As you set up Unknown User Activation in your project, it's important to consider the impact it will have on your billing, the types of data you'll use when configuring it, and the types of messages you want unknown users to receive.
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# Assess the potential cost of unknown users
Creating unknown user profiles will affect your Iterable costs. Unknown users and their associated custom events count towards your contracted allotment of subscribers and custom events. For this reason, it's important to understand the potential impact before enabling the feature:
Identify expected volume. Talk with the people at your company who monitor web and app traffic to learn how many users are currently visiting your web site or app as unknown visitors. This information varies widely by industry and company, and knowing it upfront can help you set expectations and prepare for increased volume.
Establish a baseline for future assessment. On Iterable's Usage and Billing page, review the current volume of users and custom events in your projects (or ask someone with the required permissions to do so). Establish a baseline that you can use to evaluate the impact of adding unknown users to your Iterable project, once the feature's enabled.
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We recommend that you start using Unknown User Activation with an audience that's big enough to give you a sense of the impact that converting these users can have for your organization, while having an acceptable impact on your billing. Be sure that your team has time to modify the profile creation criteria along the way, to help with this evaluation.
# Align profile creation criteria with business goals
Work with your marketing team to define what criteria unidentified visitors should meet to become unknown users in Iterable. Selecting criteria that lead to users converting on your business goals helps balance the cost of maintaining user profiles with the potential revenue opportunities.
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Using custom events as criteria improves the likelihood that the users who are added to your Iterable project will convert on the goals that you identify. Consider tracking users' conversion paths, paying special attention to the profile creation criteria you've selected.
# Decide how to message new unknown users in journeys
When Unknown User Activation adds unknown users to your project, they automatically enter any journey that uses the New User Created entry source. This means that unknown users start receiving messages as soon as they meet your criteria.
If you don't want unknown users to receive the same messaging as other new users
that are added to your project, you can send them down a different path or
exclude them from these types of journeys. To do this, include a Yes/No Split
tile that filters or redirects users for whom the itblInternal.isUnknownUser
profile field is set. Before the filter tile, add a one-minute delay tile to
ensure that the user's profile is up-to-date before they reach the split.
NOTE
It isn't possible to filter for the itblInternal.isUnknownUser field within
the Start tile — you must use a Yes/No Split tile.
# Want to learn more?
For more information about some of the topics in this article, check out these Support docs: