Negative Paths represent the follow-up Triggers, Actions, Series, and/or Timers that a participant goes through if they do not perform an activity that is checked for in a specific trigger. All triggers (with the exception of Manual Add) in a Campaign Automation have the ability to check if the participant (Contact or Account in the Campaign Automation) did not complete the trigger event within a certain amount of time.
Goals
- Learn how to add a Negative Path to a Campaign Automation
- Learn how Negative Paths work differently for Email Interaction Triggers
- Learn how to set up a Negative Path's properties
Add Negative Path to a Campaign Automation
A Negative Path can be used with any internal trigger, but cannot be used with entry triggers other than the Email Interaction Trigger (discussed below). Once you connect at least one action, timer, or series to a trigger, you will see the trigger icon change to display two dots on the right side: 1 green dot and 1 red dot. The green dot represents the path for if the participant completes the trigger. The red dot represents the path for if the participant does not complete the trigger within a specified time.
Negative Paths and Email Interaction Triggers
An Email Interaction trigger Is the only trigger that can include a negative path when used as an entry point because it behaves differently in this context than other triggers. When other triggers are used as entry triggers, they are just listening to see if a specific action occurs and have absolutely no visibility into action if it does not occur. For the Email Interaction Trigger, when used as an entry trigger, a preexisting Email Send draft with preexisting recipients is added in the trigger's properties and is automatically sent out once the Campaign Automation is run. Since there is already a list of recipients that the trigger is looking at, it can see whether or not somebody interacts with the email and send them down a positive or negative path right out of the gate. A Trigger can be set up with just a Negative Path; a Positive Path is not required.
Negative Path Properties
When you connect a trigger to a following action, timer, or series using the negative path, the negative path settings will appear in the trigger's properties.
Under the "The participant will continue on the negative path if the trigger is not completed...", specify how long you will give the participant time to complete the trigger. The following options for specifying the time are:
- Within: Enter a time period in which the participant can complete the trigger. If the participant completes the trigger within the time period, the participant will move down the green path. If the participant does not complete the trigger within that time period, the participant will move down the negative path (red path).
- By: Enter a date and time the participant must complete the trigger by. If the participant completes the trigger by the date and time specified, the participant will move down the green path. If the participant does not complete the trigger by the specified date and time, the participant will move down the negative path (red path).
Splitting Paths
When a path diverges and splits the participant along multiple paths and these paths later re-connect at some point, then the participant will not progress past this meeting point until it has met the conditions to progress to that point via all relevant paths. For example:
In this example, only the 2 participants from Trigger 1 are able to progress to the response email properly. The 1 successful participant in Trigger 3 would have also needed to progress along the positive path of Trigger 1 in order to continue successfully. This is done in order to prevent a situation in which a participant may trigger duplicate actions when reaching the meeting point multiple times.