Get to Know Communication Capping
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain what Communication Capping in Data 360 is.
- Identify use cases for Communication Capping.
- Explain how to configure Communication Capping to achieve a use case.
- Explain how to activate Communication Capping rules.
What’s Communication Capping?
Communication Capping is a feature in Data 360 that lets you set caps on communications with customers, leads, and prospects. It helps you comply with regulations, avoid message fatigue, and optimize budgets across lines of business and customer segments.
In this module, you learn some use cases for Communication Capping and how to configure Communication Capping to address your use case.
Communication Capping consumes Data 360 credits. Learn more in Data 360 Credit Consumption: Quick Look.
Your Dream Marketing Budget
You’re the marketing director for a financial company that sells insurance policies, mortgages, and credit cards. Your finance department just let you know that the marketing department needs to cut back on spending. As part of your new budget, you decide to set different communication budgets for insurance customers with different net worths, so you can prioritize marketing toward individuals with high net worth.
You want to set different SMS budgets for insurance customers with high net worth (HNW), medium net worth (MNW), and low net worth (LNW). After discussing this with your team and running some numbers, you decide that the sweet spot is 10 SMS messages per day for insurance customers with HNW, 7 SMS messages per day for MNW, and 3 SMS messages per day for LNW.
Sounds great! Your finance department is happy with the proposal. So, how do you implement your budget with Communication Capping?
Define Parameters and Rules
Communication Capping works by evaluating each member of the audience based on parameters and rules. For your financial services company, first you customize the parameters that represent the company. Then, you create rules that limit SMS messages to insurance customers based on net worth. Rules place limits on a specific combination of parameter values, which constrains communications to that specific group of people. Let’s pause here to further define these terms.
Parameters
Parameters are the dimensions on which you’re defining communication limits, such as communication channels, lines of business, and net worth categories. You define possible values for the parameters.
Think of parameters as your master data; while the values might change, the parameters themselves don’t. There are two types of parameters: Enterprise and Functional.
Parameter Type | Description | Example Parameters and Values |
|---|---|---|
Enterprise Parameters | These are customizable parameters that represent your business model. Channels is a required parameter. You can customize the possible values. You can also create up to two user-defined parameters that you can customize based on your business and capping strategy. |
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Functional Parameters | There are two required preset functional parameters that define details about your capping strategy: Frequency and Limit Type. Frequency represents how often you communicate with your customers. You can select possible values for frequency. Limit type represents the type of limit you’re applying. You can’t customize the possible values for limit type. The possible values are profile and dimension.
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Rules
Rules are how you define details about a specific capping limit, such as which net-worth category it applies to and for which dates it applies. Ultimately, the rules represent the budgets and compliance regulations of your business.
For example, for your financial services company, you want to set a cap of 10 SMS messages per day in May 2025 for insurance customers with HNW. Here’s the rule you define.
Field | Description | Values |
|---|---|---|
Start Date and End Date | Define the time frame when the rule is valid. You want to try out a temporary budget in May to see its effectiveness. | 5/1/2025 – 5/30/2025 |
Limits | Define the maximum number of messages that can be sent. | 10 |
Parameters | Define which category of the audience the rule applies to. Parameters and possible values will vary. For our example, the parameters are line of business and net worth category. |
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Frequency | Define how often to apply the rule. | Daily |
Limit Type | Define the type of limit: profile or dimension. | Dimension |
Channel | Define the communication channel that the rule applies to. | SMS |
Watch this quick video to see how it’s done!
Create a Communication Capping Activation Target
There’s one last step. Before you can activate your rule, you need to create a communication capping activation target and map the target to parameters. The available parameters are the enterprise parameters you defined. Choose values for the parameters based on the rule you defined. For example, for your SMS limit for insurance customers with high net-worth, set the Line of Business parameter to Insurance, the Net Worth Category parameter to HNW, and the Channel parameter to SMS.
See the steps in Create a Communication Capping Activation Target.
Next Steps and Results
With your parameters, rule, and activation target all set up, you’re now ready to activate your rule! Create your customer segments for your campaign and activate them using the communication capping activation target that you created. Continue your learning in Segmentation in Data 360.
With your rule activated, your campaign now excludes and includes profiles based on the rule. In Data Explorer, the CG_Audience_Dropped DMO shows you which customers are excluded, and the CG_Audience_Qualified DMO shows you which customers are included in the campaign. The CG_Audience_Dropped DMO also shows you which rule caused the profile to get dropped in the Reason for drop column. This is useful when you have multiple active rules.
Watch this short video to see these steps in Data 360.
Now you’re ready to implement your own budgets and monitor communication limits with Communication Capping in Data 360!