In this month’s newsletter, I’m here to help you solve one of the most common dilemmas which is frequently asked to me : “Should I use Campaigns or Journeys?” Now honestly, the answer to this question depends on your use-case, but there are a few guiding questions that can help you decide:
Will there be sequential communications within a specific time frame?
Are you planning to use multiple channels?
Do you need to retarget users who were unreachable or where the initial communication failed, using different methods?
Is more than one conversion event required for your communication?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these, a Journey might be the right choice for you. Let’s try to understand this with the help of use-cases.
Use Case 1: “I want to run a cart abandonment campaign for my users, where I notify them via a push notification within 15 minutes of their failure to complete a transaction. Since I don’t collect email addresses or phone numbers, I can only target them with push notifications.”
What should you choose? – A simple In-action campaign is the best approach here since this use case doesn’t align with any of the questions above. You can read here on how to set-up an In-action campaign:- Capture Drop-offs like a Pro.
Use Case 2: “I want to run an offer for my loyal users during the upcoming festive season. I plan to send this offer three times a week across different channels, i.e. email and push notifications. The campaign will run for a month.”
What should you choose?:- This is an ideal example of a Journey. You can schedule it to run over the course of a month, sequentially sending communications via push and email. The goal being to check transactions with that promotional offer code.
Use Case 3: “We’d like to set up a simple email journey for our inactive customers. The plan is to send three communications at intervals of 30, 60, and 90 days from their last transaction. These communications will be offer-centric, and we don’t want to continue if the user makes a transaction at any point.”
What should you choose? This is a classic 30-60-90 day retention cohort Journey. If you’ve considered the questions mentioned earlier, you’ll see this use case answers “yes” to the question, “Are there sequential communications within a certain time frame?” It might also involve multiple conversion events, though that’s not specified. While you could run three stand-alone campaigns, a Journey is preferable. It provides a visual overview of all three campaigns in one place and ensures smooth performance and monitoring. Here’s how the Journey would look:
I hope this helps you make more informed decisions about your campaigns. As always, I’m here to support you. If you have any questions or need further clarification, please feel free to reach out.
Ruchita comes with a decade of experience in Retention Marketing, and is now helping early-age startups turbo-charge their growth with CleverTap.
