Building and Configuring a Journey

About

Journeys (campaigns) are utilized for nurturing prospective customers. Journeys can be created for multiple goals and assist in fully automating marketing activities, for example:

Send a monthly newsletter
Announce company news
Create a nurture campaign to generate more leads
Create a nurture campaign to revive cold leads

To learn more and review important details regarding Journeys, please review the Journey Overview article.

NOTE: It is a best practice to create a specific folder and a specific list for the Journey prior to building a Journey.

Building a Journey

Before a Journey is defined, it is a best practice to align sales and marketing on a clear goal for the Journey. The goal should be specific and measurable in order to analyze definitively whether the goal has been achieved or not. Thinking of next steps once the goal has been achieved is something to consider when defining a Journey. Building a Journey is segmented into three parts:

Compiling assets
Configuring a Journey
Creating Journey steps

Compiling Assets

All Journeys generally include the same four assets:

Prospect List: Determine who will be targeted by the Journey and add them to a defined list to be associated with the Journey. By segmenting Prospects into lists by factors such as lead grade, lead score, behavior, interest, etc. targeted messages can better resonate with recipients. Prospects can be added to a list manually using a static list or a dynamic list. If one email is being sent to a defined segment, a static list can be used. For sending to Prospects through a drip or nurture campaign based on where the Prospect is in their buying journey, a dynamic list can be used so Prospects can be added or removed based on predefined rules.
Email Template(s): Depending on the type of Journey being build, one or more email templates may need to be created.
1. Newsletter or General Announcement: Create one email template that can continuously be reused to maintain brand consistency.
2. Drip Campaign: Generally, this is for one message that needs to be reiterated across multiple templates in a timed sequence. This could be an important announcement that needs to be presented or even a reengagement campaign for old leads.
3. Nurture Campaign: There would likely be different messages based on the way Prospects engage with emails, therefore, multiple email templates would need to be created in order to present the most appropriate template to a Prospect depending on what direction within the Journey they take.
Email Cadence: Before building a Journey, outline the experience that should be delivered to a Prospect and at what pace it should be delivered. This experience could range from very simple (for example, four emails sent three days apart with no open/click tracking) or could be more complex (for example, a Journey that branches into multiple paths based on Prospect interaction). Think of the following:
1. How often should emails be sent?
2. What happens if a Prospect doesn’t open an email?
3. What happens if a Prospect clicks a link within an email?
Exit Strategy: There are typically two outcomes for a Prospect going through a Journey – the Prospect either converts along the way or they make it all the way to the end of the Journey without taking any decisive action. Either outcome can provide key information regarding the Prospect.
1. Prospects who convert: These Prospects should be removed from the Journey and added to a list that captures hot Prospects. Hot Prospects should either be sent through a new Journey or passed to Sales is they have shown interest in starting a sales conversation.
2. Prospects who take no action: These Prospects should be added to a specific list for Prospects who are not engaging with content. A new Journey could be created to try to revive them or to remove them as a Prospect altogether.

Configuring a Journey

NOTE: It should be noted that the Journey that is configured within this section is only one type of Journey and is merely being utilized as an example. Not all Journeys will start with the same step(s) or follow the same path(s). Journeys should be configured to best suit their end goal.

To build a new Journey record, navigate to Journeys via the objects on the left side of Insightly Marketing. From the Journeys screen, click the New Journey button located in the upper right.

The Add New Journey popup will display where the Journey information can be applied. The following is some key information to keep in mind when entering Journey information:

Field	Best Practice
Folder	Categorizing Journeys into folders ensures that the Journey can be located easily later.
Unsubscribe Applies To	If a prospect clicks the unsubscribe email link in an email that is part of this journey, this dropdown field is used to determine what will occur. There are two options available: Prospect Record: Unsubscribe the prospect record from all future emails in this journey. This is selected by default. Source List: Unsubscribe the prospect from the source list. The source list is the list that the prospect entered the journey through.
Recipient vs. Suppression Lists	If a Prospect is on multiple recipient lists, an email will only be sent to the Prospect once. If a Prospect is on both a recipient list and a suppression list, the suppression list overrides the recipient list, and the Prospect will not be included in the Journey. Even if a Prospect is removed from Suppression list, they will not be included back in the Journey. Prospect needs to be re-added to Recipient list and Journey needs to be restarted to reprocess the prospect.
Allow Journey Repeats	Journeys can be set to repeat for any Prospect. When this is enabled, users can define how many days occur before the Journey repeats and how many times the Journey will repeat.
Send Email During Business Hours Only	When this is enabled, users can define the specific start and end hours that the Journey’s emails will be sent. Specific days can be assigned as well to indicate which days to send emails. The indicated time zone is based on the default time zone of the Insightly Marketing user, but this can be edited to apply the Email Hour Start/End to a different time zone.

Once the applicable Journey information has been applied, click Save to create the Journey record. Once a Journey record has been created, the Journey’s record will display the Detail tab by default.
- Save & New can be clicked to save the current Journey information to a new Journey record and subsequently reload the Journey Information popup so another new Journey record can be built

The Journey path itself can be configured by clicking the Journey tab. The following steps will configure a simple starter Journey – configuration can be applied differently based on the needs and end goal of the Journey.

Via the Journey tab in the Journey’s record, a new Journey will display a Teal Cog icon as the starting point. Below the Cog there will be a + button and then a Red Stop icon that indicates the end of the Journey. The + can be clicked to add a step to the Journey:

When adding a step to a Journey the following step types can be applied (additional information pertaining to Journey steps can be reviewed via the Journey Steps section of this article):

Step	Information
Action	This step will initiate an update or task that should occur for a Prospect at a specific point in a Journey. This could be sending an email, or increasing a score, etc.
Trigger	This step is a prompt that sets off an action, such as a Prospect opening an email. Triggers initiate a split/branch in the Journey’s path.
Check	This step verifies a Prospect’s field values prior to allowing them to move forward in a Journey. Checks initiate a split/branch in the Journey’s path.

For this example, Add Action will be clicked. A list of actions will be displayed where the applicable action can be selected; for this example, Send Email will be selected.
1. Choose the applicable email template to use from the Choose Email to Send drop-down and determine when the email should be sent. Click Save to add the step to the Journey.
  - Email templates will only display here if they are enabled as Customer Journey Emails during the email template creation.
Once a step has been added to a Journey, the option to add an additional step before or after will be available and indicated by a + icon above and below the step that has been added.
For this example, click the + icon below the Send Email step and select Add Trigger. A list of triggers will be displayed where the applicable trigger can be selected; for this example, Email Opened will be selected.
1. Via the Which Email drop-down, choose the email that was selected in the prior step (when the action to send an email was configured), and determine when the trigger will apply:
  - Wait Up to: Selecting this indicates that once the Prospect has completed the action (trigger i.e., opening the email), the next step in the Journey will execute. The number of hours or days applied indicate how long the Journey will wait for the Prospect to take action. The limits are 365 days and 180 hours.
  - Wait For: Selecting this indicates that the next step (after the trigger i.e., opening the email) will not execute until after the time that is set. If the trigger is set to wait for 7 days (even if a Prospect completed an action) the next step of the Journey will execute only after 7 days have passed.
2. Click Save to add the trigger to the Journey.
Once the trigger is saved, the Journey will have two branches. The next steps are determined by whether the Prospect opened the email within the time limit that was set within the trigger (for this example, the time limit chosen was to wait up to 7 days after the email was opened).
- Prospect Opened Email: For Prospects who opened the email within the timeframe dictated by the trigger, the action step Adjust Score can be added to increase the Prospect Score. Then, the Send Email action step can be added after the increase in score to send a new email (for example, new products that the Prospect might be interested in).
- Prospect Did Not Open Email: For Prospects who did not open the email within the timeframe dictated by the trigger, the action step Adjust Score can be added to decrease their Prospect Score. Then, Add Check can be selected after the decrease in score and the Check Prospect Field can be chosen. Adding the check step of Check Prospect Field can be configured to check the Prospect’s score by setting the Field Name as Score, the Operator as Greater Than and the Field Value as 0.
  Once a check step is added to review whether the Prospect’s score is above 0, a new branch will be created under the check. If the Prospect’s score is not greater than 0, the action step Remove from List can be added so nurturing ceases for the Prospect due to their score.
Once the necessary actions, triggers, and/or checks have been added to the Journey, the Journey can be initiated for the recipient list that was assigned at the beginning of creation. This can be done by clicking the Actions drop-down in the upper right of the Journey record and selecting Run Journey.

Journey Steps

Insightly identifies when email opens and/or clicks are suspected as originating from a bot. When an email open and/or click is suspected as being from a bot, the email open and/or click will be filtered out and any Journey steps that would occur based off an email open and/or click will not fire for these suspected bot actions.

NOTE: For Insightly Marketing users that also have an Insightly AppConnect subscription, Recipes can be built to automate the Journey step process.

Actions

Actions are updates or tasks that occur for a Prospect or user such as sending an email or increasing a Prospect score.

Action Type	Details
Send Email	An email will be sent to the Prospect. The user building the Journey can choose which email and schedule the send date and time.
Add Tags	Add tags to a Prospect.
Remove Tags	Remove tags from a Prospect.
Adjust Score	Increase or decrease a Prospect’s score.
Assign Owner	Assign the Prospect record to a user.
Change Prospect Field	Updates a Prospect’s field information. For example, changing a Prospect’s “Opted Out” field from disabled to enabled.
Notify User	Sends a notification to a specific user. The default setting is App Notification which will only notify users within the Insightly application. For users to receive an in-application notification and an email notification, choose App Notification + Email.
Notify User	Sends a notification to a specified user.
Add to Marketing List	Add the Prospect to a specified list.
Remove from List	Remove the Prospect from a specified list.
Convert to Contact	Coverts a Prospect into a Contact. The Contact Owner can be specified in this process. Prospect values will be mapped over to the Contact record when possible. If the Prospect already has a Contact ID, a new Contact will not be created and the step will be skipped, however it will be marked as successful.
Convert to Lead	Creates a Lead record within Insightly CRM for the Prospect. The Prospect record will still exist within Insightly Marketing and the two records will not share the same record ID. Users will be prompted to enter the Lead Status, Lead Owner, Lead Assignment, and Lead Source.
Fire Webhook	Fires or send an outgoing HTTP POST webhook to the address specific in the action.
Change Scoring Model Score	Allows for adjustments to be made to the Prospect’s scoring model.
Execute Lambda Function	Creates a trigger to execute a specific Lambda function.
Create CRM Task	Creates a task within Insightly CRM, assigns it to a CRM user, and links it to the Lead or Contact associated with the Prospect from the Journey action. When creating this Journey action, Merge Tabs can be used to automatically add data to the Task Name and Description fields by clicking the “i” icon in the field box. The content is taken from the Prospects data. If the CRM Lead or Contact Owner is selected: If the Prospect is linked to a Contact, the owner of that Contact will get assigned the task. If the Prospect is not linked to a Contact but is linked to a Lead, the owner of that Lead will get assigned the task. If no Contact or Lead is linked, but a Fallback user has been set, the task will be created. If no Contact or Lead is linked, the Journey will progress to the next step without creating a task. If the Prospect is linked to both a Contact and a Lead, the Contact owner will be linked. For all Assigned To and Assigned To Fallback options: If value is empty, the Task will be assigned to the user selected in the Assigned To Fallback drop-down field. If value is empty and the Assigned To Fallback field is set to skip, then no task will be created.
Add to Zoom Webinar	Sends Zoom webinar signups to a Prospect. The webinar ID is required. This action will only display as an option for Insightly accounts that have active Zoom integration.
Trigger AppConnect Recipe	Creates the ability to utilize and AppConnect recipe. This action will only display as an option for Insightly accounts that have active AppConnect integration.

Triggers

Triggers are prompts that set off an action such as a Prospect opening an email. The opening of the email is a trigger and the resulting step in the Journey is the action that is set off by that trigger.

Trigger Type	Details
Email Opened	When a Prospect opens an email, the next step in the Journey will be set off.
Email Link Clicked	When a Prospect clicks a link in an email, the next step in the Journey will be set off.

Checks

Checks are utilized to verify a Prospect’s field values before allowing them to continue forward in a Journey.

Check Type	Details
Check Prospect Field	Check the information entered on a field such as the county the Prospect lives in.
Check Redirect Link Click	Checks if a Prospect has clicked a Redirect Link. This step allows for a selection of the time period that a click occurred. Any Time in the Past is the default, although In the Recent Past can be selected to configure how far in the past to check for the click. The minimum requirements are 1 week/day with a maximum of 90 weeks/days. When this step in a Journey is reached, the date will be calculated from the moment the prospect has reached the check based on the date configuration. For example, if configuration is set to check if the action occurred within the last week, it would check if the action occurred in the week prior. It will not check from the start of the Journey; it will only check when the step was reached.
Check Prospect Custom Event	Checks if a Prospect has completed a custom event.
Check is Corporate Email Address	Checks if the Prospect’s email address is a corporate email address or was created with a public email provider such as Gmail, Hotmail, etc.
Check Form Submission	Checks if a Prospect has submitted a form. When creating this check, a specific form can be chosen from a drop-down menu. Insightly will verify whether the Prospect filled out and submitted the chosen form. This step allows for a selection of the time period that a form submission occurred. Any Time in the Past is the default, although In the Recent Past can be selected to configure how far in the past to check for the form submission. The minimum requirements are 1 week/day with a maximum of 90 weeks/days. When this step in a Journey is reached, the date will be calculated from the moment the prospect has reached the check based on the date configuration. For example, if configuration is set to check if the action occurred within the last week, it would check if the action occurred in the week prior. It will not check from the start of the Journey; it will only check when the step was reached.
Check Prospect Grade	Checks the Prospect’s grade. This is helpful when targeting Prospects who meet a certain grade threshold.
Check Prospect Viewed Page	Checks if a Prospect has visited a webpage. When creating this check, the web page URL to be checked must contain https://. A URL wildcard can be used as well such as https://www.insightly.com/. When creating this check, a website will be chosen that is pulled from the sites that are setup via Domain Management. This step allows for a selection of the time period that a page view occurred. Any Time in the Past* is the default, although In the Recent Past can be selected to configure how far in the past to check for the page view. The minimum requirements are 1 week/day with a maximum of 90 weeks/days. When this step in a Journey is reached, the date will be calculated from the moment the prospect has reached the check based on the date configuration. For example, if configuration is set to check if the action occurred within the last week, it would check if the action occurred in the week prior. It will not check from the start of the Journey; it will only check when the step was reached.
Check Prospect Visited Website	Checks if a Prospect has visited a website within a set time period and will return a true or false result. When creating this check, a website will be chosen that is pulled from the sites that are setup via Domain Management. This step allows for a selection of the time period that a website visit occurred. Any Time in the Past is the default, although In the Recent Past can be selected to configure how far in the past to check for the website visit. The minimum requirements are 1 week/day with a maximum of 90 weeks/days. When this step in a Journey is reached, the date will be calculated from the moment the prospect has reached the check based on the date configuration. For example, if configuration is set to check if the action occurred within the last week, it would check if the action occurred in the week prior. It will not check from the start of the Journey; it will only check when the step was reached.
Check Prospect Score	Checks the Prospect’s score. This is helpful when targeting Prospects who meet a certain score threshold.
Check Prospect Tag	Checks if the Prospect has been assigned a specific tag.
Check File Downloaded	Checks if a Prospect has downloaded a Hosted File. The Hosted File can be tracked from a third-party website or an email. This step allows for a selection of the time period that a file download occurred. When creating this check, a file will be chosen that is pulled from the files that are setup via files and redirect links that have been created – this functionality relies on web tracking. This step allows for a selection of the time period that a file download occurred. Any Time in the Past is the default, although In the Recent Past can be selected to configure how far in the past to check for the file download. The minimum requirements are 1 week/day with a maximum of 90 weeks/days. When this step in a Journey is reached, the date will be calculated from the moment the prospect has reached the check based on the date configuration. For example, if configuration is set to check if the action occurred within the last week, it would check if the action occurred in the week prior. It will not check from the start of the Journey; it will only check when the step was reached.
Check Membership List	Checks if the Prospect is included in a specified list.
Check Date and Time	Checks the current date and time.
Check Zoom Webinar Attendance	Checks if the Prospect attended a specific Zoom webinar; Webinar ID is required. This check will only display as an option for Insightly accounts that have active Zoom integration.
Check Zoom Webinar Registration	Checks if a Prospect has registered for a specific Zoom webinar; Webinar ID is required. This check will only display as an option for Insightly accounts that have active Zoom integration.

Measuring Journey Results

Measuring Journey results ensures that a Journey is being effective in achieving the end goal of the Journey.

Delivery Rate: Tracking this metric provides insight into whether content is being delivered to Prospects. Delivery rates can affect a sender score and the likelihood of content landing in a Prospect’s Spam folder. Online research can be done regarding ways to avoid spam filters. The Insightly help article Email Spam Check and Common Errors can also be reviewed for information pertaining to the Insightly Marketing spam check.

Open Rate: Tracking this metric provides insight into how enticing the content is to Prospects. If open rates are low, it could mean that the email subject lines are ineffective and could be improved or that the Prospect list needs to be reviewed for edits. It is recommended to use A/B Testing in email subject lines in order to see what performs the most efficiently in a subject line.

Click Through Rate: Tracking this metric provides insight into how often Prospects are interacting with content. If click rates are low, it could be because there are too many “calls to action” (i.e., action items) in an email or that the “calls to action” need to stand out more. Personalizing emails can help – segment lists more and send more targeted messages to help with click through rates.

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