SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Scheduled Journeys vs. Real-Time Journeys

On May 7, 2025, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 made waves by unveiling its groundbreaking Customer Journeys feature, setting a new standard for personalized marketing in a real time or bulk fashion!

A Journey is an orchestrated series of touchpoints used to further serve and engage one or more targeted customers. Whether it be to buy more, engage longer, sign up, etc., each journey has a purpose and a goal to achieve. The communications within these touchpoints may be personalized; span multiple channels; and may be initiated by a particular behavior, at a particular prescribed time or both, making it the center for orchestrating all your campaigns.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at the two types of journeys, Real-time journeys and Scheduled journeys, and compare their differences.

What is a Scheduled Journey?

There are two different types of journeys: Scheduled journeys and Real-time journeys.

A scheduled journey is a set of bulk tasks orchestrated to target a set of known contacts in an audience to meet the goals of a marketing campaign.

Let’s break that down.

A scheduled journey is a set of bulk tasks…

Scheduled journeys are considered bulk journeys. They run on a defined schedule and deliver subsequent touchpoints to various channels in a controlled manner. Meaning everyone moves at the same pace along their designated path.

…orchestrated to target a set of known contacts in an audience…

Because scheduled journeys are considered bulk, they may only begin with an Audience of known contacts; an audience being a group of people and their associated attributes created in Customer Intelligence 360 based on data stored in an outside cloud-based data source or on-premises using SAS 360 Direct or uploaded from a file via the audiences API.

Let’s look at an example

Figure 1 represents a scheduled journey.

The purpose of this journey is for a customer to make a purchase. The journey begins with an audience of 4,800 customers we have called Big Spenders. Let’s assume that all those customers fit onto one bus. That bus of customers will move together into the next node, a split node. The split node splits the journey into three paths. The first path is for those customers whose attributes include high churn, the second path is for those customers whose attributes include high value, and the third path is for the remainder of customers. Now that these customers have been split based on their attributes, each group will continue down their separate paths on their subsequent three buses hitting each touchpoint (like a bus stop) on the way. The high value segment of customers will move together to the end of the journey. The high churn and remainder customers will each move to their subsequent wait nodes. All customers in each path will wait together in this wait node for the allotted amount of time. Those customers that have not yet made a purchase and thus have remained on the journey will move together to the next node. Notice the remainder customers move to another split based on a click. This will split this bus of customers. The first path will be for those customers that clicked on the email previously sent to them. The other path will be for those that have not. Remember, no matter how many splits may happen, all customers on the same path will move together until they have either converted and are removed from the journey or have reached the end of the journey.

Figure 1

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What is a Real-time Journey (the Artist Formerly Known as Activities)?

A Real-time Journey is a set of triggered tasks orchestrated to target contacts which perform a qualifying event. This event determines who (a known or anonymous customer) enters the journey and when.

Sound familiar? It should.

SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Activities have been renamed to Real-time journeys! Unlike activities though, a real-time journey will only begin with a triggered event, making it a trigger only journey. Real-time Journeys are triggered for an individual (known or anonymous) based on an action. Communication is based on behavior, and, unlike scheduled journeys, everyone moves at their own pace.

What are some other differences?

Now that we’ve looked at what each type of journey is, let’s look closer at some of the other differences between the two.

Targeting – As stated earlier, scheduled journeys will begin with an audience. This audience being a group of known contacts. Real-time journeys will begin with a triggered event. That event may be triggered by a known or unknown customer.

Touchpoints – Because a scheduled journey is considered a bulk journey, with everyone on a path moving at the same pace, it is made up of bulk tasks. Scheduled journeys currently support bulk email tasks and bulk custom tasks, but more tasks will be added soon.

Because real-time journeys begin with a triggered event and are based on customer behavior, they’re made up of triggered tasks. Real-time journeys currently support triggered emails, mobile push notifications, triggered custom tasks, web tasks, mobile spot tasks, and mobile in-app tasks.

Personalization – Both Scheduled and Real-time journeys may be personalized. Currently, Real-time journeys may only be personalized using the primary metric from the previous task node. A Scheduled journey may be personalized using any audience or event attribute used in the journey.

Scheduling – Both scheduled journeys and real-time journeys may be set to start on a scheduled time. However, a scheduled journey may be scheduled to start and end at a set time and may be set on a recurrence. Currently, a real-time journey may only be scheduled to start and end, but not recur and is always on when active.

Entry Limits, Success Events, and Drop Conditions– Entry Limits, Success Events, and Drop Conditions are new features available for Scheduled journeys. Entry limits set a limit for customers reentering a scheduled journey. By default, a customer may enter a scheduled journey at any time, but can be limited to entering a scheduled journey only once or may reenter a journey after a specified amount of time. A customer may also be limited to being in one journey or subset of journeys, based on purpose, at a time.

Success Events allow you to determine how success in a journey is measured. By default, Completed Journey is shown to represent success, meaning the customer reaches an End node then exits the journey. If you wish to track more specific behavior, you may change this default success event to another event. Furthermore, if revenue is chosen as the target goal, a specific event with a numeric attribute to represent revenue must be selected.

When configuring your success events for a scheduled journey you'll specify whether a customer exits the journey after converting. You'll use drop conditions to specify other events that may occur which would cause your customer to drop off the scheduled journey as well. When a customer does exit a scheduled journey, an exit event is recorded.

When should I use a Scheduled Journey?

As stated earlier, you’ll use a scheduled journey when you want to reach an audience of known customers in bulk. When creating a scheduled journey, you’ll choose your journey’s purpose, whether it be onboarding, purchase, reactivation, cross sell upsell, etc.

Here are two typical use cases for scheduled journeys:

Purpose: Onboarding (Figure 2)

We have an audience of customers that have signed up for our mailing last in the last 30 days. We would like to reach out to these customers and ask them to download our app. The success event will be when the customer logs into the app for the first time. This event will be created using a form submit event. This journey will run once a week and the audience will refresh each time so new audience members receive the communications. To avoid customers receiving multiples of the same communication, they may only enter this journey once.

Figure 2

Purpose: Reactivation (Figure 3)

We have an audience of customers that have deactivated their membership in the last 30 days. We would like to reach out to these customers with an offer to reactivate their membership. The success event will be a Membership Activation page view where the customer reactivates their membership and views the membership activation page. This journey will run on the first day of every month and will refresh the audience each time. As above, to avoid customers receiving multiples of the same email, the customer may only enter this journey once.

Figure 3

When should I use a Real-time Journey?

You’ll use a real-time journey when you want to reach a set of known or unknown customers that have performed a specific action. Communications in this journey are triggered based on the customer’s behavior.

For example, suppose you have an online store and would like to provide a coupon to customers that have recently viewed specific products on your site. Your Real-time journey would begin with a product view event. This event will specify the exact products the customer will need to view for them to trigger the journey. Once they view the product, they are sent an email with a coupon for the item they have viewed. The journey may continue down two paths, whether the customer makes the purchase or not. If the customer makes the purchase, a purchase event is triggered, and they are sent an email thanking them for their purchase. If they do not make the purchase, they may receive a reminder email or text message with the coupon code.

The Customer Intelligence 360 team at SAS is so excited to announce these new capabilities. If you would like to learn more about Scheduled journeys or Real-time journeys please see the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Users Guide and Admin Guide or see the forthcoming course titled Creating Scheduled Journeys with SAS Customer Intelligence 360 or the course Creating Real-time Journeys with SAS Customer Intelligence 360 in the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 learning subscription.

A special thanks to the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Enablement team for their support and collaboration on this post!

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