Enhance your marketing efforts with perfectly timed, personalized SMS communications that feel like a conversation, not persuasion. Automate your marketing workflow into journey. With journeys, you can leverage your SMS contact base to arrange messages that will help you accomplish short-term and long-term marketing goals.
Create a journey
Go to Automations > Journey.
- Provide a name, description, and tags for your journey. Click Create.
- Set the details of your journey.
- Set trigger keywords.
- Then design your journey.
Add the details
On the Details tab of journeys you can rename the journey, view the journey ID, view the created by date and user, the last modified date and user. You can add tags, set up SMS details, and your SMS-enabled database is listed here.
SMS configuration includes
- Code Phone numbers you can use to send SMS messages.
- Session length If the session times out, the contact would have to send the keyword to the code to reenter the journey session. While the contact is still in the session they will not be able to interact with another session on the same code.
- Opt-out keywords Specific words such as STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE that signal that a contact no longer wishes to receive messages from the journey. The contact will be removed from the journey, but not all SMS communications within your organization.
- Opt-out message The message the contact receives that confirms their opt-out.
- Help keywords Specific words such as HELP that signal that a contact needs help interacting with the journey.
- Help message The message the contact receives that follows a Help keyword.
- Character mapping Automatically replace characters that are not supported by the GSM (Global system for mobile communications) standard and might decrease your character limit. Go to SMS and group messaging > Character mapping to set up.
- Shorten links So any long URL listed in the message will be shortened and then sent.
Set your organization's code
Before you trigger your journey, you need to set your organization’s code. If you haven’t set your organization’s code, the screen will provide a button to set SMS details.
To set your organization’s code
- Select Set SMS details.
- Select your desired code.
Trigger your journey
Trigger keywords allow contacts to follow a journey path. You can add trigger keywords based on your organization's code type.
There are two types of code:
- Dedicated code
- Shared code
Dedicated code
When you have a dedicated code, you can free-form enter keywords, except words currently used in other journeys within your organization.
To add trigger keywords:
- Enter your preferred keyword.
- Select Add.
- Repeat to add more keywords.
Shared code
When multiple companies use the same code, it is called a shared code. A shared code only allows you to select from a list of keywords available. To set additional keywords, contact support.
To add trigger keywords:
- Select the dropdown.
- Select the check boxes next to the desired keyword(s).
Design your canvas
Drag and drop
To design your journey:
- Drag and drop a step onto a valid drop box on the canvas.
- Click the circular icons to configure each step in your journey.
Tip: Valid drop boxes will be highlighted with a green outline and a path will be drawn on the canvas.
Paths
Paths lead contacts down or away from a step. They allow you to send your contacts along different routes in your journey based on their responses or logic you set. You can add paths through the listen for keyword and decision steps.
Remainder path:
When you create paths, a remainder path is automatically added to the canvas. The remainder path is the path that contacts will be routed if they do not follow the other designed paths.
Warning: The remainder path cannot be deleted.
Tip: Path limitations: The listen for keyword allows up to 10 steps. Up to 20 decision steps are allowed. This includes the remainder step.
Rules
Rules direct contacts through steps based on profile data, behavior, time or other information Campaign knows about the contact. You can set up rules based on session fields in the listen for reply and listen for keyword steps.
Steps
In the design tab you can drag your steps onto your journey canvas.
Send SMS message
- On the Design tab, drag the Send SMS message step to your canvas.
- Enter a step name.
- Select the message you want to send at that point in the journey.
- Preview the message after selecting it.
Update contact
Update a contact in your database through a journey.
- Drag and drop the Update contact step to the journey.
- Click the activity.
- Provide a step name.
- Optionally, add an opt-in to an SMS campaign option.
- And/or an opt-out of an SMS campaign option.
Listen for keyword
Listen for keyword is focused on receiving a specific response. You could use this when you are expecting a specific response from a contact, something such as Yes or No. This step offers paths based on how many different responses you are expecting to get back. Acoustic Journeys can store the contact's response for the duration of the journey for use in other steps.
To add a listen for keyword step:
- Go to Design tab.
- Drag Listen for keywords to the canvas.
- Enter a step name.
- Save responses for this step, if you'd like. Then save the response name.
- Add a path, optionally.
You can add a listen for keyword path by using the drag or drop method or the configuration panel.
To add a listen for keyword path in the configuration panel:
- Click Add path on the configuration panel to reveal Path 1 and the Remainder path on the canvas.
- Name the path with a name unique to the journey. The name of the path will appear on the path canvas when no keywords have been set.
- Add your chosen keywords in the tag picker. As you add keywords, they will appear on the path canvas.
- To add another path, repeat steps 2-4.
Listen for reply
Listen for reply captures what the contact responds back to you. This response from the contact is stored as a session field for the duration of the journey, and can be used later in the journey to make different paths using the decision step.
To configure listen for reply:
- Go to the Design tab.
- Drag Listen for reply to a valid drop box.
- Select the Listen for reply step to reveal the configuration panel.
- Name the step with a name unique to the journey.
Saved response name
Saved response name is a temporary value stored for the length of the session. This value can be used in the rules that are created in the decision step.
Decision
Journey offers a decision step to direct contacts to a certain route based on rules involving sessions fields, profile data, contact lists, behaviors (including universal behaviors and relational table criteria), or CRM opportunities when you are using a CRM database. This multi-step decision routing on the canvas offers the ability to direct contacts down several different paths. The decisions can also be based on the session fields set in the listen for reply and listen for keyword steps.
To use decision steps
- Drag your decision step onto the journey canvas.
- Click into the decision step, and name this step.
- By default, a Path 1 and a Remainder path are created. You can choose to add additional paths, if required.
- To more clearly set up your journey, name your paths with friendly names.
- Add rules based on the set session fields to direct contacts into decision routing paths.
Vote
The vote step allows you to track your contact's responses within a poll.
To configure vote step:
- Drag your vote step onto the journey canvas.
- Click into vote step to add name and saved response name.
When active, you can view the poll results within the step.
- Click into the vote step.
- Determine the time frame in the drop-down.
- View votes via the table or donut graph.
Exit
Exit allows you to remove users from the journey. Since contacts can enter a journey multiple times through real-time SMS conversations, the exit step prevents the users from being stuck in a continuous journey. The exit step offers you the opportunity to measure your success for reporting based on the path the user takes to exit the journey.
To configure the exit step:
- Drag and drop the Exit to your finished path.
- Name the step with a name unique to the journey.
Start, stop, and pause
You can start, stop, or pause a journey, using the top focus bar.
Start
To start the journey:
- Click Start.
- After a validation check, the Review and start modal appears with no errors.
- Review journey.
- If all information is correct, click Start.
Validation errors:
When starting a journey, a validation check occurs. If errors are in the journey, a list will appear and the journey will not start. Once you exit the journey error message, the errors will be highlighted in red on the screen until they are corrected. After correcting the errors, you should be able to start the journey.
Pause
If you want to delay the journey without removing the current contacts, pause the journey.
To pause the journey:
From canvas
- Select the Pause button in the top right corner.
- A reassurance message will appear. If you are sure you want to pause the journey, select Pause.
From the journey list
- Select Pause in the 3 dotted overflow menu next to each listed journey.
- A reassurance message will appear. If you are sure you want to pause the journey, select Pause.
Stop
If you want to edit the journey and remove the current costumers, stop the journey.
To stop the journey from the canvas:
- Select the Stop button in the top right corner.
- A reassurance message will appear. If you are sure you want to stop the journey, select Stop.
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Errors
- Non-unique step name
- Space characters in keyword
- One or more keywords that are already added
- Keyword(s) already used in another journey