How to Create an Account Activity Schedule

Objective:

In this How-To, we will learn about the best way to create an automated schedule in Core iQ around the Last Activity Date for an account. We will explore the following topics:

  • What data is necessary to create our schedule, and how to assess whether you have that data mapped
  • What trigger event works best for this schedule, as well as ideas for what types of accounts to target

What data feeds do I need in order for this schedule to work?

This sort of schedule works with any product mix and audience type, so targeting a particular product is not an issue. Simply choose the Active product mix that you want (as well as any other criteria) within our Targeted Audience builder, and move on to creating your schedule touch points. For this particular schedule to work, you need to ensure that the accounts you chose to have qualify for the audience all have Last Activity Date mapped in from your core or third party provider. Whether you are dealing in Ancillary accounts like Online Banking or Credit Card accounts, or activity around a Share Account, you will need Last Activity Date for this schedule to work.

How do I know if I have Last Activity Date mapped for a product?

In order to determine whether you have Last Activity Date mapped for an account type, you will need to use that product type's Account Listing report. So if we are creating an audience for those with Online Banking accounts, we would want to pull the Ancillary Listing report, found under the Account Level tab of the reports menu. We would pull this report to find everyone with an Online Banking account at our institution and then look at the exported results to find out whether there are populated Last Activity Dates for those accounts. If you see a date other than 01/01/1900 or 12/31/9999, then you have this data coming into Core iQ and can correctly set up this activity-based schedule. 

Please be aware that in certain cases with Ancillary accounts, you may be only updating your data once or twice a month. If your import file is not being updated on a nightly basis, you need to take that into account when creating your activity-based schedule. This is because communications only trigger from schedules after the nightly import, so an irregular import can cause unforeseen issues.

So I have the correct data mapped, now what?

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If you have Last Activity Date populated for your account type, and you have your audience created, it is time to create a set of schedule touch points for your audience. As you may have guessed, we will be triggering most of these communications based on the Last Activity Date trigger event. However, there may be a case for using Open Date as your trigger event and then filtering your audience based on Last Activity Date. While there are several different ways that you can trigger items, this works best for this particular use case. Here are a few examples of ways that our customers have used this trigger event to send communications:

  • Account Inactivity - If you have a certain threshold for when an account is marked as Inactive and is therefore closed, send communications leading up to that date. For example, if your Share account closes after 180 days of inactivity, you might want to trigger two or more emails leading up to that time. Some of our customers use a cadence of 90/120/150 days after Last Activity Date in order to queue email reminders about account inactivity. Then at the 180 days after Last Activity Date marker, they will send an email notifying the individual that their account will be closed in the next few business days.
  • Activation Reminders - Some of our customers use Open Date as a trigger for creating a set of communications for new debit card and credit card customers who have not activated their cards. For this sort of schedule, we would want to filter the audience to most likely say that the Last Activity Date must equal 01/01/1900. This is because the default start date for any account in Core iQ is 01/01/1900, so if I haven't used my card yet, then my Last Activity Date would equal that date. For this use case in particular, you will need to reach out to our Support Team to set up this special criteria. That way we can help you assess your data to ensure that the audience works as expected. On these sorts of 'Activity'-based audiences, it is always best to only use one service group in the Audience Criteria section. This ensures that your automation is looking to the right account when attempting to find the Last Activity Date.
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