Marketing Cloud allows you to create simple or complex customer journeys based on subscriber engagement (or data in the Marketing Cloud database, or other systems).
In the Journey Builder, you can drag and drop elements to control which paths subscribers take, and when.
It is possible to apply flow controls to Journey Builder!
Flow Controls are one of the main components of Journey Builder. Flow Controls determine which paths your contacts will take once you configure them to your requirements. Flow Controls are commonly used for:
⮕ Engagement Splits: Check whether the contact has engaged with the most recent message from that journey.
⮕ Decision Splits: Sends contacts down specific paths based on either Journey data or Contact data. Data that has changed between the time the contact entered the journey and the evaluation step will determine which data you should choose.
⮕ Wait Steps: Let the contact stay in that step for the duration of the wait step (for example, three days), or until a specific date passes.
Engagement Splits
Typically, engagement splits look at the most recent message sent from that journey (before reaching the split). By measuring metrics such as email opens, clicks, and bounces, the flow control determines whether the contact engaged with the communication.
It is likely that they will continue on the ‘Yes’ path if they have reached the level of engagement you consider significant, otherwise, they will follow the ‘No’ path.
🔎 Note: There is only one metric available per decision split, either open, click, or skip. Within an engagement division, you can choose one (or more) links to click. A three-day waiting period is recommended before checking bounces because the system needs time to retry the submission before counting it as a bounce, especially for soft bounces.
Decision Splits
Contacts are sent down specific paths in the journey using either Journey data or Contact data. It is important to use the most recent and relevant contact data. For optimum system performance, Journey data is the best choice, since it’s easier to retrieve this static data than to look up other sources of data.
🔎 Note: There can be up to 20 paths in a single decision split. As the split’s evaluation criteria, a contact’s attributes (field data) should be used. From top to bottom, the rules are evaluated.
So the sequence is important, start with the criteria that you expect most contacts to meet. If you are familiar with Salesforce lead assignment rules, this works similarly; a contact that meets more than one set of criteria follows the first path they qualify for.
