Understanding Real-Time Customer Journeys

Customer journeys help you visualize and automate the steps customers take as your business connects and engages with them. A journey can be as simple as sending a single email to a small audience or as complex as a multi-step lead intake and qualification process. If you're moving from Outbound Marketing, existing journeys can't be imported directly into Real-Time Journeys and must be rebuilt. While that takes some additional work, it's also an opportunity to rethink your existing journeys and take advantage of Real-Time functionality.

Choosing a segment-based or trigger-based journey

When you create a journey, you can choose between two primary approaches: segment-based and trigger-based. Segment-based journeys begin with an audience defined by one or more segments. With dynamic segments, people who become segment members while the journey is active can also enter the journey. Journeys can also be configured to repeat at a specified interval. Trigger-based journeys begin when a particular event occurs for an audience member. Depending on the journey's configuration, that individual may also be able to trigger the journey again later.

Configuring your journey audience

After selecting your segment or trigger, use the information pane to configure who can enter the journey. For segment-based journeys, you can change the segment or add multiple segments. If you're using multiple segments, each must have been created in Real-Time Journeys. If you're using an Outbound Marketing segment, only one can be added to the journey at a time. For trigger-based journeys, you can change the trigger and apply additional conditions that determine who is eligible. For example, a "contact created" trigger could be limited to contacts with a specific attribute or contacts associated with an account containing a particular attribute. You can also add segments that exclude contacts from entering the journey.

Controlling when and how often a journey runs

Segment-based journeys provide several options for controlling frequency. You can create:

• A one-time journey with a static audience.
• A one-time journey that allows new audience members to enter when they join an included segment.
• A repeating journey where audience members repeat the journey at a regular interval.

Trigger-based journeys can limit the number of times an individual triggers the journey. For example, if your trigger is an abandoned shopping cart, you could prevent someone who abandons their cart multiple times in one day from receiving an email every single time. Segment journeys can also have a start and end schedule. For one-time journeys, a rate limit can throttle how many people enter during a particular period. For example, if an email encourages recipients to call your team, you could limit entry to 25 people per day instead of potentially generating hundreds of calls at once.

Setting exit criteria and journey goals

Audience members normally exit a journey after completing its steps, but you can establish additional exit criteria. For example, you could remove someone immediately if they activate a particular trigger or become a member of a specified segment. This prevents them from continuing through messaging that is no longer relevant. The Goal tab lets you define what success looks like for the journey. Goals are optional, but they can improve analytics and make it easier to measure journey performance. You can select a trigger that indicates success, such as registering for an event, and specify the percentage or number of audience members you hope will reach that goal.

Using frequency caps

The Other settings area includes frequency caps. Frequency caps limit the number of messages an individual can receive through a particular channel during a specified timeframe. This can help prevent contacts who qualify for multiple journeys from receiving too many messages.

Adding actions to your journey

Select the Plus button on the journey canvas to begin adding actions. Available actions include:

• Messages
• A/B testing and channel optimization
• Branching
• Delays
• Phone calls and other tasks
• Triggers
• Power Automate flows

For a simple email journey, add an email action, choose a message with a Ready to Send status, and select the appropriate email address field on the contact record.

Experimenting with A/B testing

A/B testing can help determine which messaging approach performs better. If your journey already contains an email or another message, you can add an A/B test and compare two options. You could compare different email designs, images, or copy. You can even test different communication channels, such as comparing an email with a text message. Before configuring your test, make sure both options are built and have a Ready to Send status. You can then configure:

• The name of the test.
• The percentage of the audience receiving option A versus option B.
• The metric that determines the winner.
• How long the test should run.
• Which option should become the default if there isn't a significant difference.

Consider choosing a winning metric that closely aligns with the overall objective of your journey.

Using channel optimization

Channel optimization can use an audience member's historical information to help determine which communication channel may be most appropriate. Its effectiveness can improve as Customer Insights – Journeys collects more information about your contacts. You can also specify a default channel for situations where there isn't enough historical information to make a selection.

Waiting for customer actions

A Wait for trigger tile pauses an audience member's progress until a particular condition is met or a time limit is reached. The condition could be an interaction with an earlier step in the journey or the activation of another trigger. If the audience member meets the specified condition, they immediately continue down the appropriate path. Otherwise, the journey waits until the configured time limit is reached. For example, you might identify audience members who clicked a link in an earlier message and create a phone call task for them. That task could be assigned to the contact's owner, the parent account's owner, or a specific user.

Building journey branches

Real-Time Journeys provides several ways to create different paths for your audience. An Attribute branch can divide your audience based on their attributes. An Audience split can randomly separate the audience into groups. You can control the percentage or number of people assigned to each branch. These branching options don't automatically introduce a delay. If you need to pause audience members before they continue, use a wait tile.

Using wait times

A Wait time tile is different from waiting for a trigger. Instead of waiting for a behavior or condition, it delays further progress based on time. You can:

• Wait until a specific date.
• Wait for a set duration, such as three days.
• Use applicable date or time information from a configured trigger.

A fixed duration is calculated separately for each audience member when they reach the tile. A "wait until" date applies the same target date to everyone, so an individual reaching the tile after that date may not be paused at all.

Simplifying journeys with the Series tile

The Series tile can help reduce complicated branching. For example, suppose you're running an email campaign and want to continue sending a sequence of messages until a contact registers for an event. You could place your emails and delays inside a Series tile and establish registration as the exit condition. When someone meets that condition, they're immediately pulled from the series and continue down the appropriate path. Otherwise, they continue through the remaining steps in the series. This functionality can help reduce the large number of nested condition branches that may have been necessary for similar scenarios in Outbound Marketing.

Understanding journey inflow and outflow

Journey inflow and outflow provides additional visibility into how audiences move through a live journey. When enabled through Feature Switches, the feature can display the total number of audience members flowing into a selected journey tile along with information about why audience members exited at that point.

Exploring channel analytics

Customer Insights – Journeys includes both journey analytics and channel analytics. Channel analytics provides messaging insights across:

• Email
• Push notifications
• Text messages

Slicers at the top of the dashboard let you filter the information based on channel type, journey, and individual messages. The dashboard can provide information about:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Clicks by link
• Message delivery
• Delivery issues
• Unsubscribes
• Email spam rate

Many dashboard visuals also provide additional options, including exporting information, viewing the information as a table, examining applied filters, and opening the visual in a focused mode. If your analytics don't look right, check the slicers you've applied, particularly the timeframe.

Using email click mapping

Email click mapping provides a visual way to understand where recipients are interacting with an email. Within the email's Insights area, you can review the ranking of links based on clicks and see a visual heat map of where recipients clicked. This information can help inform decisions about email design, link and button placement, calls to action, and other design choices. Click mapping can be enabled through Feature Switches in Settings.

Creating segments in Real-Time Journeys

Segments remain an important part of Real-Time Journeys. When creating a segment, you start by selecting the segment's name and target audience. Real-Time allows you to target either contacts or leads, which means you can market directly to leads without first associating them with contact records. Segments can use different types of information, including:

• Attributes and demographic information.
• Behavioral information, such as whether someone opened an email.
• Existing Real-Time segments.
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Understanding segment logic

When your segment includes multiple groups or conditions, you can use logical operators to determine how those groups relate. AND ALSO requires audience members to meet the conditions in both groups, narrowing the audience. OR includes audience members who meet at least one of the conditions, expanding the potential audience. BUT NOT includes audience members who meet the first set of criteria while excluding those who meet the criteria in another group. For example, you could create a segment containing active contacts who have an email address, then narrow that audience further to recipients located in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or Chicago. Groups and subgroups give you additional flexibility when combining attributes, behaviors, and other criteria into more sophisticated segments.

Using Query Assist and segment settings

Real-Time's Query assist uses Copilot to help build a segment. It can provide a useful starting point, although complex queries may still require additional review and configuration. The segment's Settings area also lets you choose whether the segment should be static or dynamic. You don't necessarily need to rebuild every Outbound Marketing segment immediately. However, gradually recreating important segments in Real-Time can provide better performance for larger audiences and complex queries while also unlocking functionality such as using multiple Real-Time segments in a single journey.

Building better journeys in Real-Time

Real-Time Journeys maintains many of the concepts familiar from Outbound Marketing while adding more flexibility around triggers, communication channels, audience management, branching, and analytics. Because Outbound journeys need to be rebuilt rather than imported, the transition provides an opportunity to evaluate your existing marketing automation rather than simply recreating every journey exactly as it was. Features such as trigger-based entry, Series tiles, A/B testing, channel optimization, goals, exit criteria, frequency caps, and advanced analytics can help you create journeys that respond more effectively to how your audience actually engages with your organization.