HCL Unica Winter 2023 Release Highlights. How relevant is it for existing Unica customers?

Published: February 01, 2023

min read

HCL announced the release and availability of the latest update for their Unica 12.1.15 marketing cloud platform. With this new release, Unica has launched an assortment of new features and UI improvements.

In this new interface, Unica’s menu and navigation have been organized into distinct marketing functions – Plan & Manage, Build & Execute, Analyze & Optimize.

In addition, some of the highlights of this new release include the following:

Marketing Central and UI Functional Improvements – Access UI Improvements in Campaign and Marketing Central, including Test v/s Prod Run, Process Boxes with Derived Fields, and intuitive navigation
Looping in Journey Orchestration: Enables lean and concise journey building with multiple engagement points and sending repeated reminders to customers to take key actions.
Improved Collaboration for Content Creation – Import ZIP files created by external agencies, such as HTML or image content, via Unica Deliver.
External Callouts for Customer Profile Modelling and Scoring—Enables data exchange between systems to update customer profile data and improve campaign effectiveness.
Upgraded Personalization Simulation – Access granular controls, dedicated permissions, and the ability to schedule different coverage scenarios in the real-time personalization feature.
Added Privacy Controls for Personalization – Manage customer profile data utilized for personalization with three new options to conceal, obscure, or publicize based on organizational policies or regional regulations.

In essence, the Unica winter release is all about new enhancements in usability and functionality to deliver a true omnichannel experience.

Should Marketers Rush and Update to the New Version of Unica 12.1.15?

With every new release of Unica Marketing Cloud, the company demonstrates its constant commitment to delivering extended capabilities. This new release is no exception, as the company doubles down on nuanced controls and collaboration features. However, is it imperative for brands to upgrade to the new version of Unica 12.1.15?

Some of the key challenges that the upgraded platform seeks to solve for marketers include:

Journey Orchestration: While the previous version of Unica 12.1.3 included ready-to-use industrial journey templates, new looping features have now been added. As the name suggests, it enables marketers to keep customers in the loop with periodic marketing campaigns until a criterion is met. While this may result in bombarding customers with multiple messages, it can help create complex drip journey workflows with ease.
Content Collaboration: As enterprises often work with external agencies and partners, it becomes cumbersome to import multiple types of content. However, with the new import feature added in the Unica Deliver interface, it is now possible to collaborate and publish content with the click of a button. Without the need to procure additional content collaboration tools.
Personalization Modeling and Testing: Personalization is a necessity to tailor customer experiences. Overlaying multiple parameters such as CRM, product ownership, and cross-channel behavioral data allows businesses to arrive at granular segments for targeting. To that end, the new version takes a leap forward by leveraging external scoring models from other systems. In addition, it enables marketers to create enriched simulation models using the Unica Interact Simulator with granular controls. The personalization simulator with added controls allows for quick and easy testing of interactions across multiple touchpoints in design time.
Privacy Compliance: With the release of regional regulations and mounting privacy concerns, it’s a must for brands to uphold consumer privacy. The new version has added privacy controls to manage the consent preferences of customers and pass them downstream for personalization through various channels.

Upon first glance, it may just appear as if the new version simply provides UI and slight functionality enhancements to already existing modules of the Unica platform. However, MarTech decisions shouldn’t be made with superficial analysis. Instead, you have to get deep into it. We have done this hard work for you, and here’s our recommendation.

If you are not already extensively crafting customer journeys, you can expect the loop feature in the new release to be of great use, and you can embrace the new release with your eyes closed.
If you were facing operational challenges in terms of collaborating between your design agency and the campaign agency to get the right creative available for campaigns, the new release would be of great use.
Unica has traveled a long way from Affinium. The Affinium Model was phased out over a period of time, and Unica lacked modeling features. HCL has now tried to plug the gap through its simulation models and by facilitating integrations with other modeling platforms so that you can directly use scored model outputs and create audiences for your campaigns.

The Verdict: Regardless of your level of Unica usage, upgrade to the new release.

Author

Pete Johnson

Pete is a MarTech expert guru with a knack for getting diverse MarTech solutions work for brands. He has a wealth of experience in working with a plethora of MarTech platforms that dive Personalized Omnichannel Experiences. When he's not at work, you can find him playing basketball or listening to jazz.