What are Journeys?
At its core, a Journey is a set of automations designed to reach different target audiences at specific times. When you think of a Journey, consider three main factors: what content you want to send, to whom you want to send it, and when you want to send it. By combining these elements, you can create tailored messages that resonate with your audience.
Building a Journey
To create a Journey, you'll define the audience and set up a series of automations that will be sent to that audience. For example, let's say you have an existing Journey for customers who have purchased an introductory offer. Within this Journey, you can have different branches for customers who have visited your studio and those who haven't.
Audience Segmentation
One of the strengths of Journeys is the ability to segment your audience further. For instance, you can start with a general automation for all introductory offer purchasers, but then customize subsequent automations based on different criteria. These criteria could include whether a customer has taken a class or not, the number of visits they've made, or any other relevant information.
Imagine you want to create a Journey for first-time visitors who discovered your studio through Class Pass. Initially, you can send the same email to all of them, thanking them for their first visit. Then, after a week, you can send a follow-up email based on their engagement level. This could be an email to those who have taken more than three visits or a different one for those who have taken two or fewer visits. By layering conditions, you can personalize the customer experience and drive engagement.
Organizational Structure
When creating a Journey, you'll appreciate the organized structure provided. Each Journey will have a title, allowing you to easily identify and locate specific Journeys. Additionally, each email or text message within a Journey can also have its own title. This level of organization ensures clarity and simplicity when managing your automations.
A Step-by-Step Guide: Creating an Automated Journey for Client Communication
Are you ready to automate your client communication process? In this step-by-step guide, we'll walk you through the process of creating a Journey. Journeys are automated sequences of emails and texts that help you engage with your clients. By following these steps, you'll be able to build customized Journeys that save you time and enhance the client experience. Let's get started!
Step 1: Building a Custom Journey
Log in to your account and navigate to the Marketing Center
Look for the Journeys tile and click on it to access the Journey management interface.
Select Create New Journey
Step 2: Defining Journey Details
Give your Journey a descriptive name that reflects its purpose and content.
Select the appropriate location for your Journey if prompted.
This helps you organize your Journeys effectively but it does not affect who received communications. This step is for purely organizational purposes. You are not required to select a location and can leave the location blank.Step 3: Choosing Your Audience
Determine who will receive your message by selecting an existing audience or by creating an audience on the fly. If you choose to create an audience on the fly, the audience will be saved under Audiences for future use.
Select + Add a Condition. Tailor your communications based on specific conditions or audience segments. For example, you can create different messages for members and non-members.
Step 4: Adding Automated Communications
Select Configure this action
Choose the message type: Email only, text only, email and text.
Enter To & From details. Customize the email's from field, subject, preview text, and layout to create an engaging and on-brand message.
To: Will always be the recipients first name.
From: Is what appears in the recipients inbox.
Reply-to Email: If the customer replies, emails will be sent here.
Enter Subject details
Subject: What the client sees as the subject line in their inbox.
Preview text: Preview text displays in the inbox below the subject. Typically it is the first sentence of the email. However, if you enter preview text you can customize what is displayed here.
Step 5: Designing Email Layout
Enter layout details. Choose a layout option for your emails. You can opt for a standard layout or an advanced layout with more design customization.
Choose a Standard layout style or choose Advanced. Explore smart capabilities, such as smart text or AI-generated images, to add creative elements to your emails.
Select the address that will display at the footer of the email.
Text SMS phone number: Texts will always be sent to the assigned Two-way text phone number. Currently there is not a way to customize this assigned phone number. Also, the sending frequency is currently preset to every hour and can not be changed. Messages are not sent during do not disturb periods.
Step 6: Saving and Testing Your Journey
To test your Journey, select Save and Test or select Save and Exit. Before activating the Journey, we suggest testing each automation to ensure all messages look correct.
There are two important things to note about sending test messages:
Test messages send only to the personal staff email address of the logged in user.
Test messages only send as text messages, not emails.
Step 7: Turn on your automations and then your Journey
To turn on your automations under your Journey, select the on toggle on the far right of each automation. You must turn on all automations underneath a Journey and the Journey toggle to activate the Journey.
Managing and Analyzing Journeys
Monitor the performance of your Journeys regularly using the Marketing Automations reports. By checking the stats for delivered, opened, and clicked messages, you can analyze these stats and metrics to measure each automation’s effectiveness. When an automation is created, a corresponding report is created for the automation so you can make adjustments and improvements based on client engagement to optimize your Journeys over time.
Access the Marketing Automations reports:
From the main navigation menu under Reports select Clients
Select Marketing Automations
By selecting the orange automation title you can view reports on all of your automations Make adjustments and improvements based on client engagement and feedback to optimize your Journeys over time.
By following these step-by-step instructions, you can create personalized and automated Journeys that enhance your client communication. Automating your communications saves you time and allows you to provide a consistent and tailored experience to your clients throughout their Journey with your business.
Exploring Journey Tabs
When you access the journey section, you'll notice different tabs and options to organize your journeys effectively. Let's take a closer look at each tab:
Custom Built Journeys: Your own custom-built journeys will be prominently displayed here. You can filter them based on location and easily activate or deactivate them as needed.
Pre-built Journeys: We also provide pre-built journeys to simplify your experience. For existing Walla clients, you'll find pre-built automations such as the intro offer nurture, which includes welcoming, midpoint, and follow-up emails tailored to clients who have visited or not visited your business.
Status and Organization: Journeys can be activated or deactivated based on their relevance. For example, a Black Friday journey that's only used once a year can be deactivated when not in use.
