Automated journey logic
Quick definition
Automated journey logic is an aspect of digital marketing that automates the decision-making process for what happens next in a customer’s journey. It looks at where and how the customer is engaging with a brand and sends the best next message to encourage them to continue on their path to conversion.
Key takeaways
Setting up automated journey logic requires identifying a specific event and configuring actions to take place after the event occurs.
Automated journey logic improves the customer journey by using informed decision-making capabilities to automatically deliver the best next customer experiences.
Companies can sometimes make the mistake of trying to do too much from the beginning, when it is more effective and easier to start broadly and refine as they learn more.
Alex Dal Canto joined Adobe in 2013 through the Neolane acquisition, where he was part of the Strategic Alliances group. As a product marketing manager for Adobe Campaign, Alex is responsible for bringing new releases to market as well as promoting new features and creating mobile strategy. He led the go-to-market process for Journey Orchestration, built on Adobe Experience Platform, in the year before its release.
How does automated journey logic work?
How does automated journey logic affect the customer journey?
What is the business value of automated journey logic?
How does automated logic inform other aspects of a customer engagement strategy?
What mistakes do companies make when using automated journey logic?
Q: How does automated journey logic work?
A: Automated journey logic is fairly easy to set up in a journey management platform. You use a visual drag-and-drop user interface (UI) where you can define parameters based on the metrics that you have to work with. But it’s possible for that to get as technical as needed. So if you have somebody who is technically well-versed and wants to script something very complicated, they have that option as well.
To set up automated journey logic, the first thing you do is define the event that you want to work from. That could be a customer clicking a link, viewing a product, visiting a website landing page, or entering a physical store.
Once you decide what event you want to use to trigger a next action, you take the API that will fuel the event and configure it within your journey orchestration by copying and pasting the output code from whatever source you want. From there, you can save and reuse the output code. For instance, if you know you have an event that involves clicking on something, you could save that event and reuse it for whatever journey you want to create in the future.
The second part involves configuring the actual action or actions that you want to happen. When you have those two elements, you can essentially use the drag-and-drop interface and draw out the journeys that you want. Every journey starts with an event. Then you can flag conditions. The logic is set up so that if certain criteria are met, the next action will happen automatically.
The final part of setting up automated journey logic is testing the configuration to make sure customers are receiving the right information and actually taking the next steps. Few journey orchestration platforms currently have built-in testing capabilities, so companies need to add some type of external software like Post Manager to test the APIs.
Q: How does automated journey logic affect the customer journey?
A: The purpose of automated journey logic is to make an informed decision based on what the end customer wants. It should anticipate the actions a customer will take and provide a customer experience that encourages the customer to move to the next step. Sometimes, a company might use automated journey logic to move customers toward a specific goal, while other times the delivered experience is purely a result of how the customer has engaged in the past.
Q: What is the business value of automated journey logic?
A: Journey logic is the key piece that helps companies scale their customer engagement programs in real-time. If you as a marketer are trying to segment every single individual and follow them on that unitary basis to give them what they want or feed them what you think they want, it's going to be impossible. Thanks to technology like automated journey logic, you can set up business rules or have artificial intelligence (AI) help you make decisions to treat every customer individually and help them throughout the overall customer lifecycle.
Q: How does automated logic inform other aspects of a customer engagement strategy?
A: One way automated journey logic can benefit a marketing strategy as a whole is by identifying problem areas in the customer journey. For example, if you see that your customers are getting stuck at a certain point in a journey that you've created or they're dropping off and not completing the journey, that's a good indicator that the logic you've implemented might not be working. The journey that you've drawn out or think would be the ideal path might not be. Customers might be reaching a 404 page or a broken link and can’t move forward, and that’s a critical juncture that journey logic highlighted.
Q: What mistakes do companies make when using automated journey logic?
A: While creating detailed and custom decisioning models is valuable in many different scenarios, it’s generally best to start a little broader and refine as you go, rather than trying to solve for every single outcome right away. People can go overboard when specializing journeys, so it’s best to learn how much work is required to actually achieve the outcomes you want and not try to anticipate and control for every tiny action from the beginning.
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