WO2000042557A2 - Systeme et procede de generation et de remise selective d'importants volumes de messages electroniques personnalisables - Google Patents

Systeme et procede de generation et de remise selective d'importants volumes de messages electroniques personnalisables Download PDF

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Publication number
WO2000042557A2
WO2000042557A2 PCT/US2000/000960 US0000960W WO0042557A2 WO 2000042557 A2 WO2000042557 A2 WO 2000042557A2 US 0000960 W US0000960 W US 0000960W WO 0042557 A2 WO0042557 A2 WO 0042557A2
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WIPO (PCT)
Prior art keywords
information
message
mail
client
database
Prior art date
Application number
PCT/US2000/000960
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English (en)
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WO2000042557A3 (fr
Inventor
Virgil Bistriceanu
Matthew S. Minogue
Original Assignee
Mypoints.Com, Inc.
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Mypoints.Com, Inc. filed Critical Mypoints.Com, Inc.
Priority to AU26131/00A priority Critical patent/AU2613100A/en
Priority to JP2000594064A priority patent/JP2002544575A/ja
Publication of WO2000042557A2 publication Critical patent/WO2000042557A2/fr
Publication of WO2000042557A3 publication Critical patent/WO2000042557A3/fr

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    • G—PHYSICS
    • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06Q—INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
    • G06Q10/00—Administration; Management
    • G06Q10/10—Office automation; Time management
    • G06Q10/107—Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Definitions

  • the present invention relates to electronic communication systems and, more particularly, to online incentive award services which compensate consumers who use the services for viewing advertisements and similar information provided by the services or advertisers.
  • FIG. 1 shows a typical online incentive award service.
  • Such systems are typically implemented on a distributed communication network such as the Internet 10 and provide an online environment in which consumers 20 are rewarded for performing various actions after enrolling in the service via an enrollment function 50 which is part of an overall communication service 60 operated by the online incentive award service.
  • Issuers 30 are typically companies offering a product or service who wish to influence the behavior of consumers 20 by offering to reward them for receiving information about the products and services.
  • the actions which are rewarded are, e.g., viewing an e-mail advertisement sent to them by the incentive service on behalf of an issuer 30 or visiting a web page describing the issuer's product.
  • Additional points may be awarded when, e.g., the consumer 20 participates in a survey, accepts a trial offer of the issuer's product or buys the issuer's product.
  • An example of an incentive award service of the first type is the BonusMail® service operated by Intellipost Corporation of San Francisco, California, and an example of an incentive award service of the second type is the MyPoints® service also operated by the same company.
  • Another example of an incentive award service is found in the above-referenced United States Patent Application No. 09/080,946 to Bistriceanu et al., incorporated herein by reference.
  • the reward may be in the form of points which are accrued by the consumers 20 and later redeemed via a redeemer 40 for merchandise or other valuable material.
  • an earning invitation will be used to refer to the mechanism by which consumer 20 are provided with the opportunity to earn award points; thus, in the case of the BonusMail® service, an earning invitation is an e-mail message advertising an issuer's product, and in the case of the MyPoints® service, an earning invitation is a web page a consumer 20 may view to learn about the issuer's product.
  • a workable incentive award service can be implemented using a generic earning invitation, the service is more effective if the earning invitation can be customized for each consumer 20.
  • the invitation may be customized to refer to the consumer by name, or might refer to his geographic location or the like.
  • earning invitations can be tailored to each consumer's computer system; for example, e-mail messages may be configured as plain text messages or HTML formatted messages based on previously-collected information about the consumer's computer system capabilities.
  • web pages may be customized depending on whether the consumer's browser is graphics-capable, frames-capable, Java-capable, etc.
  • both e-mails and web pages can be customized based on demographic profiles of their intended recipients.
  • the effectiveness of the incentive award service is greatly enhanced if the earning invitations are targeted for particular consumers 20. This may be done, e.g., on the basis of demographic information concerning the consumer 20 which was collected when she enrolled in the incentive award service.
  • earning invitations may be sent to only those consumers 20 who have indicated an interest in personal computing.
  • This demographic targeting is advantageous in several ways. For example, the average response rate to each earning invitation is increased, thereby allowing the incentive award system to use fewer resources to achieve the same results. Further, consumers 20 receive earning invitations which are more likely to be useful to them, and their perceived utility of the incentive award service consequently increases.
  • the present invention overcomes the above disadvantages of the prior art and has an object of providing a system which can selectively generate and deliver a high volume of electronic messages over a communication network to a given receiver population. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a system which can generate and deliver messages over varying protocols.
  • an electronic communication system which delivers electronic messages such as e-mail messages and web pages over the Internet.
  • An issuer wishing to generate and deliver such messages creates a set of rules which specify criteria for selecting message recipients and criteria for rewarding the recipients for receiving or acting on the messages.
  • the messages may be served as web pages by multiple web servers or sent as e-mail messages to the consumers. Acknowledgement of receipt of the messages by the consumers may be done by e-mail or using an HTTP protocol.
  • FIGURE 1 is a block diagram of an online incentive award system
  • FIGURE 2 is a diagram of a communication service according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIGURE 3 is a diagram of the post office shown in FIG. 2;
  • FIGURE 4 shows an entry in a control table in the post office database shown in FIG. 3;
  • FIGURE 5 shows an entry in a message table in the post office database shown in FIG. 3
  • FIGURE 6 shows an entry in a client mail table in the post office database shown in FIG. 3
  • FIGURE 7 is a diagram of a toolbox shown in FIG. 2
  • FIGURE 8 is a diagram of a mail server shown in FIG. 2
  • FIGURE 9 is a sample HTML-formatted e-mail earning invitation according to the preferred embodiment.
  • FIG. 1 shows that the enrollment function 50, the redeemer 40, and the communication service 60 are logically separate from one another, this is done merely for ease of understanding, and in a preferred embodiment of the present invention the corresponding components may be independent processes running on the same physical computer.
  • the Figure shows only one enrollment function 50, one communication service 60, etc., it is possible that multiple systems are used for one or more of the corresponding components in a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Also, it is preferable that the system include multiple issuers 30 and multiple redeemers 40 to maximize the system's utility to the user.
  • FIG. 2 shows the organization of a communication service 160 according to a preferred embodi- ment of the present invention.
  • a database 165 contains information about enrolled consumers 20 (or, more broadly, users or clients) including any demographic information necessary for targeted web page serving and for targeted e-mail delivery. This information has been previously stored in the database by, e.g., an enrollment system (not shown).
  • the database 165 also preferably stores information related to each consumer's account on the incentive award service such as points accrued and transaction history.
  • An advantage of the present invention is that the system can selectively, scalably and easily deliver electronic messages including both web pages and e-mails to users.
  • the system largely operates as described in the above-referenced U.S. patent application to Bistriceanu et al., and for ease of explanation the following discussion will focus primarily on the post office 180 and mail servers 195 and the aspects of the other system components which play a significant role in the generation and delivery of e-mail messages.
  • the first step in providing an award earning opportunity is for an issuer 30 to commission the incentive award service to conduct a marketing campaign. Should this campaign include e-mail earning invitations sent to consumers 20, the incentive award service will create an entry 216 in a control table stored in a post office database 184 in the post office 180 as shown in FIGS. 3 and 4.
  • the control table entry 216 includes a job key 216a which identifies the job, i.e., marketing campaign, to which the entry corresponds; a start date 216b and a stop date 216c which respectively specify the date from which earning invitation related to the campaign may be sent to consumers 20 and the date after which no points may be awarded to consumers 20 in connection with the campaign; a client count 216d which specifies the number of consumers 20 to which e-mail earning invitations will be sent; a suspend flag 216e which specifies that the job is suspended, e.g., for troubleshooting purposes; a mail server ID 216f identifying which of the mail servers 190 will be used to deliver the e-mail earning invitations in this job; a text message ID 216g which links to an entry in a message table (described in greater detail below) specifying detailed information about the e-mail earning invitation to be sent to customers 20 who use a non- HTML-capable e-mail client for reading e-mail messages; an HTML message ID 216
  • the SQL query is used to identify customers 20 having accounts in the database 165 which will be targeted by the marketing campaign and to limit the number of messages sent to the number specified by the client count 216d.
  • the incentive award service creates one or more entries 218 in the above-mentioned message table in the post office database 184 as shown in FIG. 5.
  • the message table entry 218 includes a message ID 218a corresponding to either the text message ID field 216g or HTML message ID 216h in the control table entry 216 of FIG. 4; a message type field 218b indicating that the e-mail earning invitation is either a text message or an HTML message; a message subject 218c and a message body 218d.
  • the message subject 218c and the message body 218d are templates for the actual subject and body, respectively, of the e-mail message actually sent to the consumer 20; however, to permit customization they preferably include tags which are replaced with consumer-specific information before transmission to the consumer 20 as will be described in greater detail below.
  • the incentive award service creates a number of entries 220 in a client mail table in the post office database 184 as shown in FIG. 6.
  • Each entry 220 corresponds to a consumer identified by the SQL query 216i in the corresponding control table entry 216 and includes the job key 220a; the consumer's user ID 220b; a sent flag 220c which, when set, indicates that a message corresponding to that job has been sent; a received flag 220d which, when set, indicates that receipt of the message has been acknowledged by the consumer 20 in a manner described in greater detail below; a retry count 220e specifying the number of times retransmission of the message has been done; and a rejected flag 220f which, when set, indicates that the message was rejected by an e-mail server (for example, if no user with the given address exists on the server). Should other information about the consumer 20 be needed for processing the message, it can be extracted from the database 165 using the user ID 220b as a key.
  • the issuer can set business rules and award rules specifying the amount and types of awards that can be earned in the campaign.
  • the issuer 30 uses a toolbox 170 in the communication service 160 as shown in FIG. 7.
  • Each toolbox 170 includes a toolbox web server 172 and is connected to the Internet 10 and a toolbox database 174 which stores the business rules, awards rules and temporary consumer account information such as point accruals, and transactions as will be described in greater detail below.
  • Each toolbox 170 corresponds to one of issuers 30 and is used by that issuer 30 to control award point distribution, thereby preventing abuse of the incentive award service by unregulated transactions. More specifically, an issuer 30 can set award rules for such things as: ⁇ award description (primarily for internal tracking purposes);
  • award type e.g., ad banner, purchase, questionnaire, etc.
  • award frequency how often points can be earned for responding to the award
  • the rules thus created are stored in the toolbox database 174.
  • the issuer 30 uses the toolbox 170 to create award rules which specify the awards received by the consumers 20.
  • the toolboxes 170 are preferably resident on computer systems under the control of the incentive award service so that the issuers 30 are not unduly burdened with supporting them, and the issuers 30 preferably access their toolboxes over the Internet and develop rules using a web browser displaying HTML forms and the like.
  • the post office 180 is in charge of scheduling e-mail advertising campaigns for issuers 30 and ensuring that earning invitations associated therewith are delivered to the appropriate consumers 20. As shown in FIG. 8, it does this by using the control table in its post office database 184 as described above. When a new entry is added to the control table, the post office 180 assigns the new job identified therein to one of the mail servers 195 based on information it maintains about the loading of the mail servers 195. For example, the post office may maintain a list of the jobs currently being run by each of the mail servers 195 and an estimate of when each is expected to be completed. In that case, the post office 180 can assign the new job to an idle mail server 195 or the mail server 195 which will become idle soonest.
  • the post office 180 may poll the mail servers 195 on their status (or the mail servers 195 can automatically provide periodic reports to the post office 180), and that information may be used by the post office 180 in scheduling jobs.
  • the post office 180 identifies which mail server 195 will be used to executes delivery of messages in the job, it writes this information to the mail server ID field 216f of the appropriate control table entry 216.
  • a dispatcher process 197 in each mail server 195 accesses the post office database 184 to see if any new jobs for it have been added as indicated by the mail sever ID 216f in each control table entry 216.
  • the message body field 218d might include the code fragment POINTENTIALS—January 1999 Edition Dear ⁇ _&getUserName_>, Happy New Year ! which would extract the consumer's first name (e.g., Joe) from the database 165 and include the string POINTENTIALS — January 1999 Edition Dear Joe , Happy New Year ! in the final message.
  • the mail server 195 sends it to the consumer 20.
  • this embodiment generates each message individually and "on the fly”.
  • the consumer 20 may acknowledge receipt of the message by replying to it. Little action is required on the part of the consumer 20 other than clicking on her e-mail client's "Reply" button, since the subject line includes an encrypted string which, when decrypted by mail server 195, identifies the consumer 20 and the job to which the consumer is responding.
  • the reply message is received by the mail server 195 and a receiver process 199 therein sets the received flag 220d in the corresponding client mail table entry 220 to show that the consumer 20 has responded to the message and notifies the appropriate toolbox 170 so that points can be awarded accordingly.
  • the consumer's e-mail client is relatively sophisticated and capable of handling more sophisticated e-mail formattings (such information preferably having been previously collected and stored in database 165), other response mechanisms are possible.
  • the e-mail client is capable of generating active URLs in the displayed message, i.e., a field in the e-mail message which, when clicked on, sends a message to an address designated therein using a designated protocol (typically HTTP), such a field can be provided and the user can click on it rather than replying to the e-mail message directly.
  • the URL preferably embeds parameter information identifying the consumer 20 as described in United States Patent Application No. 09/126,219 to Smith et al.
  • URLs can also be used with e-mail clients that do not display active URLs if the consumer 20 is known or assumed to have WWW access by prompting the user to cut the URL from the e-mail message and paste it into the browser (or simply type it in).
  • the message can also include an active URL or an HTML form button such as a "Submit” button which performs the same function. In these cases where the consumer 20 responds using the
  • the response need not be directed to the mail server 195 which sent the message and may instead go to one of the web servers 190, since they are better configured for handling such traffic (in fact, in the preferred embodiment web pages served by web servers 190 and HTML- formatted e-mail messages sent by mail servers 195 are so similar that the same database entries can be accessed to generate both). In that case, point awarding and the like may be accomplished as described in the above-referenced Bistriceanu et al. application.
  • the preferred embodiment may be seen as a system which can deliver messages using both "client pull" technology in the form of serving web pages and "client push" technology in the form of sending e-mail messages.
  • Client pull technology requires little in the way of scheduling, dispatching and the like since information is delivered at the request of the recipient.
  • client push messages are sent independently of the recipient, the need for such functionality is accommodated by the post office.
  • FIG. 1 shows toolboxes 170 as separate processes, they need not be located on separate physical computer (although this is of course possible). If the level of traffic associated with several of the issuers 30 and their toolboxes 170 is relatively low, they may all be implemented on the same computer system. Alternatively, if one issuer 30 has an extremely high level of traffic, its toolbox may be distributed over several computers in a manner apparent to those skilled in the art. In fact, although in this embodiment the toolboxes 170 are preferably implemented on computer systems under the physical control of the incentive award service, they need not be and can instead be resident on systems controlled by the issuers 30. In this case, communication between the toolboxes 170 and other system components can be done over the Internet. The web servers 190 and mail servers 195 can be similarly distributed. Further, although the Internet has been used as the preferred communications network in the preferred embodiment, other networks such as proprietary networks, intranets, LANS and WANs and the like may of course be used.

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Abstract

Un des aspects de l'invention concerne un système de communication électronique permettant de remettre des messages électroniques, tels que des courriers électroniques et des pages web, via l'Internet. L'expéditeur désirant générer et remettre de tels messages crée un ensemble de règles spécifiant des critères permettant de sélectionner les destinataires de ses messages, et des critères permettant de récompenser les destinataires ayant reçu lesdits messages ou ayant agi sur ceux-ci. En fonction des données correspondant à chaque consommateur, les messages peuvent être servis aux consommateurs sous forme de pages web par plusieurs serveurs web ou envoyés aux consommateurs sous forme de courriers électroniques. Les consommateurs peuvent accuser réception des messages par courrier électronique ou par protocole HTTP.
PCT/US2000/000960 1999-01-15 2000-01-14 Systeme et procede de generation et de remise selective d'importants volumes de messages electroniques personnalisables WO2000042557A2 (fr)

Priority Applications (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
AU26131/00A AU2613100A (en) 1999-01-15 2000-01-14 System and method for high volume selective generation and delivery of customizable electronic messages
JP2000594064A JP2002544575A (ja) 1999-01-15 2000-01-14 カスタマイズ可能な電子メッセージの高容量の選択的生成および配送を行うシステムおよび方法

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US23287999A 1999-01-15 1999-01-15
US09/232,879 1999-01-15

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WO2000042557A2 true WO2000042557A2 (fr) 2000-07-20
WO2000042557A3 WO2000042557A3 (fr) 2002-04-18

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Cited By (3)

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Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
GB2368677A (en) * 2000-04-06 2002-05-08 Nec Corp Rewarding method corresponding to object selection on a web page and server for use with rewarding method
EP1646001A1 (fr) * 2004-09-24 2006-04-12 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Systèmes et techniques de personalisation de couriers electroniques
WO2007080047A1 (fr) * 2006-01-10 2007-07-19 International Business Machines Corporation Procédé et système de transmission et de traitement de messages électroniques

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US5793972A (en) * 1996-05-03 1998-08-11 Westminster International Computers Inc. System and method providing an interactive response to direct mail by creating personalized web page based on URL provided on mail piece
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US5493692A (en) * 1993-12-03 1996-02-20 Xerox Corporation Selective delivery of electronic messages in a multiple computer system based on context and environment of a user
US5794210A (en) * 1995-12-11 1998-08-11 Cybergold, Inc. Attention brokerage
US5848397A (en) * 1996-04-19 1998-12-08 Juno Online Services, L.P. Method and apparatus for scheduling the presentation of messages to computer users
US6014502A (en) * 1996-04-19 2000-01-11 Juno Online Services Lp Electronic mail system with advertising
US5793972A (en) * 1996-05-03 1998-08-11 Westminster International Computers Inc. System and method providing an interactive response to direct mail by creating personalized web page based on URL provided on mail piece

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CROSS R ET AL: "E-MAIL DIRECT MARKETING COMES OF AGE" DIRECT MARKETING,HOKE COMMUNICATIONS, GARDEN CITY, NY,US, vol. 62, no. 6, October 1999 (1999-10), pages 44-45, XP000937629 ISSN: 0012-3188 *
VIEGA J ET AL: "Mailman: the GNU mailing list manager" PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWELFTH SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION CONFERENCE (LISA XII), BOSTON, MA, USA, 6-11 DEC. 1998, pages 309-316, XP002148818 1998, Berkeley, CA, USA, USENIX Assoc, USA *

Cited By (4)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
GB2368677A (en) * 2000-04-06 2002-05-08 Nec Corp Rewarding method corresponding to object selection on a web page and server for use with rewarding method
GB2368677B (en) * 2000-04-06 2004-09-01 Nec Corp Rewarding method corresponding to object selection on a web page and server for use with rewarding method
EP1646001A1 (fr) * 2004-09-24 2006-04-12 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Systèmes et techniques de personalisation de couriers electroniques
WO2007080047A1 (fr) * 2006-01-10 2007-07-19 International Business Machines Corporation Procédé et système de transmission et de traitement de messages électroniques

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JP2002544575A (ja) 2002-12-24
WO2000042557A3 (fr) 2002-04-18
AU2613100A (en) 2000-08-01

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