Building a Predictive Goal

Building predictive goals can be an iterative process. After you create a goal and review the resulting prediction, you might decide to edit your goal criteria to see if you get a different result. Use the steps in this article to create, edit, or delete a predictive goal.

# In this article

# Create a new predictive goal

To create a predictive goal:

1. Navigate to Insights > Predictive Goals.

   • Choose one of the Predictive Goal templates with predefined system events for a specific business goal. This can be a good option if you're just getting started with Predictive Goals.

   • Or, click New Goal to build a predictive goal using criteria that you specify based on your particular business goals.

2. On the Goal Criteria page, review the values provided for the template you selected or, if you're creating a goal from scratch, specify the events and properties that are relevant to your goal.

   For example, to find people who are likely to be highly engaged with your product, your goal criteria could look for users who might add at least one item to their carts OR redeem at least one promo code, AND who have a Premium account type within a given month.

   

   • Click Perform event or Have user field, depending on the type of data you’re using as criteria. For example, if you track the type of account a user has with an event called Premium, you'd select Perform event. However, if you track this information with a user profile field called Account that has a Premium value, you'd select Have user field.

   • Select events or user fields and frequency operators and values.

     To ensure that the criteria you're selecting will support the goal insights you hope to achieve, hover the value you're thinking about choosing to see how it's performed over the past 30 and 90 days. Remember that goal criteria that applies to most, or very few, of your users won't produce insightful predictions.

     

   • If you want to include more goal criteria, add it:

     • Immediately following the first item to create an "or" statement (if either criteria is satisfied, a user might convert on the predictive goal).

     • In the box below the previous entry to create an "and" statement (this criteria must also be satisfied to count as a conversion).

3. If you want insight into how many users have recently met the criteria you've defined before you create a goal, click Preview users.

   If significantly more users satisfied the criteria than you expected, you might want to refine your goal by adding additional criteria. If far fewer users satisfied the criteria than you expected, you may want to select fewer or different criteria. Making these types of changes now instead of waiting for a goal to build can save you valuable time.

4. Under Goal Details, provide a Predictive goal name and a User field name to display user-specific score that will appear in segmentation and on the user profile. Structure it as you do other metrics used in your project (for example, HighlyEngagedPropensity).

   Refer to View a user's conversion scores to see how the value you provide for User field name appears in a user profile.

5. Click Create goal. After 12–24 hours, you'll be able to review results.

# Review your prediction

To view the results of a prediction that has a Ready status:

1. Navigate to Insights > Predictive Goals.

2. Click the goal you want to view.

3. Select a group of users with conversion probabilities you'd like to focus on. Use the radio buttons above the chart to select the top or bottom 10% of your users, or select a custom range by entering specific values (or using the sliders).

   

   • If the prediction shows that most of the users in your project are likely to convert on a given predictive goal, edit your goal criteria to include additional criteria.

   • If the prediction shows that significantly fewer than 1,000 users are likely to convert, pare back your goal's criteria.

   • If the prediction doesn't provide the insight you need, try different data points altogether.

# Edit a predictive goal

To edit a predictive goal:

1. Navigate to Insights > Predictive Goals.

2. In list view on the Predictive Goals page, click the overflow button (three dots) in the goal's row, and click Edit.

3. Provide the new details and click Update predictive goal. After 12–24 hours, you'll be able to review results.

# Delete a predictive goal

On the Predictive Goals page, click the overflow button (three dots) in the goal's row, and click Delete. Within 12–24 hours, the predictive goal is deactivated, and all related user fields are removed from user profiles.

# Next steps

• Learn how to evaluate your prediction, once it's ready. See Evaluate your prediction.

• For an example of how a fictional company built predictive goals to meet their needs, see Use Case: Reward Loyalty with Memorable Experiences.