Selligent Marketing Cloud provides several methods for splitting audiences in a Custom Journey.

The Rule Based Split Component (previously named Split Component) enables the splitting of your audience based on a constraint, an audience field, a custom event or an expression. This enables you to send your audience along different journey paths but is not a random sampling or message testing feature.

The Control Group Component enables the splitting of your audience randomly into one or more groups which can then be sent along different journey paths. With Control Groups you can choose to sample and split only a portion of the whole audience, and the splits can be defined based on a fixed number of contacts, a percentage, or a combination of both.

The AB Test Component enables the splitting of your entire audience randomly into one or more groups based on a percentage of the total audience. These groups are then sent different versions of a message and their actions within the message are used to automatically select a winning version, which is then the one used for any remaining audience. This can only be used with single batch or recurring batch journey entry points, and will only work with a single type of message.

The new Random Split Component, unlike the AB Test Component, can be used with any Entry or Event Entry Component as the starting point. Journey paths following the split can include different types of message, such as email, mobile messages, or SMS. There is also no concept of automatically testing the performance of different versions of a message and selecting a winner.

Unlike the Control Group Component you must split the entire audience, and the split percentages must total 100%.

The Component can be used with any of the Entry and Event Entry Components in a Custom Journey. Also, several Random Split Components can be used in a single journey.

The Random Split component is represented by the following icon in a Custom Journey. The properties panel allows defining the different groups for the split:

Each group or path will be followed randomly by a percentage of the audience. This percentage can be freely defined but the total for all groups must equal 100%. For each one of the defined groups, an event is available:

For example the following journey defines three different paths to compare the results of an email, a mobile message, and an SMS.

Previously, it was only possible to match a Selligent contact with the Google Custom audience by the email address of the contact. To increase matching rates, you can now also use a combination of other contact info such as phone number, first and last name, country and ZIP codes to find the matching record.

If you want to match contacts on postal address information, you also need to use the first name and last name in your matching criteria as Google requires these fields to match the country and ZIP code. All other fields can be combined on any way you need.

Previous releases already supported contact and appointment attachments in email messages. In this release, file attachments are added as well. This new option is available from the Attachments panel of the components panel for a message.

When an attachment is added to the email, personalization fields can be used to allow the marketer to attach personalized files.

Name — The name of the file displayed in the email message. Personalization fields can be used to personalize the file name.

File path— The location of the file. This needs to be a valid path or expression pointing to the location of the file. Personalization fields can be used.

Only include if the following constraint applies— This option allows to set the constraint to comply with for the attachment to be shown.

By default PDF and TXT file extensions are allowed. These are defined in the settings per tenant and can be altered when required. If the file path contains a file extension different from the default, a validation error is returned.

Important note: Use file attachments carefully as some mail clients may classify your email message as spam. Also, including too many files my result in your email message not being delivered to your contact.

In the Segments section for an audience, you can create a new static segment from an existing segment. This release introduces the requirement that the existing segment and the newly created segment must both reside in the same folder tree (Organization vs Global). For example, it is no longer possible to create a new static segment in the Org folder by selecting a static segment that resides in the Global folder. Similarly, when creating a static segment in the Global folder, only static segments in that same folder tree can be used.

The fly-out menu now shows items that have been pinned by the current user as favorites. This allows the marketer to have quick access to the assets they use most. A Star icon has been added to the toolbar to access these assets. Favorites will combine marked assets from all chapters.

Many changes have been made over the last releases to enhance the general user experience in Selligent Marketing cloud. Now, the animated Selligent bot is displayed when a 404 ‘Page not found’ error occurs.

The old Admin tool has been renamed to Campaign Reporting to make a clear distinction between the new Admin Configuration tool and the tool that mainly contains reports. This is visible from the Modules section, from the Permission in the new Admin tool, and from the Campaign Reporting tool itself.

On the Overview page of Lists, Content, and Journeys, and on any of the tables displaying a set of records in the application, action icons are by default hidden and only show when hovering over the entry. This allows for a simpler overview screen and keeps the marketer’s focus on the folders and assets..

A new method has been added to the API:

• Extend Retrieve Organization API with other linked items with organization

• The newest mobile iOS SDK 2.4 has been released on GitHub (needed for Rich Push messages) : https://github.com/SelligentMarketingCloud/MobileSDK-iOS/releases/tag/v2.4.
  The corresponding documentation has been updated.
• The MS Dynamics SDK has been upgraded to version 9.0.2.26.

All material previously found in the Learning Management System has been converted to video format and published to the Learning section of the Online Help and the Selligent Customer Portal. We welcome your feedback on topics which you feel could use more explanation or any product use cases you would like to see detailed. You can submit requests through your Selligent Account Team or via the Knowledge Management email Km@selligent.com. 

For the more technical users of the Selligent Marketing Cloud Platform, a quick guide has been added, explaining the differences in functions, variables and components used in Campaign vs SMC. This guide does not replace the existing technical documents but can be used as a ‘cheat sheet’. It is accessible from Selligent MC/General functionality menu.

• Analysis test shows the preview correctly when performed through a journey
• Single Batch Journeys don’t block sending messages when a repeater has no content, in case content protection is disabled
• CRM mappings are deleted after unlinking them
• When an email is copied across organizations, its data selections are copied as well
• Data selection filtering popup goes away when clicking ok or cancel
• Stored procedures can be deleted in the old Admin Configuration
• Base64Encode function no longer wraps at 76 chars by default
• [Direct Email] Correct error handling occurs instead of throwing exceptions in case of invalid feedback requests
• The Propercase function is correctly translated in French in the personalization editor
• Auto-complete works correctly for Content Blocks in the source editor
• When a journey is offline, a heatmap is no longer created and a clear error message is displayed
• When creating a message the mandatory field Language is now marked with an asterisk
• Drag and drop of components now works correctly also in IE11
• Items in a repeater are now shown in the order in which they were sorted
• Preview and test now work correctly when the selected audience list doesn't contain a test user
• Sending of email no longer fails when data from multiple empty extended profiles is used.
• Dashboards are now managed properly when there are none available
• "Use as a lookup data selection" is now hidden for pages
• Trackers for domains containing * are now correctly saved
• API apps with long names are now correctly created on Campaign side
• Pinned fly-out menus are no longer displayed in chapters where they are not available
• The personalization editor now shows newly added message variables with values defined.
• New domain names added can start with a number
• Reporting is now able to retrieve data for lower case language codes
• Deleting links no longer results in other used links not shown as used
• Custom channel input/output fields can no longer be created with lower-case characters causing lower-case columns in DB
• Saving organisation no longer causes a timeout
• Site Offer component is working correctly in Campaign
• When a device token is not well formatted, this doesn’t cause all batches of push messages to fail
• The correct URL is used when opening a journey from the reporting overview
• Content Block sg:var options are correctly loaded
• All Content Block variables are loaded when switching between Content Blocks with different number of variables
• Segment folders no longer disappear
• Executed journeys can be edited as expected
• Empty visibility constraints do no longer cause message sending issues
• When the organization contains an ampersand (‘&'), the API call does not cause an exception to occur
• The personalization editor displays correctly when your message has a DateTime or Date variable with values defined
• Navigating from a transactional message to a transactional journey works as expected with the ‘Go to journey’ button
• Logging off and logging in as a different user works correctly