Using Cortex paths, you can balance creativity and rigor to form deeper connections with your audience. Our customer journey tool drives meaningful, dynamic experiences that adapt to each user through advanced product predictions, automated A/B testing, and send time optimization.

A path is an automated series of steps that send targeted messages based on how users interact with your brand. With our drag-and-drop builder, you can craft personalized campaigns at scale, with ease and efficiency.

In this article, you’ll learn about paths and how you can leverage machine learning capabilities to power your marketing strategy.

Structure of a path

Before we begin, here are some terms that we use when talking about paths in Cortex:

• Path - A automated series of steps that send targeted messages based on how users interact with your brand.
• Entry rules - An event or action that triggers each path. Use our advanced segmentation to create an entry condition that determines how users qualify to enter a path, or select an entry stage to target users based on automated Cortex stage filters (e.g. Welcome, Cart Abandon, Ready To Buy).
• Exit condition - The criteria that defines how someone is removed from a path. For example, in a welcome path, you can automatically remove users who make a purchase, regardless of where they are in the path.
• Email - A step that consists of variants, or different versions of your content at a single touchpoint. Each time someone enters an Email step, they will receive only one variant. This feature uses automated A/B testing to send the highest performing variant at each Email step.
• Condition step - A rule that defines how someone moves through your path. Conditions take the form of Segment, User action, and Timing steps.
• Limit Frequency - This setting limits how often a user can enter a path. It is a required field and defaults to 0 days.
• Segment - A step that determines how someone moves onto the next step in the path based on defined criteria like attributes or activity. With Smart Segments, you can create complex combinations with nested AND / OR logic using the information that you’ve collected about your users.
• User action - A step that determines whether someone moves onto the next step in the path based on their engagement with content in the path.
• Timing - A step that controls the period of time between other steps in a path. This will override our best predicted interval and time of day for each user.
• Branch - A distinct journey in a path that occurs when you split a condition. For example, you can add a Segment step to target users from California, then split the step to add a branch for users who don’t meet this condition.