Mapping out visitor journeys

In this guide, you’ll learn how to map out sophisticated visitor journeys within a RightMessage CTA Funnel.

It’s all about “nodes” and “paths”

A CTA Funnel is made up of paths that lead to nodes.

At the top of every funnel is a path that leads downward. Think of this as “a page view has occured.” When the page has loaded and RightMessage runs, our software will follow this path down looking for nodes.

A node is a decision point (“should this person go down the left path, or the right path?”), a question, an offer (like a lead form), or where a funnel terminates – at least for the current page view.

And on every subsequent page view, this funnel will rerun. The visitor will go from the top, to the bottom of the funnel. Assuming nothing’s changed (like the visitor’s segmentation hasn’t changed, and there are no page-specific decision nodes) then they’ll follow the exact same path on every subsequent page view. It’s ultimately up to you to determine how, and when, someone should go down a different page.

Along paths, you can create new nodes – which are outlined below.

Ask a question

Within a CTA Funnel, you can ask your visitors to answer a question.

This is really a shorthand way of having them self-segment into one of a Segment Group’s available segments. A question IS a Segment Group, and an answer IS a segment.

If the visitor already belongs to a segment within the Segment Group you’re “asking”, then the visitor won’t be shown anything. They could be already segmented because we either:

• Pulled existing segmentation data from your ESP/CRM
• Auto-segmented the visitor
• They’ve already answered the question (on a previous page, or in a previous website session)

Asking a new question

To ask a new question, click the + on any path. Select Ask a question and then Ask about something new.

Enter in:

• The internal name of the question (i.e. “Industry”)
• The question’s wording
• Available answers

Then click Create question.

This will not only add this question to your CTA Funnel, but it also creates a new Segment Group behind the scenes. You can manage this segment group by editing the question from within a CTA Funnel, or from the segmentation area (accessible from Manage → Segments and questions in the RightMessage navigation.)

Asking an existing question / Segment Group

Adding an existing question / Segment Group to a CTA Funnel is easy.

Click the + on any path. Select Ask a question and then select your existing question.

Splitting on a question

Click on any question node in your CTA Funnel and select Split based on the answer.

This will create one path per possible answer / segment, along with a fallback path. Depending on how the visitor is segmented, they’ll move down one of these respective paths. Remember: If a visitor has already been segmented into the Segment Group associated with your question, they won’t be asked to self-segment by answering a question.

Pitch an offer

You can also pitch an offer within a CTA Funnel.

Click the + on any path. Select Pitch an offer and either select an existing offer, or create a new one.

For help with setting up a new offer, and how offers work, head over to our guide to CTA Funnel offers.

Split by segments

Within a visitor journey, you can also quickly set up one path per segment within a given Segment Group by creating a segment split node.

Click the + on any path. Select Split by segments and then select the Segment Group you want to split on.

Split by a yes/no decision

You can also add simple “if yes, go this way. if no, go the other way” decisions within your visitor journeys.

This is useful for checking 1st-party data like “is this person a subscriber?” or “are they tagged with ‘Customer’?”, along with behavioral data like whether someone’s visited a particular page.

Click the + on any path. Select Split by a yes/no decision.

You’ll be presented with an editor that’s identical to setting up auto-segment rules within a Segment Group. For details about defining these rules, check out our in-depth guide to auto-segmentation.

Creating a random split test

You can also randomly send visitors down a number of paths, which is helpful for doing things like A/B testing how a particular offer performs.

Click the + on any path. Select Random split test and enter the number of splits you’d like to create.

When a visitor is sent to one of these split test nodes, we’ll randomly send them down one of your paths and keep them going down that same path on subsequent page views (i.e. throughout their session.) For future sessions, we’ll send them down another random path – which, depending on the roll of the virtual dice, could be the same path they were on previously.

Exiting the funnel

You can also prematurely exit a visitor journey at any point.

Every journey initially terminates with an “Exit (Don’t pitch anything)” node. This is automatically added to the end of every funnel. If RightMessage can’t route someone to either a question or an offer, they’ll end up not being pitched anything and no widgets will display.

Sometimes you might want to exit the funnel elsewhere. To do this, click the + on the path you want someone to exit at. Select Exit the funnel here.