Workflow Decisions
Decisions in Workflows allow you to spilt your contacts based on specific criteria you have in their contact record or by an action (or inaction) in a previously-sent email. By creating two separate branches, can control where your contacts go in the automated series based either their actions (or inactions), opens or clicks or by criteria in their contact record.
The three types of Decisions are:
Email View Decisions (Decisions based on Opens)
To create a decision based on someone opening a specific email, drag the open envelope icon onto the canvas. In the pop-up that displays decide the delay length for your decision. Note that an open decision must be fed by an email.
When using an Email View Decision, you will be required to give the Decision a title, and set a wait period before the decision kicks in. The minimum wait for a decision is 1 day (to allow people time to open the email and create your branching). For an Email View Decision, you have the ability to choose to process matches (in this case opens) either at the same time as your non-matches (in this case non-openers) or choose to process them immediately to continue along your Workflow.
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When connecting a decision to the next group or email in your series you will be asked to choose whether the path matches the criteria of your decision or does not. One path is required for the decision to function. You can, but aren't required to, use both the Yes and No paths. For example, you may only care about the group that matched your criteria and decide those that didn't open won't go any further in your workflow.
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Custom Decisions (Decisions matching a query)
You can also branch your workflow on specific criteria associated with a contact record. First, drag the branching icon to the canvas and then set-up your custom query in the pop-up. As with the full-sized version of Query Builder, you will be able filter by any part of the contact record in order to make your query, including default and custom fields. Based on your query logic you can determine which of two directions a contact is sent. Those that positively match the decision will move into the Yes branch, while those that don't match you query will move into the No branch.
In this example, everyone whose Custom Field #65 is equal to "Preferred" will get the "Preferred Customers #1" email. Those who have any other entry (or whose Custom Field #39 is blank) will proceed down the opposite branch and receive the Standard Customers #1 email. As with other queries created in Query Builder, your query may include multiple criteria (ex: Custom #65 Equals Preferred AND First Name Equals David).
You are not limited to one type of Decisions in a single Workflow. You can create Workflows which use both types of Decisions.
Click Decisions (Decisions based on clicking a link)
You can also branch your Workflow based on contacts clicking links in the previous emails. Click Decisions can be based on whether or not someone clicked a single link, a series of links, or any link in the email. As with the other types of Decisions, you will have a Y/N split based on the matching of your chosen criteria.
After dragging a Click Decision onto your workflow you will need to provide the title for the Decision along with which link(s) you want counted. You can choose any link clicked in your email to be a match (this doesn't include the unsubscribe link) or one or more specific links. As with Email View Decisions, you must set a wait period before the decision kicks in. The minimum wait for a decision is 1 day (to allow people time to open the email and create your branching). For a Click Decision, you can choose to process matches (in this case if the link was clicked) either at the same time as your non-matches (in this case non-clickers) or choose to process them immediately to continue along your Workflow.
NOTE: When choosing specific links, you may wish to choose "Link Starts With" (or "Link Ends With" or "Link Contains") as your qualifier rather than "Link Equals" because of data that could get appended to the end of your link via Google Analytics, a website redirect, or Personalized URLs.
Chaining Decisions
You can chain a series of custom decisions if you want to apply logic in stages. You can also chain a custom decision after an open or click decision. However, click and open decisions which rely on email actions must follow an email and cannot be added after a custom decision.
