Journeys 2.0

Journeys 2.0 is a new way of creating and working with your customer segments that provides greater flexibility and control in how you target high-value users. By giving you the ability to create and easily visualize nested customer segments, Journeys 2.0 lets you easily hone in on the users that matter most to your business.

Opting in / out

To opt in to Journeys 2.0, navigate to either Audiences > Journeys or Audiences > Real-time, and hover over the text “LEGACY EXPERIENCE” next to the top breadcrumb navigation. Then, click “Try the New Experience” in the modal that appears upon hover:

Once opted in to Journeys 2.0, you can revert to the legacy Audiences experience at any time by hovering over “NEW AUDIENCES EXPERIENCES” in the top navigation and clicking “Revert to Legacy Experience”:

Journeys landing page

After opting in, the Audiences > Journeys section of the UI will display a table that includes every Audience and Journey you have created, sorted by Last Updated by default.

The Journeys 2.0 landing page represents two main types of customer segments:

Single-step Journeys
Rows with a Total Audiences value of 1 represent both single-step Journeys that you have created in the past, as well as legacy Real-time Audiences that have been migrated here as single-step Journeys.

Multi-step Journeys
Rows with a Total Audiences value greater than 1 are multi-step Journeys, which are represented in this view as nested Audiences. Click on the ”+” icon next to the name of a multi-step Journey to expand it to expose the individual milestones (or Audiences) the Journey contains. Clicking any of the nested Audiences will bring you to the Journeys canvas, where you can update this or any Audience contained within the Journey.

Audiences vs. Milestones

Functionally, a Milestone and an audience are the same. Both represent a targeted segment of customers that you can forward to integration partners, run A/B splits on, and otherwise leverage in campaigns. Their only difference is how you create them in mParticle:

• A Milestone is an individual step within a journey that you have defined to capture a meaningful moment in the customer lifecycle (i.e. a free trial signup, an email interaction, or an ad click). Each Milestone creates an audience of customers who fit the criteria you have set for it.
• An audience is a customer segment that you have created.

Updating a Journey

To update a Journey (either single- or multi-step), expand it by clicking the ”+” icon to the left of its name, then click on one of the Milestones nested beneath it. This will display the Milestone editor within the Journey canvas, where you can update the inclusion criteria for this particular Audience:

Closing the Milestone editor will display the full Journey canvas, which you can use to add additional Journeys features like new paths, additional milestones, and A/B tests.

Creating new user segments with Journeys

The Journeys canvas provides a flexible and powerful tool for creating targeted customer segments. Let’s look at two of the main ways you can use Journeys to create audiences:

Single-Milestone audiences

As mentioned above, creating a Milestone within a Journey is functionally equivalent to a creating a Real-time audience. By using the selection criteria and logical operators within a Milestone, you can create highly targeted customer segments for your campaigns. Let’s explore how to do this.

At the Journeys landing page (Audiences > Journeys), click the New Journey button in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

At the Create Journey modal, name your Journey, select your inputs, and click Create.

In the Journey canvas, click the ”+” icon followed by the Milestone option to create your first (and only) Milestone in the Journey.

Combine criteria with Boolean operators

In the Milestone editor, you can begin adding criteria to target the users you want in your audience. Once you have added your first criterion, you can use the Boolean operators And, Or, and Exclude to create logical relationships with subsequent criteria.

Continue adding and combining operators to hone in on the precise user segment that matters to your business goals. The Milestone below, for example, uses three criteria and two Boolean operators to create a segment of customers who are on iOS 10.0, have started at least three sessions within the last seven days, who are not located in New York City.

Create nested audiences from multiple Milestones

Now let’s see another approach to using Journeys and Milestones to create targeted customer segments, which is is equivalent to creating nested audiences in the legacy Real-time Audiences experience. To explore how this works, let’s first look at a nested audience created with the legacy Real-time Audience builder as an example:

This customer segment uses membership in three separate Audiences––App Downloaders, Recent Users (Last 30 Days), and Engaged with Ad––as its membership criteria (which is what makes it a “nested” audience). Now, let’s see how we can recreate this segment as a Journey.

First, create a new Journey, then click the ”+” icon under the top (and only) node in your Journey to create a new Milestone. For this Milestone, set membership in the first audience from your nested audience (App Downloaders) as the sole includion criteria:

Now, create two more Milestones for the remaining two audiences in the original nested audience:

This Journey is now effectively the same customer segment as the nested audience created with the legacy Real-time Audience builder, with the added advantages of being able to add A/B Tests, new paths, and partner integrations at each individual Milestone (or nested audience), and the ability to visualize each Milestone that comprises the segment in one place.

Activate a Milestone in a campaign

Once you have created a Milestone that you want to forward to an external tool for use in a campaign, click the Connect Output button in the Audience tile under the Milestone in your Journey, then follow the steps to connect that audience to any of your connected outputs.