Email, In-app, Push, SMS

Journey Optimizer comes with built-in message capabilities. You can simply add, in your journey, a push, an SMS, an In-app or email message activity and define settings and content. It is then executed and sent in the context of the journey.

You can also set up specific actions to send you messages:

• If you are using a third-party system to send your messages, you can create a custom action. Learn more in this section.

• If you are working with Campaign and Journey Optimizer, refer to these sections:

  • Journey Optimizer and Campaign Classic v7/Campaign v8
  • Journey Optimizer and Campaign Standard

To add a message in a journey, follow the steps below:

1. Start your journey with an Event or a Read Audience activity.

2. From the Actions section of the palette, drag and drop an email, an In-app, an SMS or a Push activity into the canvas.

3. Configure your activity. Learn detailed steps to create your message content in the following pages:

   Create emails

   Create In-app messages

   Create push notifications

   Create SMS messages

Update live content

You can update the content of a message (email, In-app, Push, SMS) in a live journey.

To do this, open your live journey, select the message activity and click Edit content.

However, you cannot change the attributes used in personalization, whether they are profile attributes or contextual data (from event or journey properties).

If you modified contextual data, the following error message will be displayed: ERR_AUTHORING_JOURNEYVERSION_201

If you modified profile attributes, the following error message will be displayed: ERR_AUTHORING_JOURNEYVERSION_202

Note that for the In-app activity, any changes can be made to the content while the journey is live, but In-app triggers cannot be modified.

Send-Time Optimization

About Send-Time Optimization

Adobe Journey Optimizer’s Send-Time Optimization feature, powered by Adobe’s AI services, can predict the best time to send an email or push message to maximize engagement based on historical open and click rates. Use our machine-learning model to schedule personalized send times for each user to grow the open and click rates of your messages.

The Send-Time Optimization model ingests your Adobe Journey Optimizer data and looks at user-level open (for email and push) and click (for email) rates to determine when your customers are most likely to engage with your messaging. Send-Time Optimization requires a minimum of one month of message-tracking data to make informed recommendations. For each user, the system will automatically pick the best time using the following scores:

• The best hour of each day of the week to maximize engagement
• The best day of the week to maximize engagement
• The best hour of the best day of the week to maximize engagement

The model varies whether you are talking about scoring or training. Training is conducted weekly initially and then quarterly. Scoring is weekly initially and then monthly.

• Training - the development of the algorithm used to make the score
• Scoring - the application of a score to individual profiles based on the trained model

This information is stored with the user’s profile and is referenced at journey execution to tell Adobe Journey Optimizer when to send your message.

Activate Send-Time Optimization

Enable Send-Time Optimization on an email or push message by selecting the Send-Time Optimization switch from the activity parameters.

For email messages, choose whether to optimize on email opens or email click-throughs by selecting the appropriate radio button. Push messages defaults to the opens option, as clicks are not applicable for push messaging.

You can also choose to bracket the send times used by the system by entering a value for the Send within the next option. If you choose “six hours” as the value, Journey Optimizer will check each user profile and pick the optimal send time within six hours from the journey execution time.

What happens if the optimal time is outside the window?

Let’s take an example with the following setup:

• Optimize on clicks
• Action is meant to start at 10 AM
• Window is 3 hours

A profile can have an optimal open time which is outside the window. For example, John’s optimal open on click is at 5 PM.

At profile level, there are scores for every hour of the week. In this example, the email will always be sent within the window. At run time, the system checks the list of scores within that window (3 hour window starting at 10 AM). The system then compares the scores for 10, 11 and noon and selects the highest. The email is sent at that time.

Business.Adobe.com resources