User journey in a campaign

The user journey is composed of steps, with each step corresponding to a row of triggers.

A user first enters the campaign through the Journey Start trigger which is the Root trigger. If a message is sent to the user successfully, the user is then eligible for the next set of triggers. The trigger filter criteria is evaluated and if the user qualifies, then they continue onto the next step of the journey. If the user does not qualify for any of the triggers, they fall out of the campaign and the journey is completed.

The location of your triggers is very important as they determine how users move through a campaign. In a simple setup, for any user, the triggers get evaluated from left to right (higher priority to lower priority). If a user satisfies the criteria for more than one trigger, the user enters the branch with the first eligible trigger. And if a user doesn’t satisfy any of the trigger criteria, they fall out of the journey.

Priority: The ordering of sibling or child triggers expresses the order in which the triggers get evaluated for the user. Triggers generally get evaluated from left (higher priority) to right (lower priority) and top to bottom.

Trigger ordering is more complicated when triggers have delays. A lower priority trigger can have a calculated send time that comes before a higher priority one. As a result, the ordering is not always left to right. For more information, see Eligible trigger ordering.

Root Trigger: There can be only one root trigger. This is the start of the journey.

Siblings: Triggers that appear on the same row are called siblings. In this example, triggers B, C, and D are siblings.

Children: These are the set of triggers that appear in the row below another trigger and are also connected to that trigger. A trigger can have none, one, or many children. In this example, triggers B, C, and D are the children of trigger A. Trigger E is the child of trigger B.

Parent: The parent is the trigger in the row above the row that the children belong to. In this example, the parent of trigger C is A, and the parent of trigger D is also A. The parent of trigger E is B.

Branch: The part of the journey that originates from a trigger (the parent) and includes all its children and their subsequent generations is called a branch.

Eligible Trigger Ordering

In a simple setup where eligible triggers have no delay, dayparting or other advanced features, the triggers get evaluated for a user from left to right (higher priority to lower priority).

Trigger ordering is more complicated when triggers have delays because a lower priority trigger can have a calculated send time that comes before a higher priority one. As a result, the ordering is not always left to right. When there are delays involved, the following happens at each step:

• The campaign calculates the send time for eligible triggers. It groups the triggers into those that can be sent now and those that can be sent later.
• For the triggers that can be sent now, it evaluates those left to right for the user.
• When a trigger has a delay included, the user is evaluated for the trigger only after the delay is completed.
• If none of the triggers eligible for messaging now match, the campaign calculates the minimum amount of time before the next set of eligible triggers can be sent. It waits this amount of time and starts this process again. It also remembers which triggers it has already evaluated and does not evaluate them again.

Example 1:

Consider the following example with two email triggers.

• The user qualifies for Trigger A, and an email is sent to the user.
• Trigger B has a delay of 2 hours. The user is evaluated for Trigger B only after the delay of 2 hours is completed. If after 2 hours the user qualifies for Trigger B, an email is sent to the user.

Example 2:

Consider the following example where Trigger A and Trigger B are siblings and Trigger C and Trigger D are siblings.

• Trigger A and Trigger B do not have any delays and hence the triggers get evaluated for a user from left to right. 
• Trigger C has a delay of 4 hours and Trigger D has a delay of 2 hours. Hence the minimum amount of time before the next set of eligible triggers can be sent is 2 hours.
• After 2 hours, although Trigger C is on the left and we would evaluate Trigger C before Trigger D, given that Trigger D has a shorter delay, the user is evaluated for Trigger D before Trigger C. If the user qualifies for Trigger D, Trigger C is skipped.

Other considerations

Consider the following points about a user's journey in a campaign:

• For a segment based campaign, a user does not have to remain in the segment the entire time to keep progressing through the journey. If the user was a member of the segment and has entered the campaign before being removed from the segment, the user will continue in the campaign until the user is filtered out or reaches the end of the campaign.
• When a launched campaign is paused, the triggers are moved or reordered, and the campaign is launched, this affects users that are already in the journey.