How to use Campaign Prioritization

You'll find all useful information about what is personalization prioritization in this article. 

Using this module means to steps: 

• Identifying conflicts
• Creating and publishing prioritization rules

Prioritization is possible for all personalization campaign types : Simple Personalization (SP), Multi-Page Personalization (MPP), Multi-Experience Personalizations (MEP).

Note that it is not recommended to prioritize the latter as it already includes a subtests prioritization in itself.

How to identify conflicts

Before prioritizing your personalization campaigns, you can identify potential conflicts between your campaigns to find out which ones should be prioritized and which priority to apply to each campaign.
A conflict happens when two or more campaigns either:

• target the same saved page(s) OR the “all pages” option,
• AND Target the same segment, or all visitors,

AND are live at the same time.

Main configuration

To identify potential conflicts between your personalization campaigns, you can use the 2 available filters.
AB Tasty compares campaigns according to the segment and saved Page(s):

• By default, any segment is included in the all visitors segment and any saved Page is included in the all pages option.
• All visitors is a segment in itself but it also means that no particular segment has been selected, so it matches any segment as well as the all visitors segment.
• All pages means “all the pages of the website”, including all the saved Pages, so it matches any saved Page as well as the all pages option.

Filter by campaign

This filter is based on a specific campaign, which serves as a reference, that you must select from the dropdown list.
It enables you to display the campaigns that share the same targeting configuration:

• the same segment OR all visitors (because this segment contains all other segments)
  AND
• the same saved Page(s) OR the “all pages” option (because this option contains all the saved Pages)

Filter by segment and/or by saved Page

This filter works for all campaigns, and not one specifically.
You must select at least one segment and/or one saved Page from the dropdown lists.
This means you can either select:

• one or several segments and no saved Page,
• one or several saved Pages and no segment,
• one or several saved Pages and one or several segments.

For example, to find out which campaigns target both the home page and new visitors, when applying the filter, you will only see campaigns that target at least the home page (they can also target other URLs or saved Pages) and at least the new visitors segment (they can also target other segments).

How to create and publish a prioritization rule

After identifying conflicts between your campaigns, you can start prioritizing them, that is to say applying a priority order to your campaigns.
The prioritization screen displays two columns:

• No priority applied section (left column)
• Priority levels section (right column)

Prioritized campaigns are displayed on the right column, in various prioritization level sections. They are split between prioritization levels and constitute the prioritization rule. For more information on these concepts, please refer to Prioritizing personalization campaigns. 
If a visitor matches the targeting of several prioritized campaigns on a specific page of the website, they will only see the one(s) with the highest priority.
To make your changes visible in production, you must publish them by clicking the Save and apply button.

Prioritizing campaigns

To prioritize a campaign, drag and drop it from the left column to the desired priority level.
The no priority applied section (left column) displays the campaigns that have no priority level. That is to say that they will be displayed according to their configured targeting conditions (segment, page, trigger).
By default, personalization campaigns are not prioritized.

The priority section (right column) displays campaigns to which a priority has been applied.
There is a maximum of 10 priorities: 1 is the highest and 10 the lowest.
On a same page, visitors matching the targeting of several prioritized campaigns will only see the one(s) with the highest priority.
The first 2 levels are mandatory (priority 1 and 2). For example, if you place one or more campaigns in priority 1, you must have at least one campaign in priority 2. Other priority levels can be empty.
You can place several campaigns within the same priority level (12 campaigns maximum per priority level). This means that they will be displayed to all visitors matching the targeting of these campaigns. However, we recommend placing campaigns that target the same page(s) in different

priorities.

Publishing the prioritization rule

Once you have placed your campaigns in different priority levels, you can save the prioritization rule by clicking the Save and apply button.
The tag is updated automatically and your changes are deployed in production.
If you leave without saving, the prioritization rule won’t be saved and won’t be applied to your website.

Generally speaking your prioritization rule must be updated (click the Save and apply button) in the following cases:

• when you move one or more campaigns from the non-prioritized column (left) to the priority column (right);
• when you move one or more campaigns to another priority level;
• when you move one or more campaigns from the priority column (right) to the non-prioritized column (left);
• before you change the timeframe, because your changes will not be kept if you return to the original timeframe;
• before you apply filters (filter by campaign or filter by segment and saved Page), because your changes will not be kept when you return to the original view.

Deactivating the prioritization rule

To deactivate the prioritization rule, you can either move all your prioritized campaigns back to the left column (that is to say remove them from the priority column) or pause all your prioritized campaigns. To make these changes active, click Save and apply.

For more information about personalization prioritization please refer to the following articles: 

• Tutorial Prioritization of personalizations
• FAQ about prioritization

How does it work technically?

Basic principle

Prioritized personalization campaigns (SP, MPP and MEP) will fall under the priority ranks you give them. These priority ranks, called p-values, will determine if a visitor will see one campaign or another on the same targeting.

Up to 10 priority ranks can be set up.

Multi-Page Personalizations and user journey continuity

When a prioritized MPP campaign has been seen by the visitor, thus historicized in the cookie, the tag will check this campaign but will not check the lesser priority (aka higher p-value) of other MPPs. The prioritized SP will still be checked by the tag according to their priority.

This ensures that the visitor sees the whole journey of the historicized MPP and does not prevent other prioritized campaigns to be applied except lesser priority MPPs.

Between two historized MPPs we check the priority between them. So if an MPP p-value 1 and a MPP p-value 2 are historized, only the first will be displayed in case of targeting overlap.

What about non-prioritized campaigns?

Campaigns that are not prioritized will not be altered by the prioritized campaigns. They will be displayed according to their basic targeting setup (segment, URLs, trigger, frequency…).