Marketing Automation26% of the exam
Journey Builder throughput and performance best practices
How to keep journeys fast: stagger starts and use High-Throughput Sending, pre-filter large audiences in Automation Studio, write cheap entry filters, use journey data in splits, understand how segments set the pace, and place waits, Decision Splits and heavy personalization carefully.
Given a customer scenario, recommend the appropriate marketing automation solution.
~7 min read · 8 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Recommend staggered start times and High-Throughput Sending (HTS) when concurrent journeys run slowly.
- Move large-scale filtering out of the entry source into Automation Studio, and write entry filters with cheap operators.
- Use journey data rather than one-to-many contact data in Decision Splits.
- Explain how journey segments set processing speed, and place waits and Decision Splits by the guidance.
- Explain the throughput cost of heavy personalization.
- Key terms: segment (the chain of activities between the start, waits and the exit); HTS (High-Throughput Sending for email, set per journey); entry filter (criteria on the entry source that decide who is admitted); journey data (values captured from the entry source at entry); contact data (attributes reached through the contact model).
Key facts
Baseline throughput
- Detail
- Up to two million email sends per hour per tenant
HTS
- Detail
- Two times or more throughput; can't be turned off in a journey once activated
Large entry filters
- Detail
- Not over 50% of contacts when over 500,000 total
Filter operators
- Detail
- Avoid contains and ends with; equals is cheaper
Split data
- Detail
- Use journey data from the entry source
Segment speed
- Detail
- Set by the slowest activity in it
Activities per journey
- Detail
- No limit; keep to 150-200
Short mid-journey wait
- Detail
- 3 minutes or less ignored without exit criteria or a goal with exit criteria
Wait by Duration default
- Detail
- 1 day
Advanced personalization
- Detail
- Up to 25% lower send throughput
- Why give each journey its own pre-filtered, sendable copy of a data extension?
- When should you ask your account executive about performance?
- Which tool shows the journeys and configurations that slow overall processing?
- How many Decision Splits at most should a journey start with if it needs any?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
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