Journey steps: triggers, waits, branches and goals

This is the reference for every building block in the journey builder. For a step-by-step guide to building one, see Building an automated journey.

Triggers (how a contact enters)

A journey has exactly one trigger. It decides who enters and when.

Trigger	Fires when…	Notes
Submits a form	A contact submits one of your forms	Optionally scope it to a specific form.
Opens an email	A contact opens any marketing email
Clicks an email link	A contact clicks a link in an email
Manually enrolled	You add contacts yourself	Use the Enrol button on the journey page.

Form, open and click triggers fire automatically once the journey is active.

Steps (what happens along the way)

Send email

Sends an email, using the same block builder as campaigns. The unsubscribe footer and open/click tracking are added automatically.

Wait

Pauses the contact before the next step. Two kinds:

• Fixed delay — wait a set number of hours or days.
• Until they do something — wait until the contact opens an email, clicks a link, or submits a form. Optionally give up after a timeout so no one waits forever.

If / else

Splits the flow into two paths based on a condition. Contacts who match take the If yes path; everyone else takes If no. Each path has its own steps.

A/B split

Randomly divides contacts across two or three paths by weight — for testing different follow-up routes. Unlike campaign A/B testing (which finds a winner and sends it to everyone), an A/B split keeps each contact on its path through the rest of the journey.

Goal

A conversion checkpoint. If the contact matches the goal's condition, they leave the journey marked Goal met. If not, they continue. Use a goal to stop emailing someone the moment they have done what you wanted (booked a call, bought, etc.).

Exit

Ends the journey for a contact. Useful at the end of a branch.

How conditions work

Both If / else and Goal use the same condition builder you will recognise from dynamic audiences:

• Lead score — at least / at most a number.
• Status — lead, customer, churned, unqualified.
• Engagement — has opened, has clicked, has not opened, etc.
• Product interest — matches a product.

A contact "matches" if they meet the condition at the moment the journey evaluates that step.

How runs are processed

Once a journey is active, we check it roughly every hour:

• Contacts waiting on a delay move on when the delay is up.
• One email is sent per contact per check, so a contact cannot be blasted by a long chain at once.
• Conditions and splits resolve instantly within a check.

Use Run due now on the journey page to process anything due immediately — useful when you are testing.

What always overrides a journey

• Suppression — if a contact unsubscribes, hard-bounces, or complains, they leave the journey immediately. You never email a suppressed contact, even mid-flow.
• Pausing the journey — pausing freezes every contact in place. Re-activating resumes them.