Optimization of the annual planning of targeted offers in direct marketing

This paper develops an optimization model that captures the annual planning of product‐targeting campaigns occurring in financial institutions. The formulation described in this paper extends current product‐targeting optimization models found in the literature on two main aspects, namely the possibility of promoting bundled products and the use of multi‐channel structures. The complexity of the problem is studied and extensive computational experiments are performed on representative data sets. The effect of client segmentation is empirically examined and some strategic applications of the model are presented. Our work is based on a practical case, but all features identifying the company have been removed.