer decision
• pass a promotion or voucher code that is tied to an individual and understand the user’s behavior
• pass an attribute that can be used to map to the set of dynamic personalization variables used for the individual without requiring SAS Customer Intelligence 360 to store the personalization variables on the events

Set these attributes on the Orchestration => Event Attributes tab for web tasks, mobile spot tasks, and external system tasks. You can add up to five attributes to be inherited by the task events. The attributes must be part of the triggering or targeting event. In upcoming releases, this feature will be available for other task types.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital)

Tasks in Attribution Analysis
With this release, you can now include tasks in the attribution analysis of data views. Marketers have always wanted to better understand the customer journey and the actions that are driving conversions to continuously improve marketing efficiency. Previously, you could see only the impact of traffic sources on driving conversions. Now you can also understand the value of your SAS Customer Intelligence 360 tasks in the customer journey.

With the addition of tasks to attribution analysis, you can get a more complete view of the factors that contribute to conversions and how traffic sources and tasks work together to drive conversions. By understanding the marketing efforts that are influencing the conversions, you can better optimize how they acquire and communicate with prospects and customers.

To enable this feature, navigate to the Attribution tab for the data view and enable attribution analysis. On the Default Parameters page, select the Tasks check box, and then select up to 10 tasks to include in the analysis. Only tasks that use that data view as a primary metric appear in the list of tasks to choose from.

Parameter Settings for Tasks

When enough data is collected, you can toggle the analytical results to look at only tasks, only traffic sources, or both. In addition, you can select which model results to include in the visualizations.

Traffic Source and Task Attribution Results

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Direct, SAS 360 Engage: Email, and SAS 360 Discover)

Detect and Edit Detailed Link Label and Group Values in Custom HTML
In this release, email designers have increased flexibility when viewing and editing the link label and group values that are associated with their email.

In addition to viewing and configuring link tracking in the Configure Individual Link Tracking window of an email’s Layout Manager, you can now verify and edit these link settings from inside a Custom HTML element.

After you import a Custom HTML element into the email content, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 automatically detects any pre-existing settings in that HTML code that are related to link tracking. For example, you might examine an HTML code snippet for a button called “Get Offer” that was already set up in the Layout Manager with the call-to-action link https://www.sas.com/offer. When you review the code in HTML format, you would notice these references for link tracking:

• data-link-tracking-enabled=”true”
• data-link-tracking-label=“July Offer”
• data-link-tracking-group=”Summertime Promotions”
• data-link-tracking-id=”1” (This number is assigned by SAS and must be unique per email.)

This new feature enables you to configure detailed tracking more quickly for any links in an email. This feature can also improve your efficiency, and for emails that contain a large number of links, save much-needed time.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Reference Custom Properties by Using Custom Property Tags
Custom property tags enable you to reference custom properties without knowing the custom property name. For example, this feature can be useful in an export template for an on-premises direct marketing task or in the Export node for an on-premises segment map.

In these situations, you might add a custom property tag (instead of the specific custom property) as a data item to the export table. The custom property tag acts as a placeholder for the value of a custom property. When the task is run, the custom property tag is resolved to the actual value, which is then inserted into the output data.

You can use custom property tags in activities, tasks, segment maps, segments, and messages. The types of custom property tags that can be defined are text, numeric, date, and Boolean.

Custom Property Tag

Before you can associate custom property tags with an item, you must define the tags in General Settings => Data Collection => Custom Property Tags and ensure that the tags are associated with one or more custom properties in the custom property spreadsheet.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage Direct)

Table Management User Interface
In earlier releases, the only way you could define tables in SAS Customer Intelligence 360 was by manually creating JSON descriptors and using the REST API to import them. As a result, it was easy to make mistakes when you defined tables, and it was not always clear when specific JSON properties should be used.

In addition, the REST API was the only way to view the import history for the corresponding data that was uploaded for these tables.

In this release, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 introduces a new user interface to create and manage tables. You can access the interface in General Settings => Data Collection => Table Management.

The new table management interface enables you to perform these actions:

• create tables and set properties on the columns in the table through a user-friendly interface.
• edit existing tables. For example, you can add a new column, modify some properties, and edit labels.
• select a table to import data.
• view the table’s JSON definition and copy it.
• review the import history for a table. You can view all of the import history for a table, regardless of whether an import job was initiated through the user interface or the REST API.

Note: Previously, customer data that was imported through the user interface could be verified on the General Settings => Data Collection => Data Sources page. These statuses are now available from the Table Management page.

The table management interface enables you to create tables more quickly and avoid common mistakes that the manual process might introduce.

Table Management

 

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Direct, and SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Configure Cost Center Codes
In this release, plan administrators can add a cost center code that uniquely identifies each cost center record, which is listed in General Settings for Plan. In addition to the existing cost center names, cost center codes can be used as an alternative way to reference various cost centers that are added to the system.

Cost Center Codes

 

(Available in SAS 360 Plan)