Journey Stages help you track account progression through your company's marketing, sales, and post-sales funnel. You can customize the standard Journey Stages provided by Demandbase or add stages to align with your business goals.
Follow these best practices to keep your Journey Funnel manageable, accurate, and aligned with your marketing and sales processes.
Review Journey Stages Quarterly
Review your Journey Stages at least once per quarter to ensure they reflect your current business goals and market conditions.
For example, you may need to adjust the criteria for a Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) based on changes in account engagement or qualification thresholds.
Update Journey Stages When Business Goals Change
Update your Journey Stages when your products, industry, or marketing and sales strategies change.
See Edit and Publish Journey Stages.
Limit the Number of Journey Stages
Keep your Journey Funnel focused on key milestones in the customer journey. Too many stages can make it difficult to understand account progression.
We recommend using no more than 12 Journey Stages. The standard Demandbase Journey Funnel includes the stages most organizations need.
If you need separate Journey Funnels for multiple business units, consider the Multiple Journey add-on. Contact your Demandbase Account Team for more information.
Avoid Replicating Opportunity Stages
Avoid creating Journey Stages that mirror every stage in your CRM Opportunity process. Too many Opportunity-related stages can make account progression difficult to interpret.
We recommend using no more than two Opportunity-related Journey Stages.
Add Stages to Enhance the Standard Journey Funnel
Consider adding the following stages to better reflect your business processes:
- SDR Stage: Add a stage between MQA and Opportunity to track account handoffs from Marketing to Sales.
- Post-Customer Stage: Add stages after Customer to track accounts with renewal, cross-sell, or upsell opportunities. For example, create a Growth stage for accounts with a high Growth Pipeline Predict Score. See Create Pipeline Predict Scores.
- Exclusion Stage: Add a catch-all stage at the bottom of the funnel for accounts you want to exclude from the customer journey, such as lost accounts, partners, competitors, and vendors.
Avoid Calculated Fields in Journey Stage Selectors
Avoid using calculated fields in Journey Stage selectors. Instead, configure selector logic that calculates the data directly.
For example, to replicate the Engagement Points (3 mo.) calculated field, configure selectors that calculate Engagement Points over the past three months.
Tip: Demandbase displays a caution message when you select a calculated field in Journey Stage criteria.
Use Account Based Selectors
Journey Funnels track account progression, so use the Account object as the primary object in your selectors.
Recommended selectors include:
Account: Filter accounts using account attributes.
Account with Activity: Filter accounts based on related activities.
Account with Person: Filter accounts based on related people.
Account with Opportunity: Filter accounts based on related opportunities.
Use Merged Fields When Multiple Integrations Are Connected
If you have multiple integrations, use merged fields to ensure your Journey Stage criteria use the most accurate available data.
Examples of merged fields include:
Account Name
Group Similar Selectors
Group similar selectors within the same logic to optimize data calculations.
For example, combine related Activity criteria within a single Account with Activity selector instead of creating separate selectors for each condition.
Recommended: Group Activity criteria in one selector.
Not recommended: Use separate selectors for related Activity criteria.
Add Date Ranges to Journey Stage Selectors
Include date range restrictions in your selectors to evaluate accounts using recent, relevant data.
For example, limit engagement activities to the past three months instead of including all historical activity.
Include Known People in MQA Stage Criteria
Configure your MQA stage to include at least two known contacts or leads with at least 20 Marketing Engagement Points.