Onboarding Guide

This guide walks you through going from a new JustAI account to running your first live experiment. Most teams are fully operational within 2-3 weeks.

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have the following ready:

• Brand guidelines — Tone, voice, and copy rules that the AI should follow when generating variants
• ESP access — Admin or API-level access to your messaging platform (Braze, Iterable, Customer.io, etc.)
• Conversion events defined — Know which downstream events you want to track (purchases, signups, feature activations) and confirm they’re firing in your ESP
• Target journeys identified — Pick 1-2 journeys or touchpoints for your first experiments (e.g. welcome email, cart abandonment, re-engagement)
• Key user attributes — Identify the user properties you want to segment by (e.g. plan type, region, lifecycle stage)

Note

The most common onboarding friction points are: confusion between attributes and fields, getting conversion events piped correctly from your ESP, and internal review process bottlenecks. This guide addresses each of these.

Week 1: Foundation

Set up your integration

1. Navigate to Settings > Integrations
2. Add your ESP credentials (API key, app ID, etc.)
3. Verify the connection by testing the credential check
4. Confirm that webhook events (opens, clicks, conversions) are flowing from your ESP to JustAI

See the integrations overview for ESP-specific setup guides.

Configure org settings

1. Organization name — Set your team name in Settings > General
2. API keys — Create at least one API key in Settings > API Keys. Your ESP will use this key to call JustAI at serve time.
3. Default attributes — Add the user properties your templates will segment by. See attribute configuration for details on types and CRM accessors.
4. Default fields — Add any templated content variables your copy uses (e.g. firstName, companyName)
5. Default themes — Create 2-3 starting themes that reflect your messaging strategies (e.g. urgency, benefit-focused, social-proof)
6. Metrics — Confirm your key metrics are configured. See metric configuration.

Tip

Attributes vs. fields: Attributes are user properties used for segmentation — they determine which variant a user sees (e.g. plan: free vs. plan: pro). Fields are templated values used inside copy — they appear in the actual text (e.g. “Hi {{ firstName }}”). A property can be both, but they serve different purposes.

Invite your team

Add teammates who need access to the console. If you’re using SSO, see the SSO setup guide.

Week 2: First Template

Create your first template

1. Click + New Template from the Templates page
2. Select your ESP and choose the touchpoint you want to optimize
3. Let JustAI scan the touchpoint and prefill configuration
4. Review and complete the setup — name, description, brand/tone, key metric, variables, fields, attributes, and themes

See the setup guide for a detailed walkthrough.

Generate variants

1. Open your template and go to the Studio tab
2. Click + to create new variants
3. Select themes and attributes to guide generation
4. Review the AI-generated variants in the chat experience
5. Edit as needed — use remixing for quick tweaks or the visual editor for precise changes
6. Approve variants that are ready for experimentation

See create variants for all editing and approval options.

Configure the experiment

1. Go to the Configure tab
2. Set up your AB split — Internal Persistent is recommended
3. Review stat sig thresholds (defaults are usually fine for your first experiment)
4. Follow the ESP-specific integration steps shown inline

See configuration for details on each setting.

Internal review

Share the template with stakeholders for review before going live. Common review checklist:

• Control copy matches what’s currently live in the ESP
• Variables are correctly mapped to ESP template fields
• Variant copy adheres to brand guidelines and legal requirements
• Key metric is appropriate for this touchpoint
• AB split ratio is acceptable (check with your team if control holdout matters)

Caution

Don’t let the review process stall your first experiment for too long. Start with a low-risk touchpoint where variant approval is straightforward, and save higher-stakes campaigns for after you’re comfortable with the platform.

Week 3+: Go Live and Iterate

Activate the template

Once your template is reviewed and approved, activate it to begin serving experiment traffic. The template moves from Draft to Active status.

Monitor performance

• Check the Overview tab for topline metrics and variant performance
• Look for early signals, but don’t make decisions until variants reach the minimum sample size
• Watch for any integration issues (zero traffic, missing events) in the first 24-48 hours

Let Auto-Tune work

As data accumulates, Auto-Tune will surface recommendations:

• Archive underperforming variants
• Approve new AI-generated variants based on winning patterns
• Ship a winner when statistical significance is reached

Expand

Once your first experiment is running smoothly:

• Create templates for additional touchpoints in the same journey
• Group related templates into a Flow for journey-level analytics
• Add more attributes to test segment-level personalization
• Experiment with new themes to discover what resonates

Ongoing Best Practices

• Ship & Iterate — When you find a winner, use Milestones to make it the new control and keep experimenting. Continuous optimization compounds gains.
• Review theme performance — Check which themes consistently outperform and generate more variants in those directions.
• Expand gradually — Add 1-2 new templates per week rather than launching everything at once. This keeps review manageable and lets you learn from early experiments.

Next Steps

• Integrations overview
• Core Concepts
• FAQs