Setting a merge tag strategy for a journey

You can select a merge tag strategy for your journey entry criteria. This means that when you use activity merge tags in the journey (such as in an email message or an action), the merge tags will use values from activities associated with the specific journey entry activity.

For example, you might use this feature when you have a journey based on the Salesforce entry activity “Opportunity created occurs”. You can then set the Merge tag strategy to associate any “Opportunity updated” activity merge tags with the entry activity (“Opportunity created”), by matching each activity’s “Opportunity ID” attribute.

Now that you have set a merge tag strategy, when you use merge tags for the “Opportunity updated” activity within the journey, the merge tag values will be from the latest update to the particular opportunity that caused the person to enter the journey (rather than a different opportunity they may be associated with).

For example, you could create a nurture journey for a new opportunity that contains some initial communication and internal notifications for your team. In the journey, you have the person wait at a filter shape for the opportunity stage to change (e.g. from “Qualification” to “Needs analysis”). After this occurs, you can send a new internal notification email with details of the opportunity (based on the “Opportunity updated” activity) to a team member.

NOTE:

Setting a merge tag strategy is only available for “x activity occurs”-type conditions.
If you use more than one “x activity occurs”-type condition in your journey entry criteria, you will be able to reference any of the entry activities’ attributes in the merge tag strategy settings. This means that you can match an activity to any of the entry activities. For example, you might have 2 different “Opportunity created”-type entry activities that you want to match the “Opportunity updated” activity to.
If there are no matching activities that are associated with the entry activity, then any associated merge tag values will be empty/have no value. This also applies to entry criteria that contain multiple activities. For example, you want to match an “Opportunity updated” activity with the “Opportunity created” entry activity by the opportunity ID attribute, but no opportunity updates have occurred with the same ID. As such, an "Opportunity updated"-type merge tag used in an email or Slack notification (for example), will not output a value.
Each activity can only be added to the merge tag strategy once. For example, you can’t add the “Opportunity updated” activity twice (e.g. if you intend to use different activity attributes based on which entry activity triggers the journey).