Extensive guide to setting up a workflow in the Customer Data Platform

Goal

Understand what workflows are and how to set them up.

Product

• Mobile Marketing Cloud
• CDP

Steps

With the workflow builder you can create automated customer journeys based on your customer’s characteristics and behavior. Send automated welcome series or nurture your leads with a fully mapped out journey.

What can you do:

• Set up goals, so that users that have met your goal will exit the flow and don't continue to receive messages that are part of the flow.
• Specify timeouts if you want to wait between steps in the flow to keep you from over saturating your customers.
• Track every touchpoint of your flow, so you can build on long lasting user engagement.

The easy to use drag & drop editor enables you to create these flows within a few minutes.

A workflow can be triggered through multiple ways and different steps can be setup to reach the end goal of the workflow. Below document holds an explanation of each trigger with a basic example.

Where to find

Navigate to the Customer data platform

In the left menu go to Workflows

Workflow overview

The workflow overview gives you a quick insight into the below items and even allows you to favorite your best workflows.

Favorites

On a personal level you can mark a workflow as favorite by clicking on the star, next time you visit the page your favorite workflows are on top!

Workflow icons

The icons in front of the workflow show you what type of trigger the workflow has. Is it a profile added (to segment) trigger, an event added trigger, anniversary of daily time passed trigger. It can now easily be seen straight from the overview.

Workflow short description

A short description of the start of the workflow (trigger step). This shows you exactly based on which segment (or all) a profile added trigger is activated for example.

Workflow last updated details

You can now also see who has last updated the workflow and when, this to troubleshoot any changes made in the workflow.

Workflow status with the ability to filter on it

• Active - enabled workflow
• Inactive - disabled workflow
  

Number of activations

How many times is the workflow activated

Conversion percentage

What is the conversion percentage of the workflow

Sort by

• Last updated
• Creation date
• Name
  

Create new workflow

To create a new workflow click on add from the workflow overview.

The workflow editor will open and here you can drag and drop all the different steps to create your flow. Important to know is that a workflow always starts with a trigger. Workflows can only start on 1 trigger.

Below the different trigger and step options are explained to create your flow.

Triggers

When you create a new workflow you need to start with a trigger, as the workflow needs to know based on what action it needs to go off, this is defined in a trigger step. You can only select 1 trigger to start a workflow.

Profile added trigger

This type of workflow starts whenever a profile is added to a segment. First you need to define a segment based on the characteristics and/or behavior needed, when a profile is added to this selected segment this workflow will start.

Example

Segment: Subscribers

A new profile enters the CDP and this person has subscribed to a newsletter, which makes him end up in the Subscribers segment. Based on this trigger you can send him a welcome email.

Profile removed trigger

First you need to define a segment based on the characteristics and/or behavior needed, when a profile is removed from this selected segment, this will start the activation of the workflow.

Example

Segment: Subscribers

A profile update enters the CDP and this person no longer wishes to receive the newsletter, this causes him to be removed from the Subscribers segment. This action will trigger this workflow, you can send him a confirmation that he has unsubscribed.

Event added trigger

Other then the above two triggers, this is not a trigger on profile level but on event type level (incoming message)

You need to define based on which event type or specific property within the selected event type you want this workflow to start (either with consent or not).

Example

Event type: CM Ticketing: Ticket Sale

Someone has bought a ticket and based on this incoming event, this workflow will start. You can for example send the customer a pre-arrival email 2 days prior to the event.

Daily time passed trigger

First you need to define a segment for which you want this workflow to start (either with consent or not). Secondly, you need to select a time, then every day at this set time the workflow will start.

Example

Segment: Subscribers

Everyday at 12:00 you want to send all people who have subscribed to your newsletter an update, either through Email or WhatsApp, based on their preferences.

Anniversary trigger

First you need to define a segment for which you want this workflow to start (either with consent or not).

Then you need to select a time, at this set time the workflow will go off.

Last step is to select the anniversary profile property, so which (date) property on the profile you want to use to trigger an anniversary workflow (you will of course only see date properties in the selection).

Example

Segment: All

Pick a time: 09:00 AM

Anniversary profile property: Date of birth

This means that this workflow will go off at 09:00 in the morning for all people in segment All who’s birthday it is. So you can for example send them a Happy Birthday email on their birthday.

Steps

To make the workflow carry out the right steps in the right order you have to connect them with the dotted lines. You can easy drag them from the blue points to each other. You have to connect the bottom blue dot with a top blue dot of your next step.

Wait step

Sometimes you don’t want the workflow to go off immediately after a trigger came in. In this case you can implement a wait step before the next step is executed.

Example

Someone subscribed to your newsletter and you want to wait 1 hour before sending him a welcome email.

HTTP request step

With this step you can do a lot, you can use POST, GET, PUT, DELETE and PATCH requests. It allows you to send sent events to third party endpoints or get data from third party endpoints and process them into the CDP. Our professional services team are experts in setting up these flows, so if you need any assistance here please reach out to them to get the most out of your data.

Some ideas:

• Send data to an external endpoint (POST)
• Request data from an endpoint to further use in your flow or enrich your profiles (GET)

It all starts with authenticating yourself if you want to connect to an external endpoint. We support the below options:

Basic header authentication

In general, basic header authentication is needed to post events, therefore you need to enter the key and the value. If you are trying to post events internally, CM.com products mostly use the X-CM-PRODUCTOKEN, this can be found in the target API.

OAuth 1A authentication

Another commonly used authentication mentioned is OAuth 1, this is used for example by our own CM payments product.

Here you need details like Client_Id and Client_Secret. We use HMAC-SHA256 as signature type.

OAuth 2

The OAuth 2 authentication method requires the use of a Token URL and several query parameters.

The token URL can be requested through your third party provider, same as the URL.

We support the below query parameters:

• password
• username
• client_id
• grand_type (password and client_credentials)
• client_secret

URL based API key authentication - Query parameters

Depending on the endpoint, it can support authentication in the URL.

We support profile property URL substitutions (merge tags) and are planning to extend with event and session properties.

Using {{profile property}} you can substitute the value from a profile property.

Example: The value from NPS is taken from the profile to POST to an endpoint.

https://thisIsATestApi/v1/collect/{{NPS}}?api_key=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Email step

The email step let’s you send out an email to someone’s email address.

Simply select the profile field that contains the email from the Email field on profile drop-down and then select the triggered campaign you want to send.

Merge tags

If you want to use a more personalized way in sending your email you can work with merge tags in your email campaigns. In the workflow, select the profile field that contains the recipient first name, so this will appear in their email. If no first name available, you need to specify the default value for first name (mandatory). More details on merge tags in triggered email campaigns can be found here.

Example

Someone has subscribed to your newsletter, you want to wait an hour and then send him a welcome email using his first name as known in the CDP.

Message step

The message step let’s you send out a message to someone’s mobile phone.

Simply select the profile field that contains the phone number from the Mobile phone number property drop-down and then select the campaign (message) you want to send. Same as is the email step you can use merge tags to make your message more personal. More details on how to use merge tags in campaigns can be found here.

Example

Someone has subscribed to your newsletter, you want to wait an hour and then send him a welcome SMS or WhatsApp.

Wait until step

Sometimes you don’t want the workflow to go off immediately after a trigger came in and you want to wait based on a specif date in the event property. In this case you can implement a wait until step before the next step is executed.

Example

A new hotel reservation is made, you want to wait until 3 days before check in date to send the pre-arrival email to the guest.

Filter step

When you are automating your marketing campaigns, you want to optimize it is as much as possible. For instance if you want to send emails based on customer preferences to send more personalized campaigns.

When you are sending important emails to your customers, you want to ensure that they open it. If you want to send them a reminding message, you only want to target the customers that did not open it. Of course you want to automate this in one workflow and that is when you use the Branched Workflows (Advanced/Pro subscription) of the Customer Data Platform.

Example

A customer has attended a festival, received pre-arrival details and after his stay we wait 14 days after the festival to see if he has given consent or not in these last 2 weeks by filtering on the consent field in the CDP. If not we will delete his profile, if he did we will send him a nice demo email about the next festival.

Delete profile step

You can use this step to delete a profile from your CDP.

Example

When someone revoked consent you could delete this profile automatically.

Save workflow

If the workflow is completed you can save it by pressing on the Save button. It will only be clickable if the workflow is completed and all mandatory items are filled. In this example the workflows doesn’t have a name yet, so it cannot be saved.

If you have a big workflow it can happen that when opening a workflow the steps look a bit on-organised.

If you press the tidy button in the workflow it will reorder all the steps nicely.

Setup Goal conversion

If you want to work with goals in your workflows you can enable the goal conversion on workflow level.

A goal can be setup on event level and you can choose to stop the workflow when your goal is met.

For example, when the event Webform comes in and the event property age has the value 30 then your goal is met and it will add to the goal conversion in your workflow overview.

Workflow use cases

Ticketing

Both seated and general ticketing can be integrated into the CDP, making it possible to set up automated ticketing flows out of the box.

Example

We often use a workflow for our ticketing customers. The workflow is being triggered by the order placed event. After this, we wait until the time slot for that order and send out and sms/email 24 hours before.

After this, we wait for two weeks and check whether the profile has given consent. If not, the profile is deleted so that we keep the CDP clean.

Hospitality/Leisure

Example

We can use a workflow for hotel reservations. The workflow is being triggered by a new reservation, we then send him a welcome email.

Then we wait until 3 days before his arrival and sen him a pre-arrival message with details about his upcoming stay through either email or SMS for example.

Then we wait again after his check-out date and then we send him an email thanking him for his stay.

Video

Below you find a video on the basics of setting up a Workflow in Mobile Marketing Cloud.