Marketing · Daily operations · 8 min read

Build and run a customer journey

Design a step-by-step journey with waits, conditions and branches, test it and activate it.

Before you begin

A journey follows one lead or customer through steps over time. Use a rule for a single reaction, and a journey when you need to wait and then decide. The Automation and journeys feature must be on. The wait steps are moved by a clock that checks every minute, so the scheduler must be running.

Steps: build the journey

1. Open Marketing > Automation > Customer Journeys and press New journey.
2. Enter the Journey name: 'Name the journey.' is shown if empty.
3. Set the Trigger step: choose the event (the same list as rules) and add filter conditions if needed. A journey has exactly one trigger.
4. Press Add step and choose the type:
   • Action: one of the rule actions (add a tag, notify, assign owner, send email and so on).
   • Wait: enter days, hours and minutes. Tick or until the customer replies to wake early when a message arrives (needs Omnichannel). Minimum one minute.
   • Condition: conditions with a Yes and a No path.
   • Branch (A/B): enter the A percentage, from 1 to 99; B is the rest.
   • Stop: ends the run.
5. Give each step a label, for example "Welcome message".
6. Decide Allow re-entry. Off means the same lead or contact runs the journey only once ever.
7. Press Save. The journey is a draft.

Steps: test and activate

1. Press Test. Enter a deal id or contact, or leave blank for a made-up subject, and run once. The trigger filter is ignored in a test.
2. Check Recent runs. A run shows its status (running, waiting, completed, stopped, failed), when it will wake, and the trail of steps.
3. Press Activate. A journey with no steps cannot be activated: 'Add the steps before activating the journey.'

The journey list shows In progress (running plus waiting) and Completed for each journey.

Example

Trigger Lead created where Source contains Website. Step 1: Add tag welcome. Step 2: Wait 2 minutes or until the customer replies. Step 3: Condition "Customer replied since the wait is set". Yes: Stop. No: Assign lead owner (round robin), then Notify salesperson. A new website lead gets the tag, then waits. If it does not reply, after two minutes the lead gets an owner, the owner is notified and the run completes.

What happens next

• Pause stops waiting runs from moving. When you activate again they continue.
• Archive stops all waiting runs.
• A run that goes round more than 60 steps is stopped as failed ("too many steps, a loop?").
• Waiting runs and past runs are listed in Marketing > Automation > Scheduled Actions.

Good to know

• With re-entry off, a second event for the same lead starts no new run.
• Delete of a step or rule asks no confirmation.
• A branch percentage outside 1 to 99 sent by other tools is not checked; the screen keeps it in range.
• A journey can be tied to a campaign only through the system interface. The campaign record's Social-to-cash tab lists journeys that are, otherwise it shows "None."
• Open the journey and read Recent runs to see why a lead has not moved: the trail shows each step and when a waiting run wakes.