Build the journeys

Each recipe on the pages of this section is one journey. The journeys and their message texts are examples: build the ones you need and replace the texts with your game’s tone and rewards. To open the canvas, see Start creating your first journey. For the canvas basics, see the Customer Journey overview.

Let AI Assistant create the journeys

AI Assistant can create the journeys from these recipes in your application. Send it the link to the recipe page and name the journey you need. A journey it creates starts as a draft and doesn’t affect players until you launch it. Check each change before you approve it.

Players in many games move through similar stages. Use this table to pick the journeys for the stage where you lose players.

Stage	What is happening	Journeys
New	The player installed the game and is learning it	Onboarding for new players Second session for new players
Playing	The player plays and progresses	Help for stuck players Daily reward reminder
Buying	The player is ready to spend, or has paid	First purchase offer Second purchase offer Store abandonment reminder
Loyal	The player stays for the long run	Live event and VIP announcements Anniversary reward
Leaving	The player stopped opening the game	Reactivation for inactive players

Prepare to build a journey

A message element in a journey uses ready content, so create the content first in Content: push presets, in-app templates, email content, or App Inbox presets. Each recipe lists the content it needs.

To personalize the content:

• Player data: to put a value stored on the player into a push, such as the player_level tag, add a Dynamic content placeholder to the text.
• Language: to send each player the message in their own language, add the languages to the push or in-app content. Pushwoosh picks the version by the device’s Language tag, which the SDK sets from the OS locale, so you do not need a custom language tag. See Multi-language messaging.

Best practices for every journey

Apply these to every journey in this playbook:

Practice	Why
Set a silence period	A push should not reach a player in the middle of the night. The period blocks messages in each player’s device timezone, for example 23:00 to 08:00. Learn more: Silence period
Limit how often a player enters	A repeating event such as Level completed starts the journey every time, so one player could get the same message again and again. Learn more: Campaign entry limit
Choose the message type on every message element	A journey that starts on an event does not preselect the type, and the element shows Message type not selected until you choose one. Learn more: No preselected message type
Use Marketing message for offers, reminders, and win-back	A marketing message follows the limits you set: frequency capping, silence periods, and control groups. Transactional messages skip frequency capping and control groups, but not silence periods, so keep them for service messages. Learn more: Choosing the right message type
Add a conversion goal	The conversion rate of the goal in Performance shows how many players did the action you chose. Learn more: Conversion goals, Measure results
Plan for players without push	A player who has not allowed notifications gets no push. Add a Reachability check and send an in-app message or an email instead. Learn more: Reachability check, Ask for push permission at the right moment
Check who a segment journey takes in	A journey that starts from a segment takes in only devices with a push token. The token arrives when the game asks for push permission, even if the player declines, so these players enter and get the in-app message. Players the game has not asked yet do not enter
Set an expiration on in-app messages	A journey in-app usually appears the next time the player opens or returns to the game, so set In-app expiration, for example 1 day, to keep old messages from appearing days later. To reach players outside the game, use a push. Learn more: In-app expiration
Test every journey before you launch it	A journey has no test mode, so once it is running, real players who match its entry get its messages. Learn more: Test each journey before you launch it
Set delivery rules before you launch	They limit how often a player hears from you across all journeys. Learn more: Set delivery rules before you message players