Custom Events

Custom events are actions taken by your customers. You can use them to track clients' behavior and then build highly personalized campaigns, for example, send customers a 5% off coupon if they've abandoned the cart.

Contents:

1. How does it work?
2. Enable event tracking
3. Define new custom event
4. Customer segments with custom events
5. Distributions with custom events
   1. Custom event distribution
   2. Segment-based distribution
6. Redemption limits with custom events
7. Earning rules with custom events

How does it work?

The workflow consists of four major steps:

1. Enable tracking of a particular event on your website or application (this step needs to be managed by your developers).
2. Add event to Voucherify Event Schema and define its attributes (optional metadata).
3. Pass the event using the Voucherify API.
4. Use the event to segment customers, create rules, and trigger distribution.

Enable event tracking

Define new custom event

Events you want to send to Voucherify API need to be defined in the Event Schema in the dashboard. Go to the Project Settings > Event Schema, and click Add event definition.

When adding an event, you can define additional attributes that will be stored as event metadata. Metadata enables you to extend the default event structure with custom attributes. Each metadata property sent with the event is a key/value pair of a chosen data type (text, number, boolean, and many more).

For each property added as metadata, you can also define if it's optional or mandatory when passing the event.

When the event is added to the Event Schema, you can pass it using Create Custom Event API endpoint.

Logged events can be used to segment your audience and trigger distribution. Custom events are directly linked to the customers' resources from Voucherify. It means that each event gets a connection to a customer.

Customer segments with custom events

In the Customers section, you can group customers around the recency and frequency of a particular event. Then, click Find and apply filtering to set event-related filters. 

1. Go to Events to see a list of all custom events already added to the Event Schema. 
2. Choose an event you want to use and build filtering criteria.
3. Add a filter with the plus and confirm with Apply. You can use many filters in a single query.
4. Click Apply to see the filtering results. 

You can group customers that match the filters in the auto-update segment. As a result, each customer who performed the event in the required timeframe or number will enter the segment automatical

What customer filters with events are available?

Distribution with custom events

There are three types of event-related distributions that you can run in the Voucherify dashboard. Each of these distributions sends messages automatically in response to one of the following actions:

• Customer triggered a particular custom event – This distribution sends messages in response to a logged event. When Voucherify logs an event, a message is sent to a related customer.
• Customer entered a particular event-related segment – This distribution sends a message to a customer once they enter a segment defined in the distribution conditions.
• Customer left a particular event-related segment – This distribution sends a message to a customer once they leave a segment defined in the distribution conditions.

Customer triggered a particular custom event

This distribution sends messages in response to a logged event. When Voucherify logs an event, a message is sent to a related customer.
In this distribution, you can also build customer and event-related validation rules that create additional criteria for sending a message. Distribution conditions specify the custom event that triggers a message and model optional validation rules. 

Here are the limits you can create for your distributions:

	Audience > Customer segment – send a message only if the customer that triggered a custom event is/is not in a particular customer segment.
	Audience >  Customer metadata satisfy – create rules based on metadata properties assigned to the customer that triggered the event. For example, you can send a message only if the customer that triggered a custom event has a particular metadata property assigned.
	Metadata > Custom event metadata satisfy – create rules based on metadata properties assigned to the triggered event.  For example, you can send a message only if the triggered event has a particular metadata property assigned.

Customer entered a particular event-related segment

This distribution sends a message to a customer once they enter a segment defined in the distribution conditions. It means that when a customer meets segment criteria built around the custom event, they will receive a message. For example, customers who left at least two reviews get an email with a unique promo code. 

Customer left a particular event-related segment

This distribution sends a message to a customer once they leave a segment defined in the distribution conditions. It means that when a customer doesn't meet segment criteria anymore, they will receive a message. 

Redemption limits with custom events

If you create an event-related segment, you can use it when building redemption limits. It comes down to the following steps:

1. Create an auto-update customer segment that gathers customers who performed a chosen custom event. For example, the 'Reviewers' segment that gathers customers who performed the custom event 'new_review' at least two times. 
2. When creating a campaign, add a validation rule that limits redemptions to a particular segment or excludes some segments from redeeming your incentives. For example, a validation rules saying that the code can be redeemed only if a customer is in the segment 'Reviewers' (customer left at least two reviews).

Earning rules with custom events

You can use custom events to trigger earning rules on loyalty cards. If you create a loyalty points earning rule triggered by a custom event, a customer will get points whenever this custom event occurs. You can do this by creating a loyalty campaign with an earning rule that is triggered by a custom event.

To further narrow down the criteria for the earning rule, you can add a validation rule that is based on the custom event metadata. You can define the specific attribute values that the custom event needs to have in order to qualify the earning rule. It comes does the following steps:

1. Create a loyalty campaign with an earning rule based on a custom event.

2. Add a validation rule to the earning rule using the  validation rule builder.

3. Choose Custom event metadata satisfy and set the event criteria.

• First find the event using the magnifying glass, or create a new event using the plus.
• Select the custom event metadata property.
• Choose a condition.
• Assign a value that the property should be equal to.
• Click Add.
4. Lastly, save the earning rule

After saving the campaign, this custom event will trigger the earning rule only if the specific metadata of the custom event match the values defined in the validation rule.