Information Map and Marketing Automation: Nominal x Ordinal

[bsas94]

Hi experts!

Does anybody have any examples of ordinal parameter as data item level?

I have seen only nominal data items in this case and I never saw any practical example or any difference between these two levels. Although I checked the Marketing Automation 6.5: Administrator's Guide, I didn't find anything relevant. 

Thanks!

[Les_Murray]

As a best practice, we generally recommend using one of three levels for attributes - nominal, interval, and ID.  These drive the type of control presented in the UI.  Nominal uses select boxes, interval uses a range selector, and ID gets excluded from selection nodes and is only used in export and communication nodes for output.

If using an ordinal level is required, I suggest contacting SAS Tech Support for more clarification about using Information Map levels with Marketing Automation.

Thanks,

Les Murray

Customer Intelligence PSD

[PDixon]

We do not typically use "ordinal" values in designing SAS Information Maps for SAS Customer Intelligence Studio. We typically only use nominal (character) or interval (numerics and dates) and ID (subject level). There have been times when this has been requested. In these cases the rule of thumb for using Level custom properties in a SAS Information Map for SAS CI Studio is as follows: 

Unary - One value plus missing

Binary -Two values plus missing

Nominal - Unordered values plus missing (best practce for character values)

Ordinal - Ordered values plus missing

See attached for more details.

Happy Marketing!!

[bsas94]

Hey guys,

I really appreciate all the inputs, but the point is that I need an example of how implementing this ordinal data item. That's because using them in CI I see no difference comparing to the nominal one.

I'm working with MA for three years and I've never seen any customer using ordinal data items.

All the definitions you guys mentioned I've already read in the SAS® Marketing Automation: Defining the Data and Structure for Campaigns course book. I will check with Tech Support and I will post here the solution/step-by-step.

Thanks!

[Dmitry_Alergant · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

I'm implementing SAS MA for our customers for over seven years and always had a similar question.  There is no practical difference between Nominal and Ordinal, so you just stop even attempting to use the later at some point.  ID, Nominal, and Interval are the only level types one really needs.

My guess (just a guess) is that one who brought this idea initially at R&D, might have envisioned the Ordinal level to be a sort of a hybrid between the Interval and Nominal:  to make the checkbox counts (metadata) available like it is for Nominal, but allow configuring ">" and "<" conditions wherever it is used (in the Select node) like it is for the Interval level. Apparently, this just wasn't implemented this way.

[PDixon]

Hi Dimitri, I'm not clear on what your object is in using ordinal. You are correct nominal provides the same result.  If you're simply asking how to apply an ordinal custom property in the Information Map,  it is applied the same way you would apply any of the other custom properties when defining the Information Map for Marketing Automation. In data item custom properties, you need to 1) CLASSIFY the data item as  "category"

2) Under CUSTOM select "Level" custom property and "Value" custom property then enter value of "ordinal" (best practice: nominal,interval ID) per the attached sample I provided any previous response.

Prior to 6.X CI Studio tool had the capability to display a graph of how your data items are represented in the select. This feature is no longer available (to my knowledge) therefore the use of ordinal has no real value. The use of nominal provides the same result.

If you have a specific issue you're attempting to address by using ordinal, I'd strongly recommend submitting a track with SAS Technial Support on use of the "SAS Information Map for Marketing Automation" so that you get the proper guidance to resolution and what is currently supported.

Happy Marketing!