Update Contact in Journey Builder - New Attribute Value

Question

I wanted to know if I can use "update contact" to add a new attribute when the contact opens an email and change their status on the data extension as "Email Opened"? Please let me know if my question is not clear. I basically want to change there status in the data extension instead of pulling it from the report.

Thank you!!

Answer 1

Short answer is 'Yes' you can use it.

But just keep a note:

• You need to add a wait (like 1 or 3 or x days) activity followed by engagement split with open. Journey builder will monitor till that particular date and can use update contact to change the status. But if contact opened an email beyond these days then update contact won't work.

Answer 2

As was added by @fromero, my recommendation would be to utilize a scheduled automation with a query instead of the update contact function. This is because after the update contact is run, it will never update that contact again, meaning if they open after X days, it will never reflect that they opened the email inside your data.

By utilizing a scheduled query, you will have a recurring check against the data view (real time data) to verify if that person opened the email or not, which will reflect more accurate information inside your data.

Example query:

SELECT a.SubscriberKey,
Opened = 1
FROM [myDE] a
WHERE EXISTS (
  SELECT TOP 1 o.SubscriberKey from [_Open] o
  WHERE o.SubscriberKey = a.SubscriberKey
  AND o.TriggererSendDefinitionObjectID = {{myTSD_ID}}
  AND o.EventDate > (CAST(GETDATE() - 1 as Date))
)

That being said though, if you just want this to record if they have opened by Day X, then utilizing the update contact function is the perfect solution. I would just make sure to clarify that inside your field naming convention to ensure it is easily understood and referenced correctly later.