A journey is an automated sequence that runs on its own. Instead of sending one email to everyone at once, a journey moves each reader through a path of steps — send an email, wait a few days, check a condition, send the next one. Journeys live under Journeys.
The building blocks
- Trigger — what starts a reader on the journey. Some are about your books: a reader downloads a reader magnet, clicks a book link, buys from your connected store, or reaches a review-team milestone. Others are about your list: they sign up, submit a form, join a list, or get a tag. A journey can have up to three triggers.
- Send — sends an email you design inside the journey.
- Wait — pauses for a set time, or until a date, before the next step.
- Branch — splits the path on a condition, such as whether the reader opened or clicked an earlier email in this journey, has a tag, or has read a book.
- Action — tags a reader, moves them to a list, updates a field, and so on.
Build and turn on
- Go to Journeys and create one, from a template or from scratch.
- Set the trigger, then add send, wait, and branch steps to lay out the path.
- Design each email, then use Send me a test on the step to see it in your own inbox.
- Choose Publish & turn on. Readers who match the trigger start flowing through.
To change a journey that is on, choose Pause to edit, make your changes, and choose Publish & turn on again. Readers already part-way through finish the version they started.
Who is in a journey
Open a journey and choose the people icon to see every reader in it, the step they are at, and how they got in. From there you can add a reader by email or take one out. A reader's own profile lists their journeys too.
Journey settings
- Who can enter narrows the trigger to readers who also meet a condition.
- Leave early takes a reader out as soon as they meet a condition — for example, once they have bought the book the journey was asking them to buy.
- How often a contact goes through is once by default. A journey started by a book link, a purchase, a magnet or a review team can instead run once for each of those.
Imported contacts never start a journey on their own. To send an imported list through one, add the readers to it by hand or give them the tag it starts from.
Not sure what to build first? See Automation recipes for proven starting points.