Journeys

A journey is a multi-step automation that runs against contacts over time: it can send email, wait, and branch on its own once a contact is enrolled. Setting one up is two decisions, what to call it and how contacts get in. This article covers creating a journey and choosing its trigger. Designing the steps is covered in Journey builder, and what happens to a contact after they enter is covered in Enrollments. Journeys is included from the Pro plan tier up.

Creating a journey

Open Journeys, in the Messaging group of the sidebar, and click New journey. Name the journey, then pick a trigger from a segmented control: Manual, List, Form, Tag, or Event. A live preview canvas beside the form mirrors your pick, so the Trigger card on it updates as you choose.

• Manual (the default): enroll contacts yourself, from a contact page or through the API.
• List: enroll a contact when they're added to a chosen list. See List, form, and tag triggers below for exactly which additions count.
• Form: enroll a contact when they submit one of your captured forms.
• Tag: enroll a contact when the chosen tag is applied to them.
• Event: enroll a contact when a named platform event fires for them.

Click Create journey. The journey is created as a draft and you land in the journey builder to design its steps. The name and trigger are set once, at creation, and neither can be changed afterward. If a journey needs a different trigger later, create a new one.

List, form, and tag triggers

For the List trigger, pick a list from the Contact list dropdown, populated from your Reach lists. For Form, pick a captured form; the fastest way there is the Create journey link on any form's row in the Lead forms catalog, which opens New journey with the trigger and form already selected. For Tag, pick the tag that should enroll a contact when applied.

Event trigger

Pick Event, then set Event name: the exact name of the platform event that should enroll a contact, for example contact.signed_up. The match is exact; only a contact-attributed event with that name enrolls a contact.

Re-enrollment cooldown sets how many days a contact must wait, after finishing the journey, before the same event can enroll them again. Leave it blank for once-only enrollment. A positive number lets the contact re-enter once that many days have passed since their prior run finished.

An optional Conditions builder narrows the trigger further: the contact is enrolled only when they also match the conditions at the moment the event fires.

Journey lifecycle

A journey moves through three statuses: Draft, Active, and Archived. Every status shows a Report and an Edit action in the journey's header; Edit always opens the composer, which edits the journey's working steps at any status. Draft additionally shows Clone and Activate; Active shows Clone and Archive; Archived shows Clone and Reactivate.

Activate opens enrollment: contacts start entering through the chosen trigger, and you can enroll contacts by hand from the journey's Enroll sheet.

Clone copies the journey, name, trigger, and current steps, into a new draft named “(name) (copy).” It reuses a working journey's shape; it does not let you change the original's trigger, since the copy keeps the same trigger the original had.

Archive stops a journey: it cancels every active enrollment on it and prevents new contacts from entering.

Reactivate moves an archived journey back to draft so you can review or edit its steps before pressing Activate again. It does not resume the enrollments that were cancelled on archive.