Explore the highlights from Apteco's Q1 2022 software release
The latest release from Apteco features an integration with leading interactive messaging service WhatsApp's Business platform, a variety of new ways to dissect your data with three new filters in Orbit dashboards, improved segmentation migration reporting to help marketers to better analyse where their customers were, where they went, and why and more developments to the behavioural modelling environment in FastStats. To read the full release notes our partners and users can login to the Apteco portal
Need help? For a practical, step-by-step guide on how to use any of the features in Apteco software, visit the Apteco Help Hub.
Through a new integration with Apteco PeopleStage, users can orchestrate, personalise, and broadcast WhatsApp messages and seamlessly integrate them into their existing channel mix.
In Orbit dashboards extensive enhancements have been made to the way users can apply filters. It is now possible to filter data on a single tile, add predefined filters and apply dimension filters allowing users to filter on any variables, audiences, selections or URN files in the system.
The segmentation migration reports in FastStats have been reworked to include new options that summarise and simplify movements between segments, allowing users to understand customer behaviour more easily.
There have been a number of improvements to assist the user in understanding and managing models within the modelling environment including to the performance of decision trees and the way in which evaluation is done.
The Drive-time and Point-to-point wizards in Apteco FastStats have been improved to offer users even more accuracy when calculating distance and zone size.
Get instant access to expert support for FastStats Designer™ whenever you need it with the new FastStats Designer help centre in the Apteco help hub.
Login to the Apteco portal to download the full technical release notes document
Apteco launches new WhatsApp for Business integration
WhatsApp is the leading interactive messaging service used by more than two billion people in over 180 countries and 60 languages. The WhatsApp Business platform is specifically built for medium-to-large businesses to send messages across the customer journey at scale, using automation, personalisation, and interactive options that streamline processes and improve the overall customer experience. From Q1 2022 Apteco in collaboration with Syniverse, can now offer PeopleStage users the WhatsApp Business API as an integrated channel for the orchestration and personalisation of messages customers opt in to receive.
- PeopleStage can now send Business initiated messages directly to a WhatsApp conversation as long as the chat has been initiated by the user and consent has been granted
- Once a user initiated chat has commenced, and with the proviso that an opt in has been captured, commercial business led messaging can be sent directly into a WhatsApp conversation during a 24 hour window
- Messages are pre approved by WhatsApp, and can be enriched with personalised content using the data held within your Apteco system
- Campaigns can be set up in PeopleStage and scheduled to run as part of a single stage - single channel campaign, or as part of a multi stage - multi channel customer journey
- Recipients can opt out at any time, and are automatically excluded by PeopleStage, if required
- Statistics such as opt out, seen, and delivered can be gathered and reported on within PeopleStage
- It is currently not possible for Apteco PeopleStage to validate whether the template name specified for a WhatsApp Business API message is correct and approved by WhatsApp (Meta)
- Find out more about our WhatsApp integration in the Apteco help hub
The latest enhancements to Orbit dashboards allow users to better analyse their data
When exploring a dashboard, users are now presented with additional filtering options. Each dashboard tile can now be filtered independently, users can use powerful dimension filters to filter the entire dashboard by any variables, audiences, selections or URN files in the system and admin users can add predefined filters to the dashboard
- The addition of predefined filters allows administrators to define data variable sets as filters for users when exploring the dashboard
- Dimension filters must be enabled in the application settings
- Tile filters allow each dashboard tile to now be filtered independently allowing users to display different data over separate time frames (for example this year and last year) or compare one target audience against another side by side on a single dashboard
- Dashboard users can now set the font size and placement of dashboard number tiles making it easier to achieve a more consistent presentation on a dashboard that includes numeric values of different scales
- To provide more control over the size and placement of dashboard tiles, the grid system has a higher density and the dragging mechanism feedback is improved, most notably when scrolling around the page
- Dashboard filters are collapsible, and it's now easier to see which are editable
Improved segmentation migration reporting in FastStats
One of the best ways to understand customer behaviour is to study customer migration patterns. Segmentation migration reporting helps marketers to analyse where their customers were, where they went, and why. Analysing customer migration helps us to understand why some customers defect and others remain loyal, and how to allocate the marketing budget to get more customers moving up in our rankings than there are customers moving down.
The latest improvements to the segmentation reporting in FastStats allow the user to clearly see how many segments have 'upgraded / downgraded' and has the added functionality of being able to report on value metrics and for splitting people into different segments based on those value metrics. For example you may wish to split customers in the same segment based on their revenue changes within that period.
- There is now a separate view where the ‘upgrades / downgrades’ can be further split to show how many segments customers have moved up or down
- Users can tag segments with types to show for example that a particular segment selection represents those who are ‘Not a customer’, 'New Customer' or an 'Advocate' for example
- Extra functionality has been added to allow for improving the ability to report on value metrics and for splitting people into different segments based upon those value metrics
- Revenues for each period and the difference for each group can be shown to demonstrate how revenues have gone down/up in the relevant period
The latest behavioural modelling developments in Apteco FastStats
Behavioural modelling is critical in assisting the marketer to improve the customer experience and boost campaign performance by using data to better understand – and predict – customer behaviour. Apteco is continually developing this functionality to make it even more intuitive and seamless. In the Q1 2022 release the following developments and enhancements have been made:
- The data grid, which can be used to show values of behavioural features and event time points for individual people, offers more flexibility in choosing how to view behavioural features
- The handling of evaluation context has been improved so that it now examines behaviour up to the exact date of the base event (e.g. booking date) rather than the fixed evaluation date. This better mirrors the behaviour used in creating the features at the training stage of the process
- Better integration of decision trees in order for the modelling environment to capture decision trees which are built and modified using manual options within the decision tree, such as growing or pruning particular branches
- It is now possible to edit the description and to add notes associated with selections, dimensions and results. This enables the user to better document their exploration and thought processes
Improvements to Map wizards in FastStats provide better accuracy
The Drive-time and Point-to-point wizards in Apteco FastStats are powerful tools to supplement customer analysis. Improvements have been made to these wizards, providing greater accuracy when calculating distance and zone size.
- Zones can now be created using Latitude and Longitude variables for all 3 methods of calculating the zone size, resulting in better accuracy
- An option for using driving distance for creating the zones has been added
- You can specify Latitude and Longitude when calculating the straight line distance from the centre point to each location
- You can specify a maximum value of drive time/drive distance/straight line distance, and only records within that area are categorised in the resulting virtual variable
Online help for FastStats Designer - now available in the Apteco help hub
FastStats Designer™ is the latest addition to the Apteco help hub. Providing a view of 'what's new', important information to help get you started, tips to help you find your way around, and hundred's of practical step-by-step guides with screenshots available online, you can get answers to your questions quickly and easily 24/7.
- Check out 'What's new' to find the latest updates
- Find out how to define and edit variables and learn how to organise variables into folders
- Learn how to add and work with different data sources and connecting to data providers like Oracle and Salesforce
- Get all the information you need about the load process - including pre-load actions like how to clean the system and post-load actions like temporary file management, tolerance checking and attribute processing
Take a look at the previous Apteco software release highlights
Latest Apteco Orbit updates
Apteco has released 6 updates to the Orbit platform (versions 1.10.23 to 1.10.27) since the Q4 2021 release. Visit the Apteco help hub to find out about what's new in the Orbit platform.
Q4 2021 release highlights
In this release we introduced Orbit venns, added new features and enhanced the UI of behavioural modelling in FastStats and in PeopleStage there is a major enhancement to our real-time campaigning functionality.
Q3 2021 release highlights
Find out how we're making Apteco software even more efficient by developing dynamic solutions to automate processes, tools to help you organise your resources and search functionality to be even more precise.
Q2 2021 release highlights
This release aims to assist marketers with customer journey analytics to more easily track, analyse and understand the way customers interact with companies.