Introduction to Journeys

What is Journeys?

Journeys is a tool in Cheetah Digital that enables brands to build trust and ultimately drive more revenue by defining and automating the best possible paths of interactions with their consumers.

Consumers interact with brands in many different ways, such as: signing up to newsletters, opening emails, clicking links, using the app, browsing the website and making purchases. Journeys helps brands set goals and optimize against KPIs by automating campaign content, cadence, and personalization.

What types of Journeys are available?

There are two types of Journeys that you can choose from -- Real-time Journeys or Scheduled Journeys. Although they look and function the same at surface level, these two types of Journeys each use a different process to target your desired audience, and are intended for different goals.

What is the difference between Real-time Journeys and Scheduled Journeys?

The main difference between Real-time and Scheduled Journeys is the Start step and what will trigger each Journey to begin and thus, what audience you can target.

Real-time Journeys is triggered when a customer performs a specified activity or event; it is driven by customer action and responds to their behavior. Scheduled Journeys is triggered on a specified date, or based on a recurring schedule, where customers are treated as part of a full audience who share the same timings.

When should I use a Real-time Journey?

Real-time Journeys are triggered by customer specific events which allows you to use individual customer behavior to measure KPIs and monitor how successful your communications are. You should use Real-time Journeys when you want to send a Campaign in response to a customer's action, such as an abandoned cart, a successful purchase, or an unsubscribe.

For example, if a first time customer signs up to your website, you could configure a Real-time Journey that will send them introductory offers and encourage them to make a purchase.

When should I use a Scheduled Journey?

Scheduled Journeys allow you to choose a specific audience and moves everyone through the Journey at the same time, usually in alignment with significant dates in mind. You should use a Scheduled Journey in the run up to a specific date such as an event or a booking.

For example, you could configure a Scheduled Journey to send reminder emails in the run up to a concert.

What are Journey Steps?

Steps are a method to define how each customer moves through the journey.

The entry to a journey is called a “start step” and the customer will progress through other steps such as an “action step” where a message might be sent, or a “decision step” where journey participants are diverted onto different paths based on existing data held about the customer or data that has been collected earlier in the journey.

The “Update Journey Step”, listens for the defined target behavior, such as making a purchase, which is effectively the objective of the Journey. It listens throughout the journey and as soon as the target behavior is detected, wherever the customer happens to be in the journey, they will exit the journey onto a parallel path, such as to an action step to send a thank you email for the purchase just made.

If the target behavior is detected, that is classed as a positive outcome and Journeys reports on whether-or-not the journey has been successful for each individual customer.

To learn about all the Journeys step types click here.

What Journeys can you build?

You can design your own Journeys to meet your specific requirements, however, to get going we recommend you start by building a “Templated Journey”. These are commonly used journeys such as a Welcome Journey for communicating with customers when they first share their contact details with you, or a Post Purchase Journey for keeping customers informed about the status of their purchase including confirmation, dispatch and delivery. We recommend you start with a Welcome Journey. To learn more about building a simple welcome journey click here.

Why do you need to test your Journeys?

Once you’ve created a Journey it’s important to test it to ensure it works as intended. Journeys allows you to do this by simulating the Journey without publishing it, using different customer profiles and behavior. Journeys also offers a Health Check feature which checks to make sure that all assets within other Marigold apps (“dependencies” such as campaigns) are all set up correctly and ready to go. To learn more about testing your Journeys including a step by step guide click here.

Reporting and optimization of your Journeys

Journeys are built around desired exit outcomes, which determine the success of each individual customer’s Journey. Reporting provides a view of all of these Journeys combined, and provides insights into which parts of the Journey drive those desired outcomes.

For example, an Abandoned Cart Journey is designed to drive a customer to complete their purchase. When a purchase is made, it will be marked as a positive outcome. In the Journey Metrics tab you can query each step that customers went through to gain insight into how the content, cadence, and personalization of that customer’s path could be improved to drive more positive outcomes, in this case purchases.

Once you understand what is happening, changes can be made in minutes, such as changing a wait step from 2 days to 1 day to see how that change impacts the overall outcome.

And this is the real power of Journeys. It gives you the tools to optimize your journeys to meet the goals you have set. You can show that your actions have made a tangible difference to the business. These automations will help you blow your targets out of the water!

To learn more about the power of reporting and optimization click here.