Segmentation Based on Relationships

Segmentation based on relationships offers you maximum flexibility when modeling target groups, especially in business-to-business scenarios. You can select business partners using filters for both personal data as well as data relating to the business partner's organization. The system saves all required information on the business partner, such as contact person, organization, and relationship type, with the target group. In the campaign, the contact person is contacted using the address data of the contact person's organization.

You can also use segmentation based on relationships in the business-to-consumer environment. For example, you could segment according to the relationship between parent and child to find all parents with children in a particular age group.

Prerequisites

You have defined data sources that are capable of providing the business partner relationship information. In the case of InfoSets, this means that the InfoSet itself contains all the fields required to provide the partner function information.

You need a conversion function for the data sources Business Warehouse Cube and Attribute Set. This function uses a function module to deliver the required information (for example, contact person for an organization). You need a separate function module for each relationship type. The standard delivery contains the following example function modules:

CRM_MKTTG_PF_BP_TAB_TO_CP
CRM_MKTTG_PF_BP_TAB_TO_CP_BW
CRM_MKTTG_PF_FIND_CPS

Features

You can use segmentation bases when performing segmentation via relationships. When creating the segmentation model, you must decide whether the system should use the segmentation basis to select business partners or their relationship partners.
During segmentation, you can display the distribution not only for target group members, but also for the business partners linked by the respective relationship (for example, Is Contact Person For).
You can also export the relationship information from the target group and use it in follow-up processing.
It is also possible to perform deduplication for target groups with relationships. For more information, see Deduplicating Segmentation Elements.

To use this function, you must activate the business function High-Volume Marketing (CRM_MKT_HVS).

During segment modeling, you can convert the business partner category Organization to the business partner category Person. This is especially relevant when you are performing segmentation based on relationships: If your segment contains organizations with assigned contact persons, you can split your segment by converting the organizations into relationships. This results in two segments: one segment that contains the organizations without assigned contact persons, and one segment with organizations with their assigned contact persons. In this way, you can refine your segment using filters that only apply to persons, and thereby reach the contact persons directly with your marketing campaign. To be able to use this function, when creating a data source you must specify the business partner category to which the business partners in the data source belong (Persons or Organizations).

Note Note

Note that segmentation based on relationships within high-volume segmentation is only possible with the relationship Is Activity Partner For.

End of the note.

Example

As part of your campaign, you want to contact all business partners who are younger than 30 years old, have the hobby "Golf", and work in a company with more than 1000 employees. The corresponding marketing mail should be sent to the business partner's company address rather than the private address.
As part of a campaign, you want to contact all business partners from the region "South" who have more than one child and whose youngest child is under one year old. During the campaign execution, the campaign letter should be sent to the business partner's private address and should contain the name of the child who is younger than one year old.