Smoke-Test Your Journeys with Confidence: Test Your Journeys Like They're Live—Without Going Live

[#1]

“Confidence is the foundation of great customer experiences.” 

Launching a journey in Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO) is a critical step for marketers. But what if you could see exactly how profiles flow through your journey before actually going live—without risking real customer contact or profile updates? 
Enter: Dry Run Mode. 

🧩 The Problem: Uncertainty Before Going Live 

Crafting the perfect customer journey is both an art and a science. But here’s the challenge: marketers often face major blind spots during the pre-publication phase. These include: 
- How many profiles will qualify for the journey? 
- Which paths will they take? 
- What are the expected delivery counts? 
While Test Mode offers basic functionality, it doesn’t provide the full confidence needed to predict actual behavior once a journey is live. 

Use Case Snapshot 

In this complex journey: 

- We start with 200,000 profiles. 
- Several conditions filter profiles by geography, language, or market. 
- Based on message delivery checks, the journey splits into multiple paths. 
- Marketers want to know: How many profiles end up in each final node? Without sending real messages, can we visualize and validate this flow? 

The Solution: Dry Run Mode 

Dry Run is a safe publication mode that enables marketers to: 

• Smoke test a journey using real production data
  
• Validate audience counts across all branches and conditions.
  
• Do this all without contacting real customers or modifying their profiles.

With Dry Run, you can stress-test the logic of your journey with complete peace of mind. 

What Dry Run Offers 

1. Safe & Controlled Execution
    -Your journey is published—but in a non-impacting way. No emails go out. No profile fields change.
2. Real-Time Audience Visibility
    -Every node—from segment read to message delivery—displays real profile counts.
3. Iterate Faster
    -No more duplicating and editing journeys just to see qualifying counts.

Industry Insight: Why Dry Run Matters 

• Clients runs 1-2 smoke tests before launching real campaigns. 
• Modifies multiple journey versions to validate path logic. 
• Needs 3–4 iterations per journey just to check delivery counts. 
  
• Dry Run eliminates this friction, helping you go live faster and smarter. 

How Does Dry Run Benefit the Customer? 

Ultimately, every feature in Adobe Journey Optimizer is built with one goal in mind: delivering better experiences for your customers. Here’s how Dry Run empowers marketers to do just that: 

🧠 Smarter Journeys = Better Experiences
By simulating journey logic with real profile data, marketers can:

• Spot and fix segmentation flaws before they affect customers.

• Eliminate unintended sends or incorrect branch flows.

• Result: Customers receive relevant, timely, and accurate messaging—not test runs or misfires.

🧠 Fewer Mistakes, More Trust
Dry Run helps reduce the risk of:

• Triggering incorrect actions due to logic errors.

• Result: Customers are less likely to receive confusing or unwanted messages, building brand trust.

🧠 Faster Time to Value
With visibility into the journey logic before it’s live:

• Teams can launch campaigns sooner, with fewer reworksReduces the number of test journeys needed—faster go-to-market.
• Result: Campaigns reach customers when they matter most, improving engagement and conversion. 

🧠 Tips & Tricks with Dry Run 

The real power of Dry Run is unlocked when you understand how it interacts with other features in Adobe Journey Optimizer. Here are some pro tips and expected behaviors when using Dry Run with advanced journey configurations: 

️ Wait Blocks 

What to Expect: 
In Dry Run mode, Wait Blocks (like 1-hour or 1-day waits) are simulated instantly (typically within few seconds), so you can quickly validate journey paths that would otherwise take hours or days to complete. 

Pro Tip: 
Use Wait Blocks with different action nodes (e.g., time-based delivery) and validate how audiences progress through delays—without having to actually wait. 

Engageable Profiles 

What to Expect: 
Dry Run respects the Engageable Profiles logic in Adobe Journey Optimizer. This means: 

• Only profiles eligible for communication under your AJO license will enter a Dry Run journey. 
• These profiles will count against your Engageable Profile limit, just as they would in a live journey. 
• However, no messages are sent, and no profile data is updated—ensuring a safe, non-impactful test. 

Note: Engageable Profiles in Dry Run behave exactly as they would in live journeys, giving you an accurate view of which profiles qualify—without any side effects. 

CPES (Consent Policy Enforcement System) 

What to Expect: 
Dry Run integrates with CPES to honor consent policies for custom actions only. 

Pro Tip: 
Use Dry Run to test different consent states—simulate both opt-in and opt-out users in the same journey to verify message eligibility and exclusion paths. 

What Happens to Data? 

- We have reporting available for Dry Run feature. User can see view and download dry run reports. 
- Once the journey is set to Live, only live execution data is visible. 
- UI behavior stays exactly the same as live journeys—making it easy to transition when ready. 

Summary 

Capability	Benefit
Real data, no risk	Simulate with actual profiles, no messages sent
In-canvas counts	Understand audience drop-offs and flows
Single journey iteration	No need for cloned journeys to test logic
Reporting insights	Use familiar dashboards for validation

Final Thought 

Dry Run is more than a testing tool—it’s a confidence builder. It brings visibility to the unseen and certainty to the unpredictable. 
Next time you're preparing a campaign, don’t just test it. Dry run it.