(Optimove™) Business User's Guide
Presented by Exchange Solutions | October 16, 2025
This section reflects the previous release and will be updated soon. If you need to use this feature before documentation is updated, please reach out to your Client Success Representative or Technical Solutions Architect.
The value of integrating Optimove™
The integration of Optimove™ with Exchange Solutions' ES Loyalty™ combines ES Loyalty's proven strength in offer personalization with Optimove's Email Service Provider (ESP) functions through OptiMail™, as well as its campaign features. Embedding loyalty data into customer journeys enables clients to create highly personalized loyalty experiences at scale.
The ES Loyalty integration with Optimove allows member loyalty data—including account data, partner link data, and extended member data—as well as personalized offers, to be sent to Optimove.
Data is syndicated to Optimove through one of two modes:
- Real-time updates via APIs
- Direct daily updates via batch file or Snowflake
These two modes have a combined hard limit of 50 custom member attributes. Both channels rely on Optimove being configured with the desired attributes. This approach works well for a standard set of profile attributes, but requires special handling for more dynamic data, such as Extended Member Data (EMD).
In addition to data syndication, certain events can be syndicated to Optimove in real time, and certain loyalty actions can directly trigger an email to the member. These triggered emails are called transactional emails (as opposed to marketing emails) and are sent when loyalty account–related changes occur.
Member email messages are generated based on different criteria and fall into the following types:
| Email type | Description |
|---|---|
| Scheduled | Sent at regular intervals—for example, personalized offers, points summaries, or redemption summaries. |
| Triggered | Sent in response to a member event, such as registering for and receiving a digital or physical rewards card. |
| Transactional | Sent in response to member transactions, such as linking or unlinking a partner card, redeeming points, or making a purchase. |
Purpose of the Data Integration Gateway (DIG)
ES Loyalty's Data Integration Gateway (DIG) is a generic module designed to facilitate the integration of messages sent by ES Loyalty with various external systems. It applies filtering rules to incoming messages and routes them to the appropriate connector module. DIG is one option for connecting to integrated systems; direct connections that don't involve an intermediary module are also available.
Connectors are responsible for consuming messages and interacting with external vendors or providers—such as email service providers or data integration providers—by calling the appropriate APIs.
Note: Batch updates have a latency of up to 24 hours because they are sent daily. This system also requires two sets of attributes: one for real-time updates and one for batch updates.
Member and loyalty account data
This section describes the data handling and processing requirements for the ES Loyalty/Optimove integration to pass the correct data.
Important: Optimove does not support localization conversion in transactional email (that is, conversion into the local language and formatting for elements such as currency and messaging). Ensure all monetary values and other localized content are sent to Optimove in the format intended for the final email. Marketing emails support localization through the language tag, but you should test to confirm that other format changes—such as currency formatting—are also supported.
Real-time data updates
Real-time data updates use APIs and cover the following categories:
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Loyalty account data changes: Transactional (triggered) email is sent when a change occurs in a member's account data—for example, a change to Member Profile data, Partner Link, Member Tier, or Member Household. The updated data is pushed to Optimove.
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Personalized offers: Promotional offers relevant to a specific member, used in targeted marketing email.
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Partner card link information: A unique identifier along with non-sensitive card information (such as cardholder type and link status) is stored and syndicated to Optimove. Exchange Solutions does not store sensitive card information such as card numbers, which eliminates the risk of card data being exposed for malicious use.
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Use of Optimove's native opt-in flag: The flag is based on opt-in or opt-out values provided through ES Loyalty via the Extended Member Data (EMD) payload sent through member profile updates, when a member updates their profile through the client's member management web application. The key difference between marketing email (scheduled and triggered) and transactional email is that for marketing email, the email opt-in/out flag is stored in Optimove. Members cannot opt out of transactional email for security and fraud prevention reasons.
Real-time updates for member enrollment and opt-in status
Optimove can receive externally generated events, which can then be used to initiate a real-time campaign or to update attributes within Optimove. ES Loyalty sends the following events:
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MEMBER_REGISTRATION: Initiates a welcome email. When a customer first registers as a member in the loyalty program, this event creates a member record in Optimove. When an unregistered customer swipes their card at a POS terminal, it also creates a corresponding member record and sends a registration event to Optimove. -
OPT_IN_EMAIL: Updates Optimove's internal email opt-in flag. If a member grants consent, they are opted in to receive marketing email; if consent is denied, they are opted out. The opt-in/opt-out status is visible in the ES Loyalty Console under the member's Extended Member Data section. -
REDEMPTION: Updates member redemption transaction details and triggers the redemption email in Optimove. -
MEMBER_PROFILE_UPDATE: Updates member profile data in Optimove. -
MEMBER_TIER: Updates member tier changes in Optimove.
Bulk or batch data updates
Bulk or batch updates provide periodic (daily or nightly) customer profile updates from specified tables. They are processed through Snowflake tables, which contain each member's attributes. These attributes allow customers to be segmented across various dimensions, enabling Optimove to track customer behavior and target groups—which is the foundation of Optimove's approach.
Once Optimove has successfully received all historical data, a daily data update process keeps Optimove's data warehouse current with the latest available data. This extraction process is similar to the method used for the initial historical data delivery, but includes only incremental (new or changed) data unless otherwise specified. Data is sent daily using Snowflake Data Sharing.
Data syndicated or updated in daily bulk updates includes:
- Loyalty member account data: ES Loyalty member account data synchronized to Optimove.
- Partner link status data: Partner card information, including payment and non-payment cards linked to a loyalty account.
- Personalized offers (customer promotions): Promotion data that Optimove uses for campaign execution.
- Extended Member Data (EMD): Additional data points used to segment the member population in the Optimove CDP.
- Order data: Member transaction details.
Email templates and personalization
This section describes how email templates are used, including personalization tags for offer-based email templates.
Types of templates in Optimail
Optimove supports three types of email templates, organized into two categories: marketing emails (scheduled and triggered) and transactional emails.
| Type | Category | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled | Marketing | Sent on a defined schedule. Examples include welcome emails for household members, personalized offers, points summaries, redemption summaries, and household balance updates. Subject to the member's opt-in/opt-out status. |
| Triggered | Marketing | Sent in response to trigger events in ES Loyalty, such as a first-time website or app visit, or a welcome email upon registration for a digital or physical loyalty card. Subject to the member's marketing email opt-in status—members who have not opted in will not receive this type of email. |
| Transactional | Transactional | Sent when a specified transaction occurs, such as linking a partner card, transferring points, making a purchase or redemption, updating a household balance, changing tier membership, or qualifying for gameplay. Overrides the opt-in flag, because it's important that members receive information about their account activity. |
Scheduled email and offer email personalization tags
Personalized offer emails are a type of scheduled email. They include attributes and offer personalization tags that are populated from member data to produce email content personalized for each member. Marketers can use these attributes—along with other data in Optimove that is not sourced from ES Loyalty—as offer personalization tags in email templates to support their campaigns.
Synchronization of updates, opt-ins, and promotions
The following synchronizations support the integration:
- Member account update: Real-time updates to a member's account.
- Syncing opt-in preference to ESP: Executed following the initial Optimove implementation.
- Promotion template: Optimove facilitates the integration of promotions for campaign execution.
Triggered email configurations
Triggered email—such as a welcome email sent to a new member—results from a server-side event and is therefore handled differently in Optimove from transactional email.
For a triggered email configuration, a templateID is required. This ID references the Optimove template that ES Loyalty triggers. All attributes included in the template must be added to attributeMappings in the Optimove configuration. Attribute mappings and templates are set up in Optimove.
Transactional email personalization options
Data sent from ES Loyalty as a result of a transaction can initiate one of six different types of transactional email, based on client needs and the criteria for sending. Each transactional email type has its own personalization options based on the member action that triggered it.
Conclusion – Benefits of integrating ES Loyalty with Optimove
The ES Loyalty integration with Optimove gives clients access to Optimove's data processing and ESP capabilities to send scheduled, triggered, and transactional email to members based on:
- Defined schedules
- Changes to member data
- Events in ES Loyalty (such as a redemption)
- Member registration (for a welcome email)
- Email opt-in status (consent)
The robust functionality in OptiMail™ extends critical capabilities for Exchange Solutions clients, and gives Optimove clients an integration path when they choose ES Loyalty as their loyalty platform provider.
Need additional resources? Supporting documentation for this guide is available through your TSA. Reach out to them if you need reference materials beyond what's covered here.