In the journey builder the 'decision' component allows you to ask a question within your journey. Depending on your decision selection, that may be a series of possible answers, or a simple 'Yes' or 'No'.
To separate these two differing outcomes, we have two options available for use. 'Simple Decision' and 'Multi Decision', as shown below.
Simple Decision
A simple make decision allows you to query a field within the platform, resulting in a 'Yes' or 'No' answer. For example, in the screenshot attached below we would be asking whether a contact within the journey has opened a specific email stage inside of the journey.
This make decision type would then allow you to say 'Yes' or 'No' i.e. They have opened the stage, or they have not opened the stage, and lead the two options down different routes depending on this.
Multi Decision
The multi-decision component varies slightly from the simple decision, allowing contacts to meet different set criteria and go into different routes based on this. For example, as shown below this query would look at what city a contact is based in; Leeds, Manchester, London, Newcastle or Liverpool. The values that have been input would then be the different options for each route a contact can be triggered into; enabling you to send comms for different regions via one journey and segmented into different paths.
You can include a number of different options for the operators depending on the field data type and the desired outcome of the query. You can find out more about query building and operators via this article.
Once you are happy with the selection created, you can press save and view your new component below. The options within the list can then be connected to different routes, whether that is email, SMS or even an end to their journey.
Delays within Decision components:
When using a make decision in a journey, you will get the option to add a delay to the make decision, like the below example which has a 5 day delay:
This make decision is asking whether contacts have opened email 1 in the journey. And the delay in this make decision differs from a normal delay component delay, as the minute contacts meet this criteria, they will advance through the yes in the make decision and onto whatever stage is linked after the 'yes' in the make decision. Contacts will only be held in this delay for the full 5 days if they do not meet the criteria in this make decision, which in this case is whether they have opened email 1.
So if you want to send another email to the contacts who do meet the yes criteria in your make decision, but don't want to do this as soon as they meet the 'yes' criteria, then it would be worth adding an extra delay after the 'yes' component, like below:
