Action Conditions

Action conditions specify the prerequisites for actions to fire. You can use them as a further level of granularity to determine the audience for an experience. Just as WHO targets define who is eligible for an experience, action conditions define whether qualified visitors can see the action. The combination of WHO targets and action conditions determine which visitors ultimately end up in an experience's analytics. However, unlike WHO targets, which affect the entire experience, action conditions only apply to individual actions that you add to the WHAT settings of an experience.

Because they act as prerequisites, action conditions in some ways assist with targeting in experiences. When you test variations of a change to your site, you must ensure only those visitors exposed to these changes are included in the analytics. If the analytics include a visitor who didn't see the change, the experience results can be diluted. Action conditions help prevent this scenario from happening and ensure the action doesn't fire on a part of the site that can't accept it.

General Guidance

A rule of thumb for action conditions is that unless you want the action to be visible on every page of your site, you should use action conditions. Here are a few examples of ways to use them:

  • To specify that the action fires only on the index page so that a new lightbox or email sign-up displays to visitors only on this page type and nowhere else
  • To specify that an image advertising free shipping only appears on the cart page and only when the cart value is greater than or equal to $100
  • To restrict an action to specific pages for analytics purposes

You can also use regular expressions for URL-based action conditions. See Regular Expressions in Personalization for more information.

Action Condition Types

Action conditions fall into two categories: built-in conditions applied in Action Builder and optional conditions applied to an action that you configure in the WHAT settings in Experience Editor. If the action has no built-in conditions, then you must determine whether you want the action to run site-wide or add additional action conditions. If an action has been configured with both types of conditions, then a visitor must satisfy them all to qualify for the action.

Adding Action Conditions

Built-in action conditions you apply via the Conditions tab in Action Builder.

The Conditions tab in Action Builder, with the ADD ACTION menu expanded

If your goal is to have just a few reusable actions, you should avoid applying action conditions in Action Builder. Applying them in the builder can limit an action's utility in a variety of situations.

Instead, add action conditions in the individual action that you configure for the WHAT settings of an experience. These conditions only impact the experience.

Callout of the ADD CONDITION selector in an action template

How Action Conditions Work Together

Both types of action conditions can use AND/OR logic when you create two or more of them. The action shown here is configured with conditions so that it only fires on the cart page and the cart value is less than $100.

Action configured with a page type action condition and a cart value action condition

Click the toggle above the action conditions to change the logic from AND to OR.

Available Action Conditions

The action conditions available in the action templates you can select when configuring the WHAT settings of an experience depend both on your contract with Monetate and on the method calls used to pass data from your site to Monetate. For more information about passing data to Monetate, refer to the Introduction to the Monetate JavaScript API section of the knowledge base.

Without Data Tracking

If you haven't added JavaScript API method calls to your site, then you can use the following action conditions.

ConditionDefinition
URLSpecifies on which page the action initiates as determined by a URL indicator
TimeSpecifies between what dates and times the action fires
Landing pageIndicates whether the action fires on the landing page or on every page except the landing page

With Data Tracking

If you have added the relevant JavaScript API method calls to your site, you can use these action conditions.

Depending on your Monetate implementation, you may not have all action conditions options available but can possibly add them. For example, clients can request that options that use a filter much like recommendation filters be enabled in the Product detail page category for their accounts. Contact your dedicated Client Success Manager to discuss what additional action condition options might be available for your account.

ConditionDefinition
Page typeDetermines on which page type, as defined by the setPageType data you pass to Monetate, the action fires
URLDetermines on which page the action fires as based on a URL indicator
TimeDetermines between what dates and times the action fires
Cart valueDetermines if the action fires before or after the visitor has a certain value in the cart
Landing pageDetermines if an action fires based on the visitor's landing page or on every page except the landing page
Page breadcrumbDetermines if the action fires if a specified condition for the page's breadcrumb trail is met
Page categoryDetermines if the action fires on a particular page based on its category
Product detail pageDetermines if the action fires on the product detail page based on the presence or absence of a certain product ID (PID), SKU, brand, PID in a custom list, product type, or product catalog attribute
Product list pageDetermines if the action fires on the index page based on the presence or absence of certain PID, SKU, brand, PID in custom list, or product type

To use the SKU-based options in the Product detail page and the Product list page action condition categories, you must ensure that your JavaScript API implementation passes SKUs to Monetate through the addProductDetails method. You must also contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager to request that your account be configured to use these SKU-based options.

To use the PID-based options in the Product detail page and the Product list page action condition categories, you must ensure that your implementation pass PIDs to Monetate through the addProductDetails method.

See List of JavaScript API Methods and What They Unlock, Step 4: Capture Product Details, and addProductDetails for more information about passing PID and SKU information through the API.