Before you start

Things you need to know:

Before configuring your Experiences, we advise that you create at least some of the SmartBlock content that you want to use.
Experiences is a powerful tool that offers endless possibilities for personalization. However, it's best to start simple. Begin by creating two Experiences and one Experience rule set. Focus on getting these initial setups working as intended. Once you're comfortable with the basics, you can expand and explore more complex configurations.
You cannot archive an Experience if it is part of an active rule set.
You cannot activate a rule set if it includes an archived Experience.
Archiving an Experience ensures it is not actively assigned to any visitors.

Create an Experience

Go to Content > Experiences.
Select CREATE EXPERIENCE.
Enter a name for your Experience, then select CONTINUE.
Configure web content:
- On the Web Slots tab, select EDIT to navigate to the Site Editor.
  When you access from an Experience in this way, the Site Editor is linked directly with that Experience only.
- Use the Site Editor to adjust the website for the specific Experience.
  Learn more in Site Editor.
Preview changes:
- Select PREVIEW to see how the Experience interacts with other Experiences.
- Adjust priority order and set an Experience to takeover for previewing purposes.
Publish changes:
- Select PUBLISH.
  Once published, visitors assigned to the Experience will see the configured web content.

Configure email content - Using Experiences within Slots

Edit Slots:
- From the Experience Site Editor page, select a Slot and select the Edit Mode icon.
- Or go to Content > Slots, select the Slot, then select EDIT.
Edit Slot rules:
- Select RULES from the Action drop-down menu to edit Slot rules.
- Go to Person and drag the On Experience rule onto the decision tree.
- Select the Experiences to determine which SmartBlocks to show within the Slot.
Select SAVE.

Advanced

This feature is helpful for managing email content and Slots. If you have many Slots, you can adjust what’s shown in all of them at once. It's also useful for complex rule setups. You can add the Experience Rule to each Slot and create the complex rule scenario just once.

Control which Experience is shown - Experience rules

1. Set up Experience rules

Go to Content > Experiences, select the Experience to set rules for.
Select ADD TO RULE SET.
Create a new rule set, enter a name, and select CONTINUE.
Add rules and Experiences to determine which Experience each person should be on.
Learn more in Marketing rule types.

2. Enable rule set

Go to Content > Experiences.
Select MANAGE EXPERIENCE RULES.
Enable the rule set using the Status slider.

Rule sets are evaluated when the content is generated:

Web content - evaluated when the content is displayed.
Open-time email content - evaluated when the email is opened.
Send-time email content - evaluated when the email is sent.

Use multiple Experiences - Priority order and Takeover

You can assign a multiple Experiences to a visitor through the creation of multiple rule sets.

Each rule set is evaluated for the person, and one Experience is assigned per evaluation. This Experience may be the same or different from previous evaluations.

For Slots, if a visitor has multiple Experiences, they’re evaluated based on the defined Slot Rules, to determine which content to show within the Slot.

For Site Editor configurations, you can use the Priority order and Takeover features to control the Experience content shown on the website.

Experience priority order

The priority order only affects Experiences with Site Editor configurations.

When multiple Experiences are assigned to a visitor, the system works through each Experience, in the priority order, and adds the Site Editor configurations incrementally to build the website page to display.

However, when the system finds a SmartBlock/Slot position that is in the same place as content from a previous Experience, the system does not add the new SmartBlock/Slot to this same position. Only the highest priority Experience content is displayed.

The active priority order that determines the Experience content being shown is displayed on the left-hand side of the Experiences table.

Change the priority order

Go to Content > Experiences.
Select CHANGE PRIORITY.
Drag and drop the Experience list items into the desired priority order.

Example

Priority 1: Website Experience A has:
- A banner Slot on the homepage
- A recommendations Slot below the banner
Priority 2: Website Experience B has:
- A banner Slot on the homepage - in the same position as the banner Slot in Experience A.
- A weather Slot at the bottom of the homepage

A vistor is assigned both Experience A and B – they therefore see:

From Experience A: the banner Slot on the homepage
From Experience A: the recommendations Slot below the banner
From Experience B: the weather Slot at the bottom of the homepage

The visitor doesn’t see the banner Slot from Experience B on the homepage, as this is in the same position as the Experience A banner Slot, and Experience A content has higher priority.

Takeover

Takeover only affects Experiences with Site Editor configurations.

A single Experience can be set to the Takeover state. If a visitor is assigned the Experience that is set to Takeover, then only this Site Editor configuration is shown to the customer – no additions are made from any other Experience configurations.