Marketers today need more than basic customer journeys. They need control, flexibility, and the ability to activate across all channels — all powered by real-time first-party data. Yet, legacy monolithic software has made this nearly impossible.

One of those legacy software types — customer data platforms (CDPs) — made big promises about easing the burden of journey building. But they were built for an era when customer data was fragmented, and brands needed a way to stitch it together. Instead of solving the problem, they created new ones: data duplication, rigid segmentation, slow execution, and a lack of real-time adaptability. Traditional CDPs trap data inside their own ecosystem, forcing businesses to operate on stale, pre-defined audience segments that don’t reflect real customer behaviors.

At GrowthLoop, we believe there’s a better way. A truly effective journey must be dynamic, flexible, and deeply personalized — which means it should built on your own first-party data and running directly in your enterprise data cloud. Marketers should be able to define their own logic, test and optimize in real time, and control exactly how customers move through journeys.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce a bundle of new advanced journey-building capabilities designed to put marketers in control.

Advanced journey building

GrowthLoop’s advanced suite of journey building tools includes:

• Custom Attributes – Assign a characteristic to a user inside of a journey when they meet a specific criteria or condition that is important to your campaign.
• Custom Attributes with Formulas – As customers pass through a step in their journey, dynamically assign attributes from your cloud to personalize next steps. 
• Group Criteria Nodes – Use a single journey step to send groups of users down various journey paths based on their attributes.
• Manual Mode – Create a moment for human intervention at specific journey steps, giving you full control of when and how customers progress. 
• Experiment Nodes – Test, optimize, and scale winning experiences with built-in experimentation.

With these new features, you’re no longer bound by the limitations of a traditional CDP — you can build, execute, and refine journeys directly on your enterprise cloud, with real-time precision.

Read on to learn how each feature unlocks new possibilities for the most forward-thinking marketers.

Custom Attributes: Tagging users within a journey

Tailor a personalized customer experience by tagging each customer with a specific attribute as they pass through a journey node — ensuring their experience is adjusted in future steps to address their condition.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a custom attribute based on predefined logic using a specific text value (i.e., “20% off coupon).
• Assign the attribute to the customer in real time as they pass through a specific journey node.
• Use the attribute to trigger specific next steps within your customer journey, ensuring that future steps are as relevant as possible.

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Custom Attributes use case

A home goods brand can assign a “seasonal shopper” attribute to customers who purchase holiday decor annually from October through November. This allows the retailer to target those customers with a specific promotion later in the journey, presumably during a time when the customer has a higher intent to buy.  By identifying shoppers this way, the brand can re-engage with a highly relevant offer to boost repeat purchases and customer lifetime value, driving incremental revenue year over year.

Attribute Formulas: Dynamic in-journey tagging 

Create more effective and adaptive journeys by using custom formulas to calculate specific attributes such as engagement scores, churn risk, or purchase likelihood directly in GrowthLoop. As customers pass through a step in their journey, you can dynamically assign attributes from your cloud tables to personalize next steps. 

Here’s how it works:  

• Define an attribute using a formula that will reference a specific table within your data cloud, dynamically choosing the most relevant value.
• When a user reaches a specific step in their journey, your formula will be applied.  Based on their condition, an attribute value from your table will be tagged to the user for the remainder of the journey (i.e. a coupon value of 20%, 25%, or 30%)
• These attributes will be used to trigger distinct and specific next steps within your customer journey, ensuring that future steps are as relevant as possible.

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Attribute Formulas use case

A fashion retailer can calculate a “tiered propensity to buy this quarter” score based on past purchases combined with recent browsing behavior, assigning three tiers of propensity. Based on the tier a customer falls into, they will be presented with a different value coupon in the next step of their journey. By identifying and prioritizing customers this way, the retailer increases conversion rates on future purchases by strategically presenting a specific discount to each shopper group.

Group Criteria Nodes: Conditional journey progression for precision

Control how customers progress through journeys by setting flexible conditions that determine when and if they should advance. This ensures that every customer moves forward to the most relevant next step when they meet the right criteria, improving personalization and efficiency.

Here’s how it works:

• First, define the rules and conditions that customers must meet before advancing in a journey.
• Use attributes, behaviors, or engagement signals from your data cloud to filter and qualify customers for a personalized and relevant journey.
• As customers reach these group criteria nodes, they will automatically progress exactly as you’ve designed.

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Group Criteria Nodes use case

A luxury watch brand can ensure that only high-intent shoppers (e.g., those who view a product page three or more times in a week) move to the personalized outreach stage, avoiding wasted sales effort on casual browsers. By focusing sales outreach on customers most likely to convert, the brand increases high-price purchase rates while reducing inefficient ad spend, directly improving profitability.

Manual Mode: Full control over journey execution

In addition to the robust automated journey flow GrowthLoop enables, you can now add an extra layer of precision to your campaign timing by manually progressing audiences through specific journey stages.

Here’s how it works:

• First, decide which step in a campaign journey will require manual oversight and progression.
• When a customer reaches this step, you can easily move audiences from one step to another manually within GrowthLoop, ensuring the customer receives the right message at the right time.
• Use this control for strategic moments, such as promotional launches or event-driven campaigns.

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Manual Mode use case

A beauty retailer can ensure that new loyalty program members receive onboarding emails at the right moment and only move them to the next stage after they’ve engaged with their welcome discount. By timing outreach based on real engagement, the retailer increases redemption rates on welcome offers and accelerates first-time purchases, leading to faster revenue realization.

Experiment Nodes: Built-in testing for smarter optimization

Test and optimize your marketing journeys by easily running experiments within GrowthLoop. With built-in A/B and multivariate testing, you can compare the impact of sending users down different paths and refine customer experiences based on which branch of the customer journey performed the best. 

Here’s how it works:

• Insert an Experiment Node at any point in your journey to split customers into test groups.
• At the node level, define the different journey variations that you’d like to test. The experiment could be anything from a different offer, messaging, cadence timing, or more. 
• Once users are randomly sent across the experiment groups, it’s easy to analyze the results and pinpoint what was most effective. 
• Automatically scale the winning path to maximize performance.

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Experiment Nodes use case

A subscription box company could test two different retention strategies — one offering a discount and another highlighting exclusive member perks — to determine which reduces churn most effectively. By optimizing retention strategies based on real customer behavior, the company reduces churn, increases recurring revenue, and maximizes the lifetime value of each subscriber.

Take control of your customer journeys 

With these new advanced capabilities, GrowthLoop delivers true enterprise journey-building — giving marketers full control over segmentation, progression, and optimization. Unlike traditional CDPs that lock your data into rigid systems, GrowthLoop runs directly in your enterprise cloud, so you can move faster, personalize better, and execute smarter.

It’s time to break free from the constraints of outdated customer data platforms. Start building flexible, intelligent customer journeys with GrowthLoop today. Contact our team to learn more.