Select a Provider and Tactic

If you are creating or importing a new Experience, you will be given a choice of Experience providers - providers are the tools that deliver your Experience. The selection of Lytics as a provider will prompt you to select a tactic from a list of options. The following tactics are available for Lytics Experiences:

• Drive Traffic - Increase traffic to a specific URL.
• Capture Leads - Convert unknown users to known users with a simple lead capture form.
• Present a Message - Communicate a simple message, such as a global coupon or an announcement.
• Recommend Content - Use content collections to recommend articles, products, or any other type of content to your users.

Once you've chosen your tactic, the Experience editor will take you though each step.

Choose URL

Choosing a URL to promote is the first step in the Experience editor for a Drive Traffic Experience of the Lytics provider. This step does not apply to Experiences of any other tactic or Provider.

This step allows you to enter the destination you want to link as a call to action in your Drive Traffic Experience. The protocol is preset to <https://> but can be changed to <http://>. Enter the rest of the URL into the input field.

Customize Form

Specific to the Collect Leads tactic of Lytics Experiences, this step is for selecting what information you collect on the form.

Here you will configure which form fields will be shown and thus what information you capture about your user.

• Enable fields by selecting the checkbox next to the desired field.
• Form labels have default text input that appears when the field is selected. You can rename these labels to suit your use case.
• Require fields with the Required? checkbox at the right of the text field.

Choose Content

The Recommend Content Experience type is used to surface content (an article, a blog post, a product page) to visitors. Each recommendation is personalized to the individual. This could be used to keep visitors engaged by surfacing what to read next, or assist casual perusers by prompting a starting point.

Furthermore, the Experience can be configured to only a set of pages or a subset of your total audience. This allows you to limit the recommendations from showing up on auxiliary pages like the home page, company page, or checkout page. It can also only be shown to users with high usage. This way low usage visitors can be targeted with a more aggressive campaign.

Choosing content is the first step for a Recommend Content Experience.
Lytics provides a variety of filters and options for tailoring what content can be recommended and how the recommendation algorithm should rank the content.

Choosing a content collection

A content collection allows you to limit the scope of documents that can be recommended by your Experience. If you're creating a summer seasonal experience, for example, you wouldn't want articles that are out of season. A content collection is how you define which articles are appropriate to recommend.

Use the Select a content collection dropdown to choose an existing collection or to create a new one. Clicking on New content collection will take you to the collection builder. The state of your Experience will be saved, and after creating your new collection, you will automatically be returned to the Experience editor.

Choosing recommendation settings

The Lytics content recommendation engine allows you to configure the way in which the Experience will recommend content.

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The recommendation settings work within the limits set by the content collection. If your content collection includes articles published six to twelve months ago and you choose the Recently Published method, then the Experience will begin recommending six-month-old articles, which are the most recently-published articles within the collection.

Recommendation method

The recommendation methods control how the recommendation engine ranks the content.

• Highest Affinity: Choose the content that a user is most likely to be interested in. This is the default setting.
• Freshness: Choose the content that was most recently published or updated.
• Last Interaction: Choose the content based on what a user has engaged with most recently.

New content only

The Only recommend content the user has not seen? checkbox controls whether previously viewed content will be included among the recommendations. Leave this setting checked to ensure that a user won't be recommended content they have viewed in the past.

Shuffle content

The Shuffle content on each page load? checkbox controls whether a user should be recommended different content if they encounter the Experience again (e.g. after reloading). Check this setting to vary the content that is recommended on subsequent requests or leave it unchecked to show the single best recommendation.

Design

The design step is present in the editor for all Experiences of the Lytics provider. It lets you customize the appearance and content of the widget displayed to your users on your website. This step offers layout and position options as well as a custom CSS option.

Choosing a layout

First, choose your Experience's layout. There are five different layout options, and their availability depends on the tactic you selected.

1. Modal: A full screen takeover Experience that can be closed by clicking outside the modal, clicking the close button of the modal, or taking the intended call-to-action.
2. Slideout: A small widget that occupies a corner of the screen. It does not interrupt the user's current task.
3. Bar: A short widget that takes the full width of the screen and sits at the top of the page.
4. Sticky Bar: A bar that scrolls with the page.
5. Gate: A modal that cannot be closed unless the call to action is fulfilled.

Campaign type layout compatibility

Adding content

Different content fields are supported by different Experience layouts or tactics.

Including an image for your Experience is optional, the image will be shown above or beside the messaging of the Experience. Any image you include must be hosted publicly as this input takes a URL but not an upload.

Setting position

Experience widgets can be displayed in different positions depending on their layout. The available positions will show up as a darker gray while the active position is blue.

Theming the Experience

There are three ways to theme your Experience.

1. Choose a theme: Lytics provides Light and Dark themes you can select.

2. Build a custom theme: There are eight color options available to build a theme in the Experience editor:

   • Background: The color of the background color of the Experience.
   • Headline: The text color of the headline message.
   • Body Text: The text color of the body text.
   • Close Button: The color of the '×' shape used as a close button.
   • Submit Button Text: The color of the text in the submit/call-to-action button.
   • Submit Button: The background color of the submit/call-to-action button.
   • Cancel Button Text: The color of the text in the cancel/dismiss button.
   • Cancel Button: The background color of the cancel/dismiss button.

3. Use Custom CSS: Use your own custom CSS to match the Experience's styling with your site's design. Experiences are built using the Pathfora SDK. Read about using custom CSS with Pathfora.

Target

The audience step in the Experience editor allows you to configure the target audience for your Experience. Use the dropdown to select from among your pre-built audiences. Click New audience at the bottom of the dropdown menu if you need to build a new one and you will be directed to the audience builder.

Standalone Experiences

This step is required for standalone Experiences, such as a one-off email campaign or a seasonal ad promotion. Once you have selected an audience, Potential Reach displays how many people will be eligible to receive this Experience.

Experiences part of a Goal

This step is optional if your Experience is part of a Goal on the Lytics Canvas. Here you can add additional filtering to your Experience. Any audience you choose will be combined with the Stage audience, resulting in a more targeted Experience with a smaller audience. You can also leave this blank if you don't want additional targeting.

The Potential reach displays how many people will be eligible to receive this Experience. The Stage coverage metric displays what percentage of the stage will be eligible to receive this Experience.

Adjusting your Target

If your Experience is not providing the desired results, you can pause your Experience and target a new audience. Just keep in mind that the metrics are for the Experience and won't explicitly indicate changes you made. You can also make changes directly to the target audience, and the potential reach of the Experience will be adjusted automatically.

Finding the Right Fit for Your Content

When creating a new Recommend Content Experience, you will see a content alignment score in the Target Audience step of the Experience Editor. Lytics calculates the alignment percentage by comparing the affinities of your target audience to the affinities in your selected content collection.

Use the alignment score information to ensure you are recommending content or products that are relevant for your customers, which can help improve engagement and conversion rates of your marketing campaigns.

For a quick demonstration of using the affinity alignment score while building a content recommendation, watch this video.

Display

The display step is present in the editor for all Experiences of the Lytics provider. Use the Display Step to set where and when the Experience will show up for your users. Set rules for which URL(s) an Experience can be displayed on, the triggers for displaying it, the frequency with which it appears, and the date range during which the Experience is available to show.

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Prior to activating your Experience, ensure that the display URL is included in your URL Allowlist for Orchestrate account setting.

Appears on

Appears on rules are an optional tool used to specify which webpages within your site the Experience will (or will not) be shown on. This can be a fixed list of pages or expressions that match many pages. There are four URL-matching strategies offered, and rules can be used in combination.

• URL Contains – The text specified must be included in the URL.
• Simple Match – A fuzzy match that removes the URL protocol and query string before matching.
• Exact Match – The URL must match what is typed exactly, including protocol and query parameters.
• Regular Expression – A regular expression (sometimes referred to as Regex) to be executed client-side with JavaScript for complex matching requirements.

Each of these URL-matching strategies can be used to create a rule determining when the Experience is shown with Show on selected, or to specify the cases where the Experience should not be displayed with Hide on.

Appears on use cases

Consider the following use cases, and some suggested solutions using the appears on rules.

Advanced Display Options

The Advanced Display Options allow you to respond to the user's interaction with your site, using the state of their active web session to determine when an Experience is displayed. These are all optional and can be used in combination.

Display triggers

• Show after x page views – Do not show the Experience until the requisite number of pages have been visited.
• Show after x seconds – Do not show the Experience until the requisite number of seconds in the session have elapsed.
• Show after x% page scroll – Do not show the Experience until the user has scrolled a certain percent of the way down the page.
• Show on exit intent – Do not show the Experience until the user is about to abandon the site.

When using triggers in combination, note that the conditions function as an ALL conditions met, not ANY condition met. If you set an Experience to Show after 5 page views and to Show after 70% page scroll, when your user scrolls to 70% of the third page, the Experience will not show because only one of the two conditions have been met.

Display frequency

• Show up to x times per user, ever – After the specified number of times displaying the Experience, suppress its display forever for the current user.
• Show up to x times per user per session – After the specified number of times displaying the Experience, suppress its display for the current user. This count resets when the user ends their current session.

If you set an Experience to Show up to 5 times per user, ever and Show up to 2 times per user per session, and a user is shown the Experience twice each on their first two sessions, for their third session they will be shown the Experience for the final time.

If you set an Experience's frequency to Show up to 2 times per user per session and a trigger of Show after 5 page views, your user will see the Experience upon reaching the sixth page, again on reaching the seventh page, and not again during their session.

When user clicks CTA

• Hide after x clicks – Hide the Experience after the user has clicked the call-to-action the specified number of times.
• Hide for x time – How long an Experience should remain hidden, in seconds/hours/days/weeks.
• Hide permanently – Instead of hiding an Experience for a set amount of time, never show it again for the current user.

When user clicks cancel or close

These are the same options as above, but applied to when the user has seen the Experience but not clicked the CTA.

Pathfora Overrides

Pathfora is a very powerful client-side personalization SDK. In addition, it is open-sourced. Because anyone is invited to contribute to Pathfora, providing clear controls for all features is impossible. As a result, we provide a technical but friendly interface for using "overrides." Overrides allow you to leverage the full power of pathfora for functionality such as custom load and callback handlers and advanced customization and styling.

In the coming weeks, we'll extend our documentation to outline several common patterns for leveraging overrides. For those looking for initial information, don't hesitate to contact your primary account contacts. For others that are already leveraging overrides directly via our APIs, you will also see a representation and area for managing those overrides directly within the "Advanced Settings" in the Experience wizard, as pictured below.

Date Range

Set the date range for when the Experience will be shown to your users. The start date will be populated with the current day, so that your Experience will start immediately without you needing to set anything.

You can set a start date in the future and Activate the Experience ahead of time; it will have a "scheduled" status and then switch automatically to "active" on the start date.

The end date is not required. If you do not set an end date, the Experience will run indefinitely as long as it is active. End dates cannot be in the past, nor can they precede the start date.

The date range is inclusive, so if you set a start date of 3/21/2022 and an end date of 3/23/2022, the experience will run for 3 days. On 3/24/2022, the Experience will switch from "active" status to "ended" on its own and users will no longer see it.

Review

The review step is the final step for all Experiences of the Lytics provider. It provides an at-a-glance view of everything you've chosen for your Lytics Experience.

Though there is nothing you need to do on this step, it does give you an opportunity to check that all your selections are listed as you expect before you activate the Experience.

Previewing

Use the Preview button in the top right of the screen to see how your experience will look when it's active on your site. Simply enter the URL you want to see the preview on in the modal that appears, and you'll be directed to your site but with the experience running as it will once it becomes activated. From this preview state you can get a better idea of how/when the experience is triggered and see what your users will see.

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The URL you enter must match the appears on conditions you set in the display step. The target audience, however, is ignored for previewing ease.

Save and Exit

When you first enter the Experience editor, you will see a Save button in the top right corner which allows you to save your progress at any time.

If you have made it to the final step within the Experience Editor (Review for Lytics Experiences), the Next Step button will now be a Save and Exit button. Click on this button to save and exit your Experience. If you have previously saved your Experience and made no other changes this will simply allow you to exit the Experience Editor.

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After the Experience has been saved once, the button will become a Save button that is only enabled when you make further changes.

Name your Experience

If you have not yet named the Experience at the time you save, you will be prompted to do so at this time, and the Experience's tactic will be suggested as a default.

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When creating a new Experience within Lytics, name it including the purpose and any categorization (e.g. Drive sales: Holiday). When working with existing Experiences from your third party tools, name the imported experiences on Lytics with the same/similar names as in the external tool.

Discard Changes

Unsaved Experiences

At any point you may discard your unsaved Experience by clicking on the Close button (X) in the top left corner of the Experience Editor and then clicking Confirm when asked "Are you sure you want to discard unsaved changes?"

You may also select the Delete option from the more options (...) menu in the top right corner of the Experience Editor and click Delete permanently when prompted.

Both methods will remove you from the Experience Editor without saving.

Previously Saved Experiences

If you have previously saved the Experience and have returned to make edits, you may discard all changes you've made since your last save by clicking on the Close button (X) in the top left corner of the Experience Editor (and clicking Confirm when prompted) or by selecting the Discard Changes option from the more options menu (...) in the top right column.

The former will discard changes and exit the Experience Editor. The latter method will allow you discard changes, but stay within the Experience Editor where you can make new edits.

Permanently Delete

You may permanently delete previously saved experiences from within the Experience Editor by selecting the Delete option from the more options menu (...) in the top right column and clicking Delete permanently when prompted.

Select a Provider and Tactic

From the provided list, you will choose a provider from the list of out-of-the-box integrations. Each provider has a single tactic selection associated to it.

You will need then need to configure the experience based on that selected provider. Below you will find an overview of the steps for navigating the Experience Editor for out-of-the-box integrations. For more detailed information for specific integrations, use the links below to navigate to the the integration documentation for your selected provider:

• Facebook (Tactic: Import Ad Set)
• Google Ads (Tactic: Import Ad Group)
• Iterable (Tactic: Import Campaign)
• Mailchimp (Tactic: Import Campaign or Automation)
• Mapp (Tactic: Import Campaign)
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Tactic: Import Journey)
• SendGrid (Tactic: Import Campaign)
• The Trade Desk (Tactic: Import Ad Group)

Choose Authorization

After selecting your provider, you will be prompted to select or create an authorization to connect the integration. Existing authorizations will be shown. If you have multiple accounts within a particular channel, you will choose which account to import from.

If you don’t have an authorization, you will be prompted to add one before continuing. To create a new authorization, click the Add new authorization button, which will take you to a modal where you can enter the appropriate credentials. For provider-specific documentation on creating authorizations, see the below documentation for your selected integration.

• Facebook
• Google Ads
• Iterable
• Mailchimp
• Mapp
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• SendGrid
• The Trade Desk

Import

After you have selected your Authorization you will then select the campaigns you want to import into Lytics (you may select up to 10 at a time). The total number of Experiences you can bring into Lytics is only limited by the amount in your connected provider. However, to have meaningful and accurate reporting, it's recommended to only import Experiences that will add value to the use cases you are activating within Lytics.

Completed campaigns that have already "ended", will not show on the list of importable Experiences. Those that are saved as drafts, paused, or currently running, those will be available to import.

Target

Once you have imported an Experience, you will activate it by adding a Lytics audience. This lets you enrich your existing campaigns with Lytics behavioral audiences, content affinities, and Delivery Optimization.

The Target step in the Experience editor allows you to configure the target audience for your Experience. Use the dropdown to select from among your pre-built audiences. Click New audience at the bottom of the dropdown menu if you need to build a new one and you will be directed to the audience builder.

Configure Integration

The Configure step in the Experience Editor allows you to configure how the audience for your Experience will be exported to the third-party tool you are using. In order to successfully activate and export an Experience to your provider tool, you will need to correctly configure the Experience. See below for links to the configuration documentation for each supported integration.

• Facebook
• Google Ads
• Iterable
• Mailchimp
• Mapp
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• SendGrid
• The Trade Desk

Configure Delivery

Delivery Optimization takes the guesswork out of deciding who to send what message, and when. For the third party Experience providers built-in to the Lytics Canvas, you can use this option to automatically determine when to deliver messages to individual users on those channels.

This step in the Experience editor allows you to toggle Delivery Optimization On or Off. If you do nothing, it will remain off. You can turn it on to help prevent over-messaging and let you focus on creating great Experiences, rather than manually building delivery logic rules that are complicated to manage and execute.

How does Delivery Optimization work?

Lytics uses data science to determine the optimal delivery time of an Experience for individual audience members. The delivery time is based on when an audience member last interacted with your brand via the channel of the Experience, as well as their behavior when that interaction happened. Experience decisioning also uses the Experience's performance measured by click-through rate (CTR) to estimate engagement likelihood.

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The actual delivery of an Experience is always controlled by the downstream tool, where there could be additional logic necessary to deliver the Experience. Lytics Delivery Optimization simply controls when the user data is triggered to send to your third-party tool.

Consider the Experience tactic when determining if you want to turn Delivery Optimization on. For Experiences using real-time delivery such as Iterable triggered emails, Delivery Optimization can help improve user engagement by reaching each user at the ideal time.

In other circumstances such as sending a one-time blast email through SendGrid for a sale promotion, you'll likely want to leave Delivery Optimization off and simply push a list of all current users into the audience so that you can send the campaign as soon as you're ready. If Delivery Optimization was enabled, you may not see users exported to SendGrid until they "need" to receive a message (the most optimal time).

Save and Exit

When you first enter the Experience editor, you will see a Save button in the top right corner which allows you to save your progress at any time.

If you have made it to the final step within the Experience Editor (Configure Delivery for out-of-the-box integrations), the Next Step button will now be a Save and Exit button. Click on this button to save and exit your Experience. If you have previously saved your Experience and made no other changes this will simply allow you to exit the Experience Editor.

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After the Experience has been saved once, the button will become a Save button that is only enabled when you make further changes.

Name your Experience

If you have not yet named the Experience at the time you save, you will be prompted to do so at this time, and the Experience's tactic will be suggested as a default.

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When creating a new Experience within Lytics, name it including the purpose and any categorization (e.g. Drive sales: Holiday). When working with existing Experiences from your third party tools, name the imported experiences on Lytics with the same/similar names as in the external tool.

Discard Changes

Unsaved Experiences

At any point you may discard your unsaved Experience by clicking on the Close button (X) in the top left corner of the Experience Editor and then clicking Confirm when asked "Are you sure you want to discard unsaved changes?"

You may also select the Delete option from the more options (...) menu in the top right corner of the Experience Editor and click Delete permanently when prompted.

Both methods will remove you from the Experience Editor without saving.

Previously Saved Experiences

If you have previously saved the Experience and have returned to make edits, you may discard all changes you've made since your last save by clicking on the Close button (X) in the top left corner of the Experience Editor (and clicking Confirm when prompted) or by selecting the Discard Changes option from the more options menu (...) in the top right column.

The former will discard changes and exit the Experience Editor. The latter method will allow you discard changes, but stay within the Experience Editor where you can make new edits.

Permanently Delete

You may permanently delete previously saved experiences from within the Experience Editor by selecting the Delete option from the more options menu (...) in the top right column and clicking Delete permanently when prompted.

Select a Provider and Tactic

From the provided list, you will choose a Generic as the provider. Generic Experiences only support one tactic:

• Universal Experience - Create a general Experience to be used with any use case or integration supported by the Lytics platform.

Target

The Target step in the Experience editor allows you to configure the target audience for your Experience. Use the dropdown to select from among your pre-built audiences. Click New audience at the bottom of the dropdown menu if you need to build a new one and you will be directed to the audience builder.

Tutorial

This step offers a quick overview of the additional steps you will need to take to activate your Audience for this Experience

Name, Save and Exit

Upon saving and naming you Experience, an audience will be generated.

If you are still within the Experience Editor the Tutorial screen will be updated to provide a link to the generated audience.

If you have exited the Experience Editor you can find this link by clicking the Help link in the Experience summary page.

Save your Experience

When you first enter the Experience editor, you will see a Save button in the top right corner which allows you to save your progress at any time.

If you have made it to the final step within the Experience Editor (Tutorial for Generic Experiences), the Next Step button will now be a Save and Exit button. Click on this button to save and exit your Experience. If you have previously saved your Experience and made no other changes this will simply allow you to exit the Experience Editor.

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After the Experience has been saved once, the button will become a Save button that is only enabled when you make further changes.

Name your Experience

If you have not yet named the Experience at the time you save, you will be prompted to do so at this time, and the Experience's tactic will be suggested as a default.

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When creating a new Experience within Lytics, name it including the purpose and any categorization (e.g. Drive sales: Holiday). When working with existing Experiences from your third party tools, name the imported experiences on Lytics with the same/similar names as in the external tool.

Discard Changes

Unsaved Experiences

At any point you may discard your unsaved Experience by clicking on the Close button (X) in the top left corner of the Experience Editor and then clicking Confirm when asked "Are you sure you want to discard unsaved changes?"

You may also select the Delete option from the more options (...) menu in the top right corner of the Experience Editor and click Delete permanently when prompted.

Both methods will remove you from the Experience Editor without saving.

Previously Saved Experiences

If you have previously saved the Experience and have returned to make edits, you may discard all changes you've made since your last save by clicking on the Close button (X) in the top left corner of the Experience Editor (and clicking Confirm when prompted) or by selecting the Discard Changes option from the more options menu (...) in the top right column.

The former will discard changes and exit the Experience Editor. The latter method will allow you discard changes, but stay within the Experience Editor where you can make new edits.

Permanently Delete

You may permanently delete previously saved experiences from within the Experience Editor by selecting the Delete option from the more options menu (...) in the top right column and clicking Delete permanently when prompted.