Adding a Decision step to your Act! Marketing Automation campaign

Question:
How can I add a decision tree to my Act! Marketing Automation campaign?

Product Family: Emarketing
Product: Act! Marketing Automation

Answer:

The AMA campaign builder allows you to create as simple or comprehensive a campaign as you like. From a simple one-off blast email to a full nurture campaign with different assessments and call to actions.

In this example, we will be adding a Decision tree to our campaign along with an additional email step. After I send my first email, I would then like to assess if my recipients opened this email and based off this assessment, send a follow up email for those who DID NOT open the first email. This second email will be very similar to the first email, think of it as an "In case you missed it" follow up. The goal in this use case is to get as engagements as possible for the message being sent out.

NOTE: AMA tracks opens by using a tiny 1 pixel image embedded automatically in each email template. In order for a Decision step based on email opens to work, the customer will need to have opened the email and viewed images in order to track this correctly. 

To add a decision tree to a campaign:

1. Open any existing AMA campaign in draft mode or create a new campaign.
2. Once the campaign is open, click the email step that you want the decision tree to follow.
3. An Edit Email Step pop up will appear. In the first drop down, select Insert Actions After. In the second drop down select Decision. Then click Go.
4. You are now in your decision step editor. You will see an Add Condition pop up where you will set the condition you are looking for in this campaign. You can build a decision based off the following conditions:
   • Call Result: This looks at a completed call activity made in Act! and evaluates that result (i.e. Complete, Sold, Attempted, etc.)
   • Column/Layout Value: This will asses an Act! field value for the recipient
   • Email Opened
   • Email Clicked: This will asses if any link was clicked in an email
   • Email Clicked (Specific URL): This will asses if a specific link was clicked in an email
   • In List: This will asses if the recipient is in an Act! group
   • Not In List
5. In this example, we will select Email Opened in the first drop down.
6. In the next drop down, you will select which email you are assessing an open for. If you have multiple emails in this campaign, you will select the email you wish to asses. In this case, there is only one email in our campaign, so select that email. Click Save.

Next, you will be taken to the overall decision setup page. Here you will want to give your decision a name. This can be something simple like "Intro Email Opened". Next you will notice the criteria you had just set up to already be reflected in the Groups section. The condition should say "Email Opened: Intro Email". Once you are done here, go to your Actions drop down and click Save & Return.

Now you are back in your campaign flow and you now have a decision step below the email you originally selected. You will notice the appearance of a Yes and No branch. Here you can decide how you want this campaign to flow. In this example, I want to send a follow up email to all recipients who DID NOT open my first email. So if they DID open, they will not be sent any additional emails and will complete the campaign. However if they DID NOT open, I want to send them a second email.

To add your follow up email for those who DID NOT open the first email:

1. Click the End step under the No branch.
2. In the pop up, select Change Action Type under "What would you like to do".
3. In the following drop down, select Email.
4. Click Go.
5. You now must complete the No branch with an End step. 
6. Click the new email step.
7. In the first drop down select Insert Action After and in the following drop down select End.
8. This completes the setup of the flow of this campaign. It should now look like this:

To edit your second email step, click the email step and select Edit Email. You will then be taken to the email editor where you can create or import an email into the editor. Once done, click Actions > Save & Return to be taken back to your campaign flow.

The final important setup step for this flow lies in the pause period between your first email step and the decision step. By default, this will be set to "Wait 1 Day". What this means is, once the campaign is activated, the first email will be sent at the scheduled time. After that, all of your recipients will then immediately move into the decision step where they will sit in queue for 1 day (24 hours). At the end of that 1 day, the decision step will then asses if each recipient opened the email or not. If they DID open the email, they will be sent down the Yes branch. If they DID NOT open the email, they will be sent down the No branch. 

There is no backwards movement in a campaign flow, so at the end of 1 day, if a recipient did not open the first email, they will be sent down the No branch. Even if they opened the email 3 days after receiving it, they will remain down the No branch because at the time of assessment (1 day), they had not opened it.

For this reason, you want to make sure you are giving enough of a pause period for your recipients to perform the action you are assessing. In most cases, it is recommended to wait anywhere from 3-7 days depending on your customer base. This gives enough time for everyone who is going to open your email, to open the email in time before the decision step fires off.

To change the pause period from Wait 1 Day:

1. Click the arrow beside "Wait 1 Day".
2. In the Intervals pop up, edit the wait time by typing in a number, then selecting the increment (days, hours, minutes, etc). In this example, lets change the wait time to 5 days.
3. You can check the "Do not send on weekends" box to prevent the follow up email from being sent on a weekend.
4. Once done, click Save.

You will now be taken back to your campaign flow where you will see the change you made reflected in the new pause period between your first email and decision step. And this completes the setup! Check out the link below on adding an action step to your campaign:

Adding an Action Step to an AMA campaign