Journey Settings

Journey Builder High-Throughput Sending (HTS)

Apply HTS to your email activities. Enabling this feature can increase your email sending throughput by two times or more.

Contact Entry

Contact entry mode dictates when the contact is eligible to enter a journey. Journey Builder offers three entry options to define when contacts can enter a journey. To learn more, see Choose a Contact Entry Mode.

• Select No re-entry if contacts can’t enter the journey again after a previous entry. For example, in a Welcome Journey, set your entry to No re-entry because you want your customers to be introduced to your brand only one time. This setting applies across all versions of a journey. After you activate the journey, you can’t change this option.
  

  Note Test Mode doesn’t support this setting. When testing a journey, use Re-entry at any time or Re-entry only after exiting. Then, select No re-entry after testing if necessary.
• Select Re-entry at any time if contacts can enter the journey multiple times before exiting. This setting admits the contact into the journey each time that contact meets filter criteria. For example, if you use a journey for a post-purchase engagement, you can allow contacts to enter the journey whenever they make a purchase. After you select this option and activate the journey, you can change the option to Re-entry only after exiting after creating another version
• Select Re-entry only after exiting if a contact must exit the journey before reentering it. This setting admits the contact into the journey when that contact meets filter criteria, if applicable. But the system doesn’t readmit that contact into the journey until after that contact exits the journey. After a contact exits the journey, the contact can enter again after meeting the filter criteria. For example, contacts can go through a journey multiple times but not concurrently, such as for a seasonal promotion or a yearly membership renewal. After you select this option and activate the journey, you can change the setting to Re-entry at any time by creating another version.

The system applies the Contact Entry setting at the journey level for each version of a journey.

Note The contact entry setting isn’t configurable for Single Send journeys.

Consider timing and how you want customers to enter the journey. Choose the best cadence for putting users into the journey, and consider re-entry criteria. For example, in a Welcome Journey, set your entry to No re-entry because you want your customers to be introduced to your brand only one time. Sometimes, contacts can go through a journey multiple times but not concurrently such as a seasonal promotion or a yearly membership renewal. In this case, use Re-entry only after exiting. Re-entry anytime allows the contact to enter the journey multiple times simultaneously. For example, if you use a journey for a post-purchase engagement, you can allow contacts to enter the journey whenever they make a purchase.

Default Email Address and Mobile Number

Define a default email address and mobile number for each contact before sending messages in a journey. Often, Marketing Cloud Engagement stores more than one email address or mobile number for a single contact. Use this feature to designate which address or number receives the message.

Before you set a default, configure the journey’s entry source.

Do you want your journey to always send to the email address associated with each contact, or can that email address change during the journey? If the email address can change, choose to identify and use an email attribute from Contacts. The same principles apply to the mobile number you select as default.

• Select Use email attribute from Contacts. If the email address can change, as in a journey with a long duration, choose to use the email attribute associated with Contacts.
• Select Use email attribute from Entry Source. If a contact’s email address is unlikely to change or a journey doesn’t allow re-entry, use the email for the contact at entry.
• Select Use mobile number attribute from Contacts. If the mobile number can change, as in a journey with a long duration, choose this option. When this option is selected, the journey first attempts to use the mobile number indicated in the entry source. If that number is invalid, Journey Builder looks to the Contact for other valid numbers. If another valid number is found, Journey Builder uses that for sending SMS messages in the journey.
• Select Use phone number attribute from Entry Source. If a contact’s phone number is unlikely to change or a journey doesn’t allow re-entry, use the phone number for the contact at entry.
  • If you don’t want to use the mobile number attribute from Contacts, select Disable SMS Fallback to Contact Model. When checked, only the number in the entry source is attempted. If the number invalid, no other attempts are made.

Considerations

• If more than one entry source data extension column has EmailAddress as its data type, Journey Builder prompts you to select one.
• To set the default mobile number to the priority 1 number stored in the contact record, select Use mobile number attribute from Contacts. The default address overrides the current email address setting for each contact.  
• To use the full-path name setting, create a new version and reselect the default email address from contacts. All attribute groups accessible on Data Designer are now listed as options under contact data when you select the Default email address from contacts option.
• Fields configured with the EmailAddress data type are available only after an entry source is fully configured.

Transaction Key

To identify a contact entering a journey as unique, create a transaction key.

Note Transaction Key is available with Custom Events only. Add the Transaction Key setting to the config.json file for the journey’s entry event to make it available in Journey Settings.

Transaction keys combine an ID value that Journey Builder generates with a unique contact attribute value to create a wholly unique identifier. All contact filters in the journey observe this unique identifier, including filters in the entry event and decision split activities. This identifier prevents contacts from following the unintended path when their ContactID still matches current entry or decision split criteria due to a previous transaction. The contact attributes available for creating a transaction key are ContactID and ContactKey. Transaction keys are commonly used when a journey’s entry event is initiated via the API.

Google Analytics Integration

The Google Analytics integration tracks links in your journey emails and can track links by domain. If enabled for your account, Google Analytics tracking is available by default in all journeys.

You can optionally specify which domains to track. When you include specific domains, journey metrics include only the links that point to these domains.