I am trying to build a journey in Marketing Cloud that includes an "update contact" step as the first step in the journey (for example, update contacts who are age 50 or older by changing their campaign_name field to "over_50"). I want to update the field in the same data extension used for the journey. I then want to have a split on the journey, and anyone who has campaign_name of "over_50" to go one path, and the remainder go another path. Can I do that, or is the data extension a snapshot of the moment in time that the journey was activated and therefore the decision step won't see the campaign_name that I'm trying to update?
1 Answer
Correct, the Journey Entry data extension will be a snapshot for that record.
You can still build this use-case though. Simply use a different Data Extension as the target for Update Contact activity. This target Data Extension needs to be available and linked in Data Designer's Attribute Group - and then you can configure this Decision Split, based on Contact Data path, in your Journey.
Check out this help article on this scenario.
