SAS Education is pleased to announce a reorganization of the SAS Customer Intelligence Learning Subscription.  The SAS Customer Intelligence 360 courses have been reorganized and in many cases their content has been divided among smaller, more modular and topic driven courses.   Expected benefits: Improved organization and more modular set of courses Easier to find topics you need training on The new course SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Resources and Guides has a new subscription guide video.   The previous learning subscription has been replaced with the new one.  Existing subscribers have been migrated and given access to the new one.   I find the easiest way to access the learning subscription is under “Learn” (on SAS.com) select “Course Catalog” (or browse to learn.sas.com), then side filter select “Learning Types = Learning Path”,  and find “SAS Customer Intelligence​ Learning Subscription” among the choices.   To access the courses, make sure to be logged into your SAS profile (after you are subscribed). ... View more

  Your online “behavior” can dictate what gets displayed to you on a website – in real time. Some call this personalized contextualization. The items you click on in a website can be used to deliver marketing content that is relevant to your interests. The purpose of this post is to describe how SAS Customer Intelligence 360 can deliver this personalized content.   SAS Customer Intelligence 360 is a suite of digital marketing functionalities.  Amongst those is the capability to deliver creative content to a website.  Many websites (especially retail websites) have boxes or windows with images that may include promotions, new information, items on sale, etc.  We refer to those boxes or windows as “spots”.   Spots exist on websites and mobile apps.   When I first developed training for this functionality, I was happy to use as creative content one of my favorite things – golf.  I’ll run us through a scenario where a visitor (that’s what we call customers or prospects who visit a website) will browse a hotel resort’s web home page and see inviting pictures of resort views and activities.  These images - with imbedded links behind them - can be delivered by SAS Customer Intelligence 360.  Then, the visitor (someone like me) immediately notices another main tab titled “Golf”.  The visitor clicks on the Golf tab, scrolls and views the info, and then returns to the home page.  Voila – one of the “spots” changed and now displays a promotion for a golf package – all delivered by SAS Customer Intelligence 360.  Let’s walk through this process to understand how to set this up.   Spots and Web Tasks   The main HOME page – notice the GOLF tab on top and the lower left spot that displays a poolside view:   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   All these images displayed in the spots are delivered by SAS Customer Intelligence 360.  These spots contain “default” content images which we refer to as “creatives”.  These spots have imbedded links for visitors to view more information. These are set up by using “Spots” on the left side menu within SAS Customer Intelligence 360.   Next, the visitor clicks on the Golf tab which displays this page:     Using SAS Customer Intelligence 360, a Page View event was created to capture this online customer behavior of viewing this page.  That visitor’s “event” is captured instantly and stored by the system, and that event can be used to “trigger” any number of SAS Customer Intelligence 360 functions.  In this example, we want to change the spot on the home page to display a golf promotion. We know this topic is relevant to the visitor because they visited the Golf page.   Next, the visitor returns to the home page and voila – notice the bottom left spot content has changed:     A free golf lesson is included with an offered golf package.  The visitor can click on that spot to view more details and sign up for this golf package.  Or, they could do something like fill out an interest form, and as a result an email could be delivered to provide more information (delivered by SAS Customer Intelligence 360).   By the way, you can also present multiple creatives in a random fashion, so this visitor went back to the home page again and now sees this:     Now the visitor has seen two different golf package offers – with different images.   That new creative content was delivered by a Web Task in SAS Customer Intelligence 360.  The task is published and waiting to display the new golf package content, once the task’s trigger event is fired off by a visitor clicking on the Golf page. If a visitor never selects the Golf page, then these specific creatives will not be displayed on the home page.  Rather, either the default content will remain, or other Web Tasks can display content based on different click behaviors – such as interest in accommodations or dining.   So when you are browsing a website, the information you view is not necessarily static – i.e. everyone does not see the same content – but rather, with the help of solutions like SAS Customer Intelligence 360, the web content is tailored to you and your interests. Welcome to the age of personalized digital marketing.   For more information on how to set up Spots and Web Tasks, please visit these sites below:   SAS Customer Intelligence 360 User's Guide SAS Customer Intelligence Learning Subscription   Courses: SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Fundamentals Using SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Web, Mobile Spot, and Advertising Tasks     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... View more

  The purpose of this post is to describe the Email Client Preview feature and how to run tests before emails are delivered.   SAS Customer Intelligence 360 is a suite of digital marketing functionalities. Amongst those is the capability to develop email content and deliver the email messages.   Most likely you receive emails from numerous senders that could be related to personal accounts and typical retailers that you make purchases from. You are probably receiving an extra amount of emails these days with it being the holiday season for many parts of the world. SAS Customer Intelligence 360 can be used to send emails that are personalized and ideally contain content that is relevant and timely to the viewer.   There are three main features to test emails before they are delivered:   Responsive Previews: test how an email would render on multiple screen widths and send test emails to entered email addresses Email Client Preview: see how an email is displayed on multiple devices, browsers, email clients, and platforms Spam Test: test if the email is flagged as spam   The latter 2 are “paid services” which means there is a cost associated with these tests. This post will discuss the Email Client Preview feature and how to use it.   Email Client Preview   These tests can be run by using the Review tab within an Email task. Note that the task must be in the Designing status and not part of an activity. Select Email Client Preview and then Run Preview and it will begin the process of testing the email against many platforms and email clients. It generates previews for each one – give it some time to complete this process. Not all of the preview windows will finish at the same time.   Once a preview test has completed running, the Tile view provides an easy way to scan how the email renders for different clients and platforms. You can select an item to take a closer look and inspect how the email displays. There are many platforms and clients so it is a best practice to ensure proper display.   Here is an example of the initial Tile view where you can see many test results:   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   You can select any one to view in more detail, such as for the iPhone 13 Pro Max on the iOS 15 platform:     A new improvement recently added is the ability to toggle to the Bulleted list view to see a list of all the platform and client tests. Green checks for each one indicate the test is completed. Simply select any among the list to see its preview.     You can also apply a search to view the results for a platform, client, or an application such as a browser.   If any of the results do not display as expected, you may need to modify the content and layout of the email.   If you would like to learn more about email tasks please visit these sites below:   SAS Customer Intelligence 360 User Guide SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Learning Subscription     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here. ... View more

  The purpose of this blog is to describe the two main types of mobile app messages, and how they are different.   SAS Customer Intelligence 360 is a suite of digital marketing products. Within that suite, SAS 360 Engage Digital is the product that can deliver mobile app messages to mobile app users.   You may receive mobile app messages from mobile apps related to various topics like weather, home security, airlines, retail store, and so on. For example, each time I set my house alarm on or off, I receive an app message delivered to my phone because I use a mobile app to manage and monitor my home security. But did you know there are two main types of mobile app messages, and they have very different purposes and operate quite differently?   The two main types are referred to as In-App Messages and Push Notifications. Mobile app messages are delivered to a mobile app that has been installed and configured on a mobile device such as a phone or tablet.   In-App Messages   In-App messages are only received when users are actively using the app on their device. Thus, they are called “In-App” messages. If a user is not using the mobile app, they will not receive in-app messages.   To set up and configure delivery of In-App messages, a SAS 360 Engage Digital task type named “In-App Message” must be set up and executed or “published” to start the delivery.   These type of tasks can be set up only as “triggered” tasks, meaning the task has been set up to use a specific app-only event that needs to be done by a user that will trigger the mobile in-app message delivery. For example, it could be a behavior as simple as viewing a specific item on the mobile app or adding an item to a cart on the mobile app.   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   It is important to note that we cannot use any external events to trigger an In-App message in 360 Engage Digital. Reason being simple – we would not know if the user is actively using the mobile app when the trigger event occurs.   Push Notifications   Push Notifications are quite different. In fact, they are messages that are delivered to mobile app users that specifically are not actively using the app.   They are designed to inform, attract, remind, or lure a user to use the app. They are sent to promote more interaction with the app and therefore more interaction with the organization that is deploying the mobile app and using SAS Customer Intelligence 360.   For example, if you installed and use an app to order food carry-out or delivery, but have not used the app in a while, the food service company could send you a push notification informing you of a special promotion of a new menu item.   This message type is designed to “push” a user back into using the app. To set up and configure this type of delivery, a SAS 360 Engage Digital task type named “Push Notification” must be set up and executed or “published” to start the delivery.   A Push Notification task can be configured either as a “bulk” or a “triggered” delivery task. Bulk refers to a (typically large) amount of messages all sent at the same time to multiple app users.     The event used to trigger a push notification task could be any event external to the mobile app, however not an event that occurs in the app itself. Again, important to note here is that a push notification is not delivered to a device when the app is in focus or being used. The push notification will be delivered only when the mobile app is minimized and running in the background.   To set up and execute these mobile tasks, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 needs to be connected and configured to work with a mobile app.   If you would like to learn more about mobile app tasks please visit the Customer Intelligence 360 User Guide.  ... View more

A new e-learning course for SAS 360 Engage: Email has been released.  It is available as part of the new SAS Customer Intelligence 360 learning subscription. ... View more

There is a new learning subscription available that provides access to all SAS Customer Intelligence 360 e-learning courses for 12 months.   Individual e-learning courses for SAS Customer Intelligence 360 will no longer be offered. The subscription includes e-learning for SAS Intelligent Decisioning for customers that use it for marketing purposes. SAS is currently offering a 30-day free trial period available to start any time before May 31. For details including a list of available courses, see the website: https://www.sas.com/en_us/training/programs/customer-intelligence-360-learning-subscription.html ... View more