journey exclusion

Question

Summary

I want to exclude some customers, who bought an event ticket, from a product review journey using a decision split at the beginning of the journey.

The condition that I use is "Order" doesn't contain the name of the event and instead of getting the customers from the DE exclusion kicked out, I get the other rest. Tried "Order" contain the name of the event but I got the exact same result

I have attached a screenshot with the initial journey

• The first decision split is my new decision split where order doesn't contain the name of the event
• second decision split is to check if they are subscribed
• third decision split is to check if they are a EU customers or worldwide

I have a Product Review journey where customers who are buying something are entering a journey receiving an email to ask for a review. We just launched a couple of events that are due at the end of the year.

The problem that I have with this is that the customers who bought the events are being pushed into the journey and ask to leave a review before the event has actually happened.

I have created an audience by selecting the customers who purchased the event and set up to run every day as an update.

Then, I was trying to exclude them from the journey and the way I did it is to connect the customerID of the DE with the Custom Key in the Contact builder.

Then I added a decision split at beginning of the journey and filter the new data exstension linked in contact builder where the OrderName doesn't contain the EventName.

The problem is that instead of having the people who just bought the events kicked out of the journey I get the rest of the people. I've tried to change instead of doesn't contain to contain I still get the same result or I'm missing something. Attached a screenshot with the beginning of the journey. I hope this make sense. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

First of all - I would leave most of this logic to the query populating the journey data extension. This will give you the best flexibility of adjusting your criteria.

Secondly, I assume one individual can have multiple event tickets. Hence your decision split operates on a data extension connected in the Data Designer using a 1:Many cardinality. This is never a good idea, as the decision is evaluated on the first occurrence of the match (selected randomly). If your customers are allowed into the journey, this can be caused by them having an old ticket for an event which has indeed occurred in the past. This is although probably not a case in your journey, as all your events are still in the future.

More help can be provided, if you also share the screenshots of your decision logic.

Also, looking at what I can see from your screenshot of the journey - you only have a single email. For the sake of simplicity, I would use Automation Studio with a single query activity and one email send activity. Again - leaving the logic to SQL.

Answer 2

One thing to keep in mind when you deal with decision splits and more complex boolean conditions. The human brain usually understands comparisons without negations much faster and consistent. That's why i tend to use conditions without "nots" ;)

But as you said you already tried it. It is just a tip ;)

What I would do is to change the SQL query that build your audience that each of those actually did not use the code. (Just like Lukas Lunow said)

Nonetheless it seems a little bit weird, that you got the wrong result.