[SalesForce] Journey Builder Entry Sources: Audience vs Event

I've largely been ignoring the Audience Entry Source within Journey Builder since it's release not too long ago, but after testing it out recently I am pretty impressed.

Some of the pros:

Removes the need for fire event activity in Automation Studio
Email Studio Audiences can be configured to either automatically process all records, or only the new records
If record doesn't exist, a new one is created, effectively removing the need for many steps in Contact Builder

Possible cons:

Lack of API compatibility
Can't reuse across other Journeys

Question: Based on current functionality, why would an Event Entry Source be used in place of an Audience Entry Source for a typical Journey? I prefer Event Sources personally because I am accustomed to the routine of making attribute groups / root sources / automation / fire event, but it does seem as though Audiences may be the simplified approach.

[Note: If this question is too broad I can relate it back to a single example use case and ask for best practices].

Thanks as always!

Best Answer

To me it helps to think about an Event Entry Source as sort of an equivalent to a Triggered Send Definition, whereas an Audience Entry Source is more similar to an Automation containing a User Initiated Send (obviously the difference being that they occur in Journey Builder, enabling you to string together a longer series of communications/actions).

With an Event Entry Source, you can trigger the first message in a journey in real-time via API. With an Audience Entry Source, you can certainly get close to real-time if your data extension is populated in real-time and your supporting Automation is run every 15 minutes or so. However, typically if your data extension is populated in real-time, that would indicate it is happening via API call and therefore why not just use an Event Entry Source via API?

There certainly are some overlapping cases where either would suffice, but in short I would think about an Event Entry Source as an optimal choice for real-time triggering via API. Though an API call is not required to fire an Entry Event Source, if you don't use the API (at least on a Contact Event Type), you would still have to schedule the refresh via Automation, so at that point it's kind of "six of one, half dozen of the other". Worth noting that Event Entry Sources do come with some handy pre-built Event Types, such as Date Based Events (for easy Anniversary or Birthday campaigns), Salesforce Data for cross-cloud integrations, etc.

The reality is, the answer is probably mostly dependent upon your data availability/latency and/or ability to trigger a journey via API.

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] How to you debug or troubleshoot Journey Builder Entry Sources? My Account field based Entry isn’t injecting any contacts

The best way to test the salesforce data entry is to have a custom field created in salesforce - e.g. MarketingTest - and then create a journey where the entry criteria is based upon all your criteria + the MarketingTest = True. This will allow you to test the configuration, and then at go-live remove the marketingtest field.

In order to trouble shoot why it doesn't enter - there are many places to start. First of all, your Marketing Cloud Connect integration user - does it have the system administrator profile inside Salesforce Core? If not, it might be missing some permissions for the data.

Assuming that the integration user has all the necessary actions, you should be able to modify a record inside core salesforce, to meet the criteria, press save and then within 5-10 seconds, you should see that record in the data extension. If that's not the case, it means that the entry event might be wrongly configured. This is highly sensitive to having the right lookup fields populated, and ensuring you select the right entity (lead, contact or person account) to enter the journey.

Finally, if the data flows into the data extension, but not into the journey, you should be able to see why it didn't enter based on the entry event history (or journey history tab). It should say that a contact was evaluated and didn't enter. A typical use case here could be error to bind email, which has to do with the data you forward and your population configuration.

If neither of the above scenarios solve your issue, could you maybe share more insights about your scenario, what you are doing and where you are experiencing the errors? :)

[SalesForce] Accessing Entry Event Data – Journey Builder Custom Activity

I found where the bug was. I should have used the "real" EVENT DEFINITION KEY instead of its NAME. When you are in a journey you won't see this value. For this you need to go to Entry Sources and find your Event there.

So now it works!

config.json:

     "arguments": {
         "execute": {
            "inArguments": [
                 { "Contact.Key":"{{Contact.Key}}" },
                 { "FirstName":"{{Event.ContactEvent-72af1529-1d7d-821e-2a08-34fb5068561d.FirstName}}" }
             ],
             "outArguments": [
             ],
             "url": "https://zapier-jb-test.herokuapp.com/jb/activities/send-to-zapier/execute/",
             "verb": "POST",
             "body": "",
             "header": "",
             "format": "json",
             "useJwt": false,
             "timeout": 10000
         }
     },

And the API Output:

{  inArguments: [ 
    { 'Contact.Key': 'customevent1' },
    { FirstName: 'Foo1' }
], ...}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] How to you debug or troubleshoot Journey Builder Entry Sources? My Account field based Entry isn’t injecting any contacts

[SalesForce] Accessing Entry Event Data – Journey Builder Custom Activity

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