A journey is a set of predefined actions that are configured to accomplish a certain goal. In case a visitor performs or doesn't perform the predefined actions on your organization’s website, then based on that, communication triggers can be configured. The visitors will receive messages via different channels which in turn will engage, encourage and influence them to make purchases and thereby help your organization to reach its desired goal of enhancing as well as retaining its customer base.

In order to create a journey, the very first step is to choose a ‘trigger’ that determines how the journey will be carried onwards. The trigger might be based on subscriber activity such as an online purchase or it could be associated with an occasion like someone's birthday. When the specified action is performed, or the date rolls around, the journey will be triggered and get automatically deployed.

One of the main advantages of employing journeys is the facility to implement and leverage omnichannel messaging. NotifyVisitors enables you to create journeys based on different conditions and logics and thereby engage visitors based on actions performed by them on your organization’s website. The conditions and logics set within a journey can be configured in a manner to either include (enter) or exclude (exit) customers within the journey.

Although journeys streamline the process of customer engagement, there are times when you might experience certain issues while running and deploying them. We have thoroughly analyzed some of those issues and provided solutions to resolve the same. Before you begin reading the article, kindly ensure that your e-commerce store or your organization’s website is integrated with NotifyVisitors.

Inadequate Or No Entries In Journey

Journey Is Inactive / Paused / Stopped

It is possible that even though the event trigger has been configured properly, the journey somehow gets paused or stopped. This might be because certain settings for the journey are not configured properly. So, the first step is to check whether the journey is active or inactive. 

In order to check whether a journey is active or inactive, simply navigate to the Journey section of the NotifyVisitors Dashboard and check whether the status of the journey is indicated as ‘Running’. If yes, then the journey is currently active. If not, then the journey has either paused or stopped and is thereby currently inactive.

Issues With The Event Trigger

Every journey has a main event which acts as a trigger to include or filter customers. In other words, when a visitor performs a specific event that is predefined within the journey, on your e-commerce store or on your organization’s website then that customer gets included within the journey and consequently the journey gets executed for that particular customer.

However, at times, even though the customer performs the preconfigured event, he or she does not get included within the journey. This in turn leads to inadequate entries within the journey. There could be multiple reasons for such an occurrence related to the event trigger, but some of them are quite straightforward such as:

Inexecution Of The Main Event

It is possible that even though the main event has been configured properly, its execution is not on the correct triggers i.e. the triggers on which the execution is supposed to happen. In order to know whether the execution of the main event is getting registered or not, you need to check the event logs. In order to check the event logs and know whether the main event is getting mapped within the software, simply proceed as follows:

Navigate to the NotifyVisitors Dashboard > Analytics > Events.

Choose the event from the ‘Select Event’ dropdown and if required specify the event’s associated ‘Attribute(s)’ , then click on the button titled ‘View Details’. Upon doing so, the trending graph for the selected event will get displayed. You can even check the exact payload of the events by clicking on the ‘View Logs’ button.

Main Event Does Not Get Registered / Mapped / Detected

In case after checking the event logs you realize that the main event is not getting registered within the marketing automation software even though it is being triggered by the customers on your organization’s website, then you need to perform certain corrective measures in order for the main event to get mapped within the software. Kindly conduct the following checks and then follow our guide to resolve this specific issue.

1. Check whether the NotifyVisitors integration code is added to the website. 
   You need to ensure that your NotifyVisitors integration code is added to your organization’s website.
2. Check whether BID and BID_E are correct and related to the same account. 
   You might have purchased more than one NotifyVisitors account. Kindly note that each account has its own unique Brand ID or BID. The Brand ID of the NotifyVisitors account that you are currently using to deploy your journeys, should be linked to your organization’s website in order for the software to track visitor behavior and record analytics for your journeys. In other words, both BID and BID_E (Encrypted Brand ID) linked to your organization’s website should be of the same NotifyVisitors account that you are currently using to deploy journeys.

Main Event Gets Registered Yet The Customers Do Not Enter The Journey

In case some customers are not getting included within the journey even though the main event is getting mapped and registered within the software, then it could be possible that the main event’s trigger is pre configured with rules such as an attribute filter and with certain prerequisites which need be fulfilled by the customers in order to get included within the journey such as: 

1. All conditions must be satisfied.
2. Any condition should be satisfied.

Since certain customers might be missing the required attributes or might not satisfy the conditions pre configured for the main event trigger, they will thereby not get included within the journey.

Issues With The Segment Trigger

The journey gets triggered when the customers enter into a segment in accordance with its predefined rules. In case customers are not getting included into the journey then this essentially means that the customers may not be entering into the segment. In this scenario, you need to check whether the customers are getting included within the segment via checking the time of their entry in the segment through the user logs for that specific segment. In case the customers are not getting included, then the cause for this occurrence has to be identified and debugged. You need to follow the steps mentioned hereinafter to check the user logs of a particular segment. 

Navigate to the NotifyVisitors Dashboard > Segments > Segment.
A list of all the segments you had configured will be visible on screen.

In the ‘Search Bar’ you can enter the name or ID of the segment that you have set as an entry point in the journey in order to filter it out from the list of all segments. Click on ‘More Options’ or ‘Three Dots’ present under the ‘Action’ tab to get a dropdown as shown in the screenshot below. Select the ‘User Logs’ option.

Selecting the ‘User Logs’ option would open records such as User Name, User ID, NVUID, Email, etc. for all the users who got included within the segment.

It is from these records that you need to check the time at which the customers entered within the segment. To perform this check, simply open the user logs for the segment as described above and in the screen that follows, you can check all the users’ details including the time of entry in the segment as shown in the screenshot provided below.

Journey Works Only For The First Time

It is possible that even though the main event trigger has been configured properly and the segment rules have been defined correctly, the journey somehow works only once i.e. exclusively for the first time and then gets paused or stopped. This could be either because certain additional settings for the journey are configured incorrectly or because the customer has exited the journey by fulfilling its ultimate goal. Kindly perform the following checks to ascertain the reason why the journey worked only once.

Check Whether The Customers Are Allowed Or Not Allowed To Re-enter The Journey

Ensure that the additional setting titled ‘Re Enter’ hasn’t been left unchecked. Leaving this particular setting unchecked will disallow customers from re-entering within the journey in case they perform the main event once again upon previously having exited the journey. All those customers who have previously exited the journey upon fulfilment of the journey’s ultimate goal, should be allowed to re-enter it in case they trigger the main event once again.

Check Whether The Customer Has Performed An Exit Trigger / A Goal Trigger / A Stop Flow

It is possible that the journey worked only once for a subsection of customers and then got paused or stopped because all those customers performed a predefined exit trigger or goal trigger, an example of which is shown in the screenshot provided below. For instance, suppose within the journey, the ultimate goal is predefined as the ‘Purchase’ event.

So, all those customers who perform this event using specific browsers at any point within the journey’s flow, will be automatically exited from the journey and consequently the journey would cease to execute for them.

Similarly, in case the customer performs a different event such as ‘Add To Cart’ or ‘Cancel Purchase’ at any point within the journey’s flow, then he/she will be automatically exited from the journey. So for such customers the journey would not execute again unless they re-trigger the main event.

Customers Enter The Journey But Do Not Receive Communications

In case some customers are not receiving any communications preset within the journey’s flow even though they are included within the journey since the main event is properly configured and the segment rules are correctly defined, then in this situation you will have to check the journey’s ‘Transactional Activity’. Proceed as follows in order to check a journey’s ‘Transactional Activity’.

Navigate to the NotifyVisitors Dashboard > Journey.
Enter either a journey’s name or its ID in the ‘Search’ bar in order to filter out a specific journey. Then, click on the ‘Three Dots’ present adjacent to the journey’s name in order to get a dropdown as shown in the screenshot below. Select the ‘Transactional Activity’ option from the dropdown.

In the following screen, enter the NotifyVisitors NV_UID of the customer who didn’t receive communications even though he/she was included within the journey. Hit enter once you have typed in the NotifyVisitors NV_UID to display the status of various communications sent to the customer.

The purpose of checking the ‘Transactional Activity’ is to determine the status of the dispatched communications which in turn could be successful, rejected or in progress. In case the status is:

1. Rejected: Then the customer(s) must have performed the exit trigger or goal trigger as explained above.
2. In Progress: Then the journey has not yet been completely processed and is currently under execution. To be sure that the journey is undergoing execution as defined, simply check the schedule time for the communications.

3. Successful: Then the customers must have received the forwarded communications. In case the customer(s) still complain about having not received them, then you need to check the error statistics of your dispatched communications. Proceed as follows in order to check the error statistics of the campaigns within a journey. 
   1. Navigate to the NotifyVisitors Dashboard > Journey.
   2. In order to filter out a specific journey, click on the search bar and enter either the journey’s name or its ID. The details such as Status, Run Time, Channels, Total Entries etc. for the journey you searched for will get displayed on-screen.
   3. Click on ‘More Options’ or ‘Three Dots’ present right next to the journey’s name in order to get a dropdown as shown in the screenshot below. Select the ‘Analytics’ option from the dropdown.

• 4. In the screen that follows, you will be able to see the overall statistics such as Sent, Delivered, Unique Open, Unique Clicks etc. for all the campaigns within the selected journey. Click on the ‘Campaign Name’ in order to view the detailed error statistics of that campaign.

• 5. Upon doing so, a new frame would appear on-screen wherein you can check the detailed statistics for the selected campaign, including the error statistics such as Total Bounced, Total Rejected, Total Failures, Total Marked As Spam etc.

Upon checking the error statistics, in case you notice that the campaign has a certain discard count viz. delivery rejections, then in this scenario you need to check whether the customer(s) were reachable or not reachable via the campaign’s channel (Email, SMS, Web Push etc.). Proceed as follows in order to perform the ‘User Reachability’ check.

Navigate to the NotifyVisitors Dashboard > Segments > User List.
Search a specific user via entering any one of the user’s credentials such as User ID, NV_UID etc. in the search bar. Then, click on the user’s name in order to view detailed information of that user.

Within the new frame that opens up, click on the tab titled ‘User Reachability’ in order to ascertain the channels through which the user is reachable.

Upon checking the error statistics, in case you notice that the campaign has a certain failure count viz. delivery failures, then in this scenario the issue is in the service provider integration.