Podium Orchestrations Overview

About Podium

Podium orchestrations provide an easy way to create, visualize and monitor cross-channel triggered campaigns for each customer touch point.

You are able to launch multiple automations using a single trigger, making welcome, abandon, and re-engagement campaigns a breeze to set up.

Podium Insights, a set of performance metrics and indicators, will be displayed within published orchestrations, without the need to exit Podium. Immediately visible insights for each automation component include overall metrics for status, filtered and action categories, with detailed indicators coming into view upon hovering over each category.

Orchestration goals can be used to remove contacts who meet the desired goal from an orchestration based on their real-time behavior.

Orchestrations support draft, published and past versions for powerful version control.

You can add detailed descriptions to every component of the orchestration, making it easy to visualize the strategy of each automation. You are also able to print the orchestration for sharing with other team members.

 Podium Overview

Creating a New Podium Orchestration

Navigate to Message Automation -> Podium Orchestrations and click New.

Give the orchestration a name, add any tags and click Continue. You will be taken to the Podium orchestration main page. The order of operations for every automation follows exactly how components are stacked, starting with message send delay (or "Wait Until" trigger), followed by filter/audience criteria, and finally the action. If a contact is filtered out of an automation, they will be ineligible for any subsequent child automations (directly below). However, they will remain eligible for any sibling automations (directly to the right) provided they pass those filters.

Orchestration Settings

From the main orchestration page, you are able to configure the orchestration with settings defined in the table below.

Defining the Trigger

The first step in an orchestration is defining a trigger. Clicking on the trigger component will open a window containing trigger options:

• A contact's profile is updated - triggers an orchestration based on a profile change.
• A contact's real time behavior - triggers an orchestration based on an action a contact takes.
• A date or timestamp - triggers an orchestration based on the proximity of a date or timestamp.
• Recurring interval - triggers an orchestration on a recurring schedule based on audience rules.

A contact's profile Is updated

This trigger is used for starting orchestrations when a change is made to a contact's profile.

For example, you can start a series of automations when a contact is added to the newsletter list or when a contact's loyalty attribute is changed.

Selecting this trigger type will display options for choosing either a contact attribute or a list, with dropdown menus for all available attributes or lists in your account.

Use Case - Welcome Series

Use this trigger when setting up a welcome series. Learn more about setting up a welcome series using Podium.

A contact's real time behavior

This trigger is used for starting orchestrations based on contact's real-time behavior.

For example, you can start a series of automations when a contact opens or clicks a previously sent automation, or when a contact performs a custom event (browses a page on your website, adds something to the cart, places an order, etc).

Selecting this trigger type will display a list of message events and custom named events to choose from.

Use Case - Abandon Campaign

Use this trigger when setting up an abandon cart/browse/search campaign. Learn more about setting up an abandon cart campaign using Podium.

A date or timestamp

This trigger is used for starting orchestrations based on a date.

For example, you can start a series of automations based on birthdate, an anniversary, an expiration, etc.

Selecting this trigger will display a list of system dates and custom dates to choose from.

Use Case - Expiration Notification

Use this trigger when setting up an expiration campaign such as when a contact's membership is about to expire.

Recurring interval

This trigger is used for starting orchestrations automatically based on a recurring schedule and a set of audience rules. With all of the Audience Builder rules at your disposal, the potential use cases are near limitless.

• Sending Interval - Schedule recurring sends to occur every day, week or month. If weekly or monthly, specify day of the week or date in a month.
• At what time - Choose the send time and time zone.
• Start date - Specify recurring send start date.
• Add end date (optional) - Specify recurring send end date.

Use Case - Win-Back Campaign

Use this trigger when setting up a retargeting campaign for contacts who have not opened a specific message within a defined period of time.

For example, using the Recurring Interval we can set up a win-back campaign to automatically retarget an audience segment that has not opened the monthly clearance sale message within 15 days of message send time.

Recurring Trigger Notes:

• Recurring triggers are always followed by a single Action component.
• Additional sibling action components can be added parallel to one another.
• A full automation consisting of Wait Until, Delay, Filter, and Action components can be added below the initial action component(s).

Setting the Delay

Once the trigger is defined, you have the option to set a delay before the automation is sent.

The delay may be set as immediate (no delay) or a specified number of minutes, hours or days. A delay cannot be set for orchestrations using a data/timestamp trigger. The delay component will be greyed-out being that the automation will trigger immediately based on the desired date or timestamp trigger.

Changes to the delay period in a previously published orchestration will be effective for contact who meet the trigger following the change, and will not apply to contacts who are already in the delayed state.

Delaying Custom Event Triggered Messages

Unlike immediate sending, delayed sending presents an opportunity for the contact to trigger custom events more than once during the delay and before the message is sent. This is especially true when the trigger is based on custom events such as browse, product view, add to cart, etc.

Settings for handling events triggered during delay will become available in the Delay component when the orchestration trigger is based on a custom event.

Use Case - Browse Abandonment

Your contact may be interested in a particular jacket on your website. They view the product page but leave without making a purchase. You are able to send them a follow-up message based on this activity after a specified period of time.

The best suited orchestration trigger for this use case is A contact’s real time behavior based on a custom event we created and named browse_product.

Conditional event properties allow you to consider only those browse events that match specific criteria, in this case, when the product name is Cordial Blue Jacket.

Available orchestration trigger frequency options include:

• Once only - Contact can trigger this orchestration one time.
• Unlimited - There is no limit to how many times contact can trigger this orchestration.
• Once an hour - Contact can trigger this orchestration once every hour.
• Once a day - Contact can trigger this orchestration once per day.
• Custom interval - Specify the number of times contact can trigger this orchestration per number of days or hours.

Once the trigger is configured, opening the Delay component will now reveal If/Then conditions for handling of contact activities, or events, while the delay timer counts down.

In our example, the initial If condition will auto-populate with the browse_product custom event that is set as the orchestration trigger.

The Then statement can be configured to handle recurring custom event triggers according to the following options:

• Fire a unique action each time - Send a message for every occurrence of the custom event trigger within the specified delay time. For example, if the delay is set for 10 minutes, a contact who triggers the custom event at 3:00 PM, and again at 3:09 PM, will receive two messages, one at 3:10 PM and another at 3:19 PM.
• Note: The trigger frequency determines how many times the orchestration can be triggered by a contact. If set to Once only, the Fire a unique action each time option will not be applicable, since the custom event can be triggered no more than once. In the example above, the trigger frequency is set to Unlimited to compliment sending multiple messages any time the custom event is triggered during the delay.
• Continue the delay time - Delay timer will be unaffected by subsequent custom event triggers. For example, the first browse_product event could be triggered at 3:00 PM, and a subsequent one at 3:04 PM. Because subsequent triggers are ignored, only one message is sent at 3:10 PM.
• Restart Delay time - The delay timer will restart from the beginning each time the custom event occurs until it is allowed to expire in absence of repeated triggers.

Multiple If/Then conditions can be added to further automate message sending based on contact's real-time behavior.

Setting the Audience Filter

The audience filter allows you to filter the recipients of the automation by an Audience Rule. You are able to set up a new audience or load a saved audience.

Defining the Action

The last component in an automation is the action. Clicking on the action component will open a window containing the three action options:

• Send an email - sends contacts an automated email message.
• Send an SMS (if enabled in the account) - sends contacts an automated SMS message.
• Send a push notification (if enabled in the account) - sends contacts an automated push message.
• Make an Open channel request (if enabled in the account) - makes a RESTful API call to a specified endpoint. 
• Run a Data Automation job (if enabled in the account) - runs a data job to transform the collection data specified.

Message Creation

Clicking on either of the above Action options will open up the automated message creation page. You are able to use either the Sculpt or HTML editor to compose message content.

You will have access to the same message creation features and functionality found in other automated messages, except the ability to edit the sending method.

Adding Additional Automations

Podium supports multiple automations in a single orchestration. Clicking the Plus button will add an additional automation either next to (sibling) or below (child) the current automation.

If an automation is added below, there will be an option to set an additional trigger: Wait Until.

You have the options for Do not wait, wait for previous message events (opened, clicked or bounced) or wait for other event (message event or custom named event) before the automation will send.

Setting the Orchestration Goal

The orchestration goal is used to set a primary objective for the orchestration. This objective is defined by a custom event such as "placed an order", "viewed a webpage", etc. When contacts complete the objective, they can be excluded from, or continue through, the remaining actions within the orchestration. Note that the orchestration goal is optional and not required before an orchestration can be published and enabled.

Clicking on the Goal icon will display options to set a goal for the orchestration. Give the goal a name, select a custom named event and define what happens to a contact when the goal is met. There are options to keep or exclude the contact from an orchestration.

Adding Descriptions and Printing

When a component is configured, a default description is added. You can easily edit the description by clicking and typing text in the description field.

You can zoom in or out of an orchestration and print for sharing with other team members.

Publish and Enable

Once all components are configured and message content is created, you can publish the entire orchestration by clicking the Publish Draft button.

If any components are left incomplete, you will see an error with the incomplete components highlighted.

After successfully publishing the orchestration, you can enable it using the Enable/Disable dropdown. In the published state, the delay, filter and action components are read-only until the orchestration is copied to draft.

When an orchestration is running and then disabled, all message sending will be stopped for that orchestration, even if the contact is in the delayed state. Once the orchestration is enabled again, contacts will continue on the path from their last state, and all updates to Podium insights will resume.

Viewing Podium Insights

Podium Insights are available for the entire orchestration and for every automation within the orchestration. Once an orchestration is published, enabled and sending, you can gain insight into its performance all the way down to individual automation components.

Goal performance will be displayed at the top of the orchestration page. Results can be viewed as total or unique values and applied to the current version only, or aggregates, which includes past versions of the orchestration.

• Total/Unique Triggered - total or unique number of contacts that triggered the orchestration
• Current Version - display results for the currently published version only
• Aggregates - display results for all versions of the orchestration, current and past

Component summary metrics will be displayed to the right of individual automations. Hovering over each category (status, filtered, action) will display detailed indicators.

• Waiting - number of contacts waiting to be triggered according to to the Wait until trigger
• Delayed - number of triggered contacts in the delayed state
• Filtered Out - number of contacts that didn't meet the audience criteria and were filtered out of the automation

Note that tracked indicators for the Action component differ depending on the channel used to send the message.

• Email Sent - number of contacts that received the email message
  • Message Stopped - Number of messages that have been stopped when the {stopMessage} Smarty function is used in an email action. This number is shown below the Email Sent action indicator, when hovering the action indicator itself, and the event can be used as a filter in Event Data Reports.
• SMS Sent - (if enabled in the account) number of contacts that received the SMS message
• Push Sent - (if enabled in the account) number of contacts that received the push message

If viewing Podium Insights for past orchestration versions, you will see all campaign metrics up until the point that version was re-published.

Drafts and Past Versions

Copying to draft provides an easy way to modify all aspects of the orchestration. When an enabled orchestration is copied to draft, the live published version will continue to run until the new draft is published.

All previously published versions will be saved under the Past Versions tab. Past versions are saved using the orchestration published date and time stamp. The orchestration enabled date is not displayed in this view.

When copying to draft and adding a new action, the contact that received the initial message will need to re-trigger the orchestration to receive messages created with the new action, assuming they met the audience criteria and were not filtered out.