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Creating an Alerts Journey in Journey Hub

Learn how to create journeys to send customer's notifications for Low Inventory, Price Drop, or Back-in-Stock alerts.

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Written by Support
Updated over 2 months ago

How does Journey Hub Alerts Work?

The Alerts Suite is comprised of three different types of campaigns: Low Inventory (sent when the quantity on hand drops below a threshold), Price Drop (when the price of an item drops more than a specified amount), and Back-in-Stock (when an item is restocked).

In the Listrak Platform an alert is configured for each type of message you send. These alerts specify properties such as the specific merchant, the amount a price must drop by, or what is considered low inventory. Two types of alerts can be configured: implicit - based on the products a contact browses or adds to their cart, or explicit - based on signing-up for notifications.

โš ๏ธ The type of alerts that can be configured is based on your integration. Contact your Account Manager or Listrak Implementation team to learn more.

After an alert is configured and the journey is activated, when a contact takes the implicit or explicit action and the threshold is met, such as product's inventory level dropping, a contact is then entered into the journey. A contact's email address or phone number is collected in the explicit sign-up form, or may have been previously collected as they engaged with your site, for instance when creating an account.

What happens before messages are sent?

A contact is eligible to receive messages when opted in to the channel associated with the message. If a contact is not opted in to the channel the message will be skipped and a contact will continue through the flow. This is checked for each message in the journey at the time of send. For example, a contact entered into a cross-channel email and SMS journey would not receive SMS messages if they are not opted in to the specified SMS sender code that is set at the message level.

In addition to checking subscription status, the journey also checks the stock status of the product that is included in the message. A product must be both in stock and marked as purchasable in the Listrak product data in order to send an alert message. If a product is no longer in stock or purchasable the alert will be removed from the Listrak system and a contact will skip the message step.


Understanding Alerts Types

Before you can create a journey, you have to define how a contact becomes eligible for receiving the messages from the Alerts Suite.

The following alert types can be configured in your settings. The type of journey you create should match up to the type of alert being used.

  • Cart Price Drop: Enters a contact into a journey if a product in their cart decreases in price by your specified threshold.

  • Cart Low Inventory: Enters a contact into a journey if a product has low inventory based on your threshold.

  • Product Browse Back In Stock: Enters a contact into a journey if the product they previously browsed has come back in stock.

  • Product Browse Price Drop: Enters a contact into a journey if a product they previously browsed has decreased in price by your specified threshold.

  • Product Browse Low Inventory: Enters a contact into a journey if a product they previously browsed has low inventory based your specified threshold.

  • Sign Up Back In Stock: Enters a contact into the journey if they fill out a form on the website to be notified when a product is back in stock.

  • Product Back In Stock: Enters a contact when an item they requested is back in stock.

  • Expiration Notification: Enters a contact into a journey if the product has not come back in stock after a period of time. This alert is configured when setting up the Back In Stock alert.

  • Discontinued: Enters a contact into a journey if the product has been discontinued based on the product information provided to Listrak. This alert is configured when setting up the Back In Stock alert.


Now you are ready to begin building your Alerts journey.

Creating a Journey

  1. Navigate to Automation > Journey Hub Journeys.

  2. Select the New Journey button.

  3. In the event select popup, select the alert type.

  4. Give your journey a name.

Creating an Alert

Next, you will create an alert. Creating an alert directly in the Journey Hub interface makes it simple to configure your entire Journey.

๐Ÿ’ก You can also edit an existing alert to adjust properties such as quantity thresholds directly within the Journey Hub interface.

  1. Click on the Alert Event in the builder and select the merchant associated with the alert.

  2. Click Set Up New Alert if you have not previously created an alert for the journey type.

  3. In the setup section you will be able to create an alert. All alert types can be configured in this interface.

    1. Give your alert a name.

    2. Select your alert type.

    3. Set your alert action.

    4. Select an email list.

  4. In the configure setting, you will specify the threshold that needs for a change in product to enter contacts into the journey.

    1. For Low Inventory Alerts: Select the quantity a product must drop below to be considered low inventory.

    2. For Price Drop Alerts: Configure the percentage or dollar amount a price must drop by to be considered.

    3. For Sign Up Back In Stock: Configure an alert code definition to identify the alert, the quantity threshold that determines the number of items that must be available before a back in stock notification can be sent, and what contacts will be notified.

      1. All Contacts: Notifies all contacts who have signed up to be notified when the product is in stock.

      2. Custom: Deliver notifications to a subset of contacts based on the number of items in stock.

        1. The Contacts per In-Stock Unit allows you to send a number of notifications per item in stock. For example, a value of 2 and a threshold of 10 in stock would send 20 notifications.

        2. Lastly, set a Contact Notification Priority Order to determine who should receive notifications. LastInFirstOut notifies the most recent signups whereas FirstInFirstOut notifies the contacts who signed up first.

    4. For all low inventory and price drop alert types you will configure a relevancy window, the number of days after a contact took the specified action where they would be eligible to receive the alert. For example, and 30 day window in a Back-In-Stock means that a contact would be notified if a product's stock rose above the limit within that timeframe.

Adjusting the Entry Criteria

  1. Configure the re-entry frequency that specifies how often a contact is eligible to into a journey.

    โš ๏ธ The alerts queues run every 4 hours. If a contact browsed 4 products and they all dropped in price they would receive a message every 4 hours for 16 hours if no frequency is configured.

  2. Adjust the entry prevention rules to exclude contacts based on your specific goals.

๐Ÿ’ก Only allow a contact to enter the journey once every X number of days to limit the number of emails they receive if they were browsing or adding a large number of products to their cart.

Configuring Exit Events

An exit event determines what must happen in order for a customer to exit a journey. If no exit events are configured or customers do not take the specified action, they will naturally exit the journey at the end of their path.

1. Select the exit at the bottom of the journey.
2. Select the desired event and then the merchant from the entry event.
๐Ÿ’ก Use the purchase event to remove contacts who purchase while in the journey.
3. If desired, select Journey to exit a customer out of the journey if they enter another journey.

Configure the Flow

Now that you have determined how a customer becomes eligible to enter or exit the journey you can determine the experience they will have in the journey by customizing paths based on past purchase history, messaging channel, and more.

Below are a few of the strategic considerations you may make when configuring your Alerts Journey.

Coupons

Include coupons in the message to incentivize a customer to make a purchase. Including coupons in Discontinued messages can provide a contact an incentive to purchase a different product.

Wait Step

Use wait steps to pause a contact before they receive additional messages.

Email Messages

To add an Email message, add the Email element onto the canvas. When creating messages, be sure to select the list associated with the campaign, such as the Alerts list, in the properties panel. You can include information about the product from the alert in the message by opening up the Personalization drop-down of the text element.

When adding an image, you will have the option in the Image Source to select the Journey Hub tag to display the product image. You will have a similar option when configuring the Link URL to display the link back to the product

SMS Messages

To add an SMS message, drag the SMS element onto the canvas. In the properties panel, select the sender code. You can include information about the product from the alert in the message. Product information about the item can be inserted from the personalization tag. If adding an image to an MMS message, you have the option to insert a dynamic image URL of the alerted product.

Message Delivery Settings

When configuring an email or SMS message you can set adjust message delivery settings in the Properties Panel. Enabling this setting allows you to limit the time range for when a message is sent.

You can also enable Time Zone Optimization to adjust the time to a customer's location based on their IP address, if sending an email message, or the area code, for an SMS message.

Activating a Journey

Once all messages have been created and the paths established, you are ready to activate the journey so that contacts can start receiving the new path and messages.

To activate, select the Activate button in the top right corner.
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๐Ÿ’ก If replacing an existing Conductor conversation with a journey, be sure to terminate the existing conversation so that lapsed purchasers only receive one alerts series.

Editing an Alert

Editing an alert allows you to adjust some of the properties of the alert. Editing these properties allows you to adjust the logic of your campaign to correspond with business changes, for example, the number of items you keep in your warehouse.

โš ๏ธ Only alerts created in Journey Hub can be edited in this interface. Learn more about alerts created in the email channel. For alerts created in Journey Hub, some properties cannot be edited, such as the list associated with the alert.

  1. Open your existing alert journey.

  2. Click on the entry event on the canvas.

  3. Click Edit in the properties panel.

  4. Adjust the properties on either the first or second screen, as needed.

  5. Click Complete.

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