Building a Story
Last updated
Last updated
To build a new Story, navigate to Stories from the menu at the top. Click on the Create new Story button in the top right corner.
First, give your Story a name. You also have the option to add a description and Labels to your Story.
You will need to enter a start date and decide if you would like your Story to run indefinitely or end on a specific date.
You can configure Cappings and Exclusion Rules in the Story setup. You can edit the following settings:
Re-entering Story: When this option is enabled, users will enter this Story every time it starts as long as the defined conditions are met.
Simultaneous Stories: If checked, users can enter other Stories while being in the current Story.
Next click on Apply and continue.
The story canvas shows the two base blocks integral to every Story: The 'Story Start' block and the 'Segment' block.
To add a block to your story, simply choose the block from the list on the left, and drag and drop it onto the Canvas.
To edit any block click on it, the details of the selected block will appear on a card at the bottom of your screen. In the top right corner of the card, you will see an 'Edit' icon, you can click here to modify the block.
You can start a Story by event or by time.
A Story set to "Start by time" will run periodically. This can be set to any number of Days, Weeks or Months. For example, a Story that sends a Birthday Wish to customers can every morning, sending an email to only those customers who have a Birthday on that day. Similarly, a Story can be set to run every 12 Months to remind customers of your annual Holiday Sale.
A Story set to "Start by event" will look for the specific Event in the background when activated. For example, a Story can be set to trigger every time a Customer opens an email.
The Segment block defines a set of conditions that your target group should pass in order to proceed through the journey. This block works similar to the Segmentation Setup in CrossEngage Campaigns.
The Wait block allows you to schedule your messages, or other journey steps. Wait blocks represent a time gap between two blocks. These can either be used to wait for a specified time (e.g. wait for 2 hours) or wait until a specified time (e.g. wait until next Monday, 12:00).
The Condition block allows you to split your audience into two groups: Users matching the conditions you define in this block and those who don’t match the conditions.
The Real-time Trigger block enables you to split your audience into two groups based on their behavior: Users who perform a particular action and those who do not. In this block, you can define the action a user needs to perform and the maximum timeframe in which the user must perform this action to proceed.
This block can be added after the Journey Start and Segment blocks, enabling you to add event-related triggers to your stories. You can relate to the properties of an event you choose to start your story with or other real-time triggers or the events from the message blocks.
The AB Test block enables you to experiment and optimize your marketing strategy. By using this block, you can divide your audience in 2-5 variants. You can send different marketing materials to different variants, or set up different journeys for them.
Once you drag and drop the AB test block on the canvas, you can see a setup block and a result block.
The AB Test Setup block is where you can choose the number of variations and distribution per variation. Each variation represents a path your audience can take. You can add up to 5 variations and each variation can be set up similar to any other story path. You can also choose an Event to monitor the success of the variant, such as "Completed Order".
The AB Result Block displays The KPIs per message is displayed in the AB result block and you can choose the winner variation in the result block by clicking on the Trophy icon next to the variation. This will conclude the AB test, and all future Stories will use only this variant.
Message Blocks
You can currently create message blocks for the following channels inside your Stories:
SFTP Upload
Onsite Display
Push Notifications
Segment Transfer
SMS
Webhook
A user will exit the journey defined in your Story when:
they reach the end of a branch, i.e. there are no more blocks
they are excluded by any block (e.g. through a Segment or Condition)
Any error occurs when a message for a user is processed
The Story is disabled
The branch a user is currently on is deleted or re-connected
A user will re-enter the Story at the next defined start unless the respective option has been disabled.
You will only be able to see the message block types for the integrations that have been configured in your account. You can find out more in the section.
