What are Custom Journeys?
Most marketing campaigns can be satisfied by the standard journey models, for example:
- Black Friday SMS = use a Single-Batch Journey
- Birthday Celebration = use a Recurring Batch Journey, daily frequency
- First buy = use a Recurring Batch Journey, daily/hourly frequency
The messages sent will provide information or links (call to action) to help the viewer continue some process elsewhere.
However, what if the journeys were slightly more complex? For example: perform three different actions based upon the different links clicked manage someone's subscription preferences perform validation against provided details then choose different processing paths according to further business logic
This is where Custom Journeys are used: they're completely customizable processes to satisfy complex marketing needs, requirements that can't be covered by the basic journey models but instead allow greater flexibility:
- Sending communications using a multitude of channels according to preferences
- Responding to raised events (e.g.: purchase confirmation)
- Handling subscription management (tick/untick magazine subscriptions)
- Inviting then capturing feedback surveys
- Managing selected event registrations (e.g.: concert tickets)
Prerequisites
The following assets are required to start building Custom Journeys.
- An Audience List is required. This list will determine WHO and WHAT will be used for personalization and segmentation in the Custom Journey, as well as for targeting. If targeting only a subset of contacts in the audience, a corresponding segment can reduce the time to create a filter manually.
- Assets to send out communications. Think which channels to use to communicate - This can be standard channels such as email, SMS, Mobile message.
Once you are certain, create the necessary assets, ensuring they're valid. Use test sends to confirm message correctness before publishing those assets for use in the journey .
But what if you need an off-line channel such as export, print, PDF, or Call? Or any other custom channel? In that case, please contact first you administrator to check if the necessary plugins and custom channels are configured for your environment.
Further considerations:
- Does this journey need to be subject to Cadence management? If so, does it need to be limited in time or run continuously?
- Do interactions in the journey need to be tracked for reporting? This is enabled by default, but may not be required.
- Does the journey contain pages to be displayed on your website? Is a content renderer required?
Activities
1. Create a Custom journey, specifying an Audience List .
2. Check the basic properties of your journey. A segment can be selected here later if it wasn't available at journey creation time.
3. View Advanced properties and fill these out based on the questions answered in the Prerequisites section
4. Add all the required components to your journey.
- What is to be achieved by this journey? Do you want to increase subscriptions, store preferences, increase turnover, track interactions on newsletters, optimize the send time,.... Depending on the 'What' you will need to add components to save data, split your audience into the correct target groups, add Delivery optimization etc.
- Who do you want to target? Are all contacts in your audience targeted in the same way? Are there different paths to be followed depending on contact characteristics, past interactions
- What is the happy path? Start with the most straightforward path to follow, when everything goes as expected.
- Include side branches. For example when splitting the audience based on contact properties, also include cases that are not part of the basic path. Such as a split on language, but what if a contact has no language
- What are the exceptions? (example: incorrect data filled out, no interaction recorded, record already exists, missing data...). Make sure to handle all the exceptions within the journey for example by looping back to previous steps, or redirecting to another journey, or simply display a 'sorry, something went wrong' page.
- Build in validations and checks whenever data is entered to ensure only valid data is passed on and stored.
- Test the different paths through the journey to ensure all possibilities are covered.
5. Save your journey
6. Validate your journey. This will provide you necessary information if all steps are possible. (check out the topic on what components can or cannot be combined)
7. Publish. This is required to make the journey available to Redirect to.
8. Activate the Journey (if necessary as this is only required for time-bound journeys such as Custom journeys with a Single Batch, Recurring Batch or Custom Event component).
What if changes are required to the journey?
When messages in the journey are modified, they need to be republished for the journey to become aware of changes - but the journey itself does not require republication.
Changes in the logic of the journey or in the configuration of components or paths requires the journey to be saved, re-validated and republished before possible relaunch/reactivation.
