Most of Journey Analytics works the moment a journey is activated, but the dashboard view that combines send data with website behavior has to be set up. Here is the path a Marketing Cloud admin or marketer follows to get a measurable journey and a populated dashboard.
- Define a goal before activating
In Journey Builder, open the journey settings and set a goal as a filter on contact data that describes the conversion you care about. Express the target as a number or a percentage. Decide whether meeting the goal should also exit the contact.
- Connect Google Analytics
Set up the Google Analytics integration for Marketing Cloud Engagement. The Journey Analytics dashboard pulls site behavior, conversions, and revenue from this connection, so the dashboard tiles stay empty until it is in place.
- Open the Journey Analytics dashboard
After contacts begin flowing, open the dashboard to review the delivery, engagement, conversion, traffic, and goal tiles. Remember that the dashboard Goals tile reflects Google Analytics goals, not Journey Builder goals.
- Check journey health alongside trends
Use the health icon on the activated journey to read goal attainment, current population, and alerts. Treat health as the operational check and the dashboard as the performance check.
Choose a raw contact count or a percentage of the audience. Percentages travel better across journeys of different sizes; raw counts read more clearly for a single campaign.
Optionally let contacts who meet the goal leave the journey early. This records the conversion and stops further sends, unlike a plain exit criterion that removes contacts without counting them.
The dashboard reports across email, SMS, and push. Include the channels your journey actually uses so the engagement tiles are not diluted by channels with no activity.
- The dashboard Goals tile reflects goals configured in Google Analytics and is not linked to Journey Builder goals or exit criteria, despite the shared name.
- Goal attainment updates on a roughly 24-hour cycle, so a freshly activated journey will show little or no goal data on day one.
- Journey history covers only about the last 30 days of a contact's activity, so older interactions will not appear when you investigate a specific person.
- Without the Google Analytics integration the dashboard tiles stay empty even though in-journey goal and population data still works.