Management Center: Dialog activities

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Dialog activities

Create Dialog activities when to automate marketing actions based on the specific behavior of the customers. Think of a Dialog activity as an interactive dialog with a customer: you wait for the customer to do something, and then you respond with a planned marketing action. This dialog can be ongoing as the customer's behavior on the site changes over time.
Dialog activities are triggered by an event, for example, a customer places an order or abandons a shopping cart. You can then respond by reaching out to that customer with a relevant and timely marketing action. For example, you can send an e-mail or text message (SMS), issue the customer a coupon, or add the customer to a customer segment.
Here are a few simple examples of Dialog activities you can set up using Management Center:

When a customer registers, send the customer a thank-you e-mail message containing some promotional advertisements.

When a customer places an order, if the customer has spent over $1000 at the store, add the customer to the "Big Spenders" customer segment.

When a customer has abandoned a shopping cart for 3 days, send the customer an e-mail message as a reminder of their recent shopping visit. Issue the customer a coupon for 20% off their order.

Build Dialog activities using the Activity Builder in the Marketing tool. The last Dialog activity example from the previous list looks like this in the Activity Builder:

Multi-phase and multi-channel Dialog activities

A Dialog activity can have multiple phases, allowing you to track and react to a customer's behavior over time. Here is an example:
When a customer registers on the site, wait for a week. If the customer has not placed an order, then e-mail the customer a coupon for 10% off. Wait for another week. If the customer has still not placed an order, then e-mail the customer a coupon for 20% off.
A Dialog activity can involve multiple channels, including e-mail messages and text messages. Here is an example:
When a customer's birthday is one week away, send the customer a special birthday e-mail message containing a promotion code for 10% off their next order. On the customer's birthday, send the customer a text message (SMS) with a happy birthday wish.

Repeatable Dialog activities
When you create a Dialog activity, you can select or clear a Repeatable check box on the General Properties tab. This check box controls whether a customer can enter and complete the Dialog activity multiple times. Consider what the activity is trying to accomplish to decide whether to make the activity repeatable. Here are a few Dialog activity examples to consider:

Example Dialog activity If Repeatable check box is selected If Repeatable check box is cleared
When a customer places an order, issue the customer a coupon for 20% off the next order.
To inform the customer of the coupon, send a thank-you e-mail message.
If a customer places multiple orders while the activity is active, that customer will receive an e-mail and coupon with each order. If a customer places multiple orders while the activity is active, that customer will receive an e-mail and coupon with only the first order.
When a customer participates in social commerce on the site at least one time, send the customer a thank-you e-mail that encourages the customer to continue participating. If a customer participates in social commerce multiple times while the activity is active, that customer will receive the e-mail each time he or she participates. If a customer participates in social commerce multiple times while the activity is active, that customer will receive the e-mail only the first time he or she participates.

To avoid sending customers duplicate e-mail messages and giving away multiple coupons, you could set both of the example activities as not repeatable by clearing the Repeatable check box. For the first example, however, you might want to set the activity as repeatable so the customer is rewarded for each order.

Related concepts

Comparison of Web activities and Dialog activities
Web activities
E-mail activities
Personalization ID
Targets in marketing activities
Marketing tool
Campaigns

Related tasks

Create a Dialog activity
Activating or deactivating an activity
Test Dialog activities
Changing a Dialog activity
Create a Web activity

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Example Dialog activity	If Repeatable check box is selected	If Repeatable check box is cleared
When a customer places an order, issue the customer a coupon for 20% off the next order. To inform the customer of the coupon, send a thank-you e-mail message.	If a customer places multiple orders while the activity is active, that customer will receive an e-mail and coupon with each order.	If a customer places multiple orders while the activity is active, that customer will receive an e-mail and coupon with only the first order.
When a customer participates in social commerce on the site at least one time, send the customer a thank-you e-mail that encourages the customer to continue participating.	If a customer participates in social commerce multiple times while the activity is active, that customer will receive the e-mail each time he or she participates.	If a customer participates in social commerce multiple times while the activity is active, that customer will receive the e-mail only the first time he or she participates.