Journeys
A Journey is an automated sequence of steps a Prospect passes through, usually starting with an email to a list and branching from there according to how they engage. Journeys can be built now and started later.
On this page:
- Before you build
- Creating a Journey
- Building the path
- Actions
- Triggers
- Checks
- Journey lifecycle
- Prospects entering and leaving
- Reopening Leads
- Journey statistics
- Measuring results
Before you build
Agree on a specific, measurable goal first, and decide what happens once it is met.
All Journeys generally need four assets.
A prospect list. Who the Journey targets. Segment by grade, score, behavior or interest so the messaging fits. A static list suits one email to a defined segment; a dynamic list suits a drip or nurture campaign, since Prospects join and leave by rule as their situation changes.
Email templates. A newsletter or announcement needs one reusable template. A drip campaign needs one message across several templates in a timed sequence. A nurture campaign needs several, because the right message depends on which branch the Prospect took.
An email cadence. How often emails go out, and what happens when a Prospect does or does not open or click.
An exit strategy. Prospects either convert along the way or reach the end without acting. Both outcomes are information. Converters should leave the Journey for a hot-prospect list, then either enter a new Journey or go to Sales. Non-actors should go to a list for the disengaged, to be revived or removed.
ℹ️ Create a dedicated folder and a dedicated list for the Journey before building it.
Creating a Journey
Go to Journeys and click New Journey. The Add New Journey popup takes the configuration below. Save creates the record; Save & New saves and reopens the popup for another.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Folder | Categorization, so the Journey stays findable. |
| Unsubscribe Applies To | What happens when a Prospect clicks unsubscribe in a Journey email. Prospect Record, the default, unsubscribes them from all future emails in this Journey. Source List unsubscribes them from the list they entered the Journey through. |
| Allow Journey Repeats | Lets the Journey repeat for a Prospect, defining how many days between repeats and how many times. |
| Send Email During Business Hours Only | Restricts sending to defined start and end hours and specific days. The timezone defaults to the Marketing user’s own and can be changed. |
Recipient and suppression lists
A Prospect on several recipient lists receives the email once, not once per list.
⚠️ Suppression is permanent for that Journey run. A Prospect on both a recipient and a suppression list is excluded from the Journey, and removing them from the suppression list afterwards does not let them in. They have to be re-added to the recipient list and the Journey restarted before they are reprocessed.
Building the path
Open the Journey tab on the record. A new Journey shows a teal cog as the start, a + button, and a red stop icon as the end. Click + to add a step. Once a step exists, + icons appear above and below it.
Three step types:
| Step | What it does |
|---|---|
| Action | Performs an update or task on the Prospect: send an email, adjust a score, assign an owner. |
| Trigger | Waits for an event such as an email open. Creates a branch. |
| Check | Evaluates a Prospect’s field values before letting them continue. Creates a branch. |
Steps can be scheduled to run immediately or in the future.
A worked example
The source builds a simple branching Journey.
- Click +, choose Add Action, select Send Email, pick the template from Choose Email to Send, set when it sends, and Save.
- Click the + below it, choose Add Trigger, and select Email Opened. Pick the same email under Which Email, set the timing, and Save. The Journey now has two branches.
- On the opened branch, add an Adjust Score action to increase the score, then a Send Email action for follow-up content.
- On the not-opened branch, add an Adjust Score action to decrease the score, then Add Check and choose Check Prospect Field, with Field Name Score, Operator Greater Than, Field Value 0.
- Under that check, on the branch where the score is not greater than zero, add Remove from List so nurturing stops.
|
1 Selecting Send Email Action in Automation |
2 Automation Workflow With Email Open Branching |
⚠️ An email template only appears in a Journey if it was enabled as a Customer Journey Email when it was created. A template that does not show up here is not missing; it was not flagged for Journey use.
Trigger timing: Wait Up to versus Wait For
The distinction changes the shape of the Journey.
Wait Up to moves the Prospect on as soon as they take the action, and the period sets how long the Journey waits before giving up.
Wait For does not execute the next step until the full period has elapsed, even if the Prospect acted on day one.
⚠️ Trigger limits are 365 days and 180 hours.
Actions
| Action | Details |
|---|---|
| Send Email | Choose the email and schedule the send date and time. |
| Add Tags / Remove Tags | Adds or removes Prospect tags. |
| Adjust Score | Increases or decreases the Prospect’s score. |
| Assign Owner | Assigns the Prospect record to a user. |
| Change Prospect Field | Updates a field, such as switching Opted Out from disabled to enabled. |
| Notify User | Notifies a specific user. Defaults to App Notification, which is in-app only; App Notification + Email sends both. |
| Add to Marketing List / Remove from List | Adds or removes the Prospect from a specified list. |
| Convert to Contact | Converts the Prospect to a CRM Contact, with the Contact Owner specified. Prospect values map across where possible. |
| Convert to Lead | Creates a CRM Lead. Prompts for Lead Status, Lead Owner, Lead Assignment and Lead Source. |
| Create CRM Task | Creates a CRM task, assigns it, and links it to the Lead or Contact associated with the Prospect. Merge tags can populate the Task Name and Description from Prospect data through the “i” icon. |
| Fire Webhook | Sends an outgoing HTTP POST to a specified address. |
| Change Scoring Model Score | Adjusts the Prospect’s scoring model score. |
| Execute Lambda Function | Triggers a specific Lambda function. |
| Add to Zoom Webinar | Sends a webinar signup. Requires the Webinar ID and an active Zoom integration. |
| Trigger AppConnect Recipe | Runs an AppConnect recipe. Requires an active AppConnect subscription. |
⚠️ Convert to Contact is skipped, silently and successfully, if the Prospect already has a Contact ID. No new Contact is created, and the step is still marked successful, so a Journey report showing that step succeeded does not mean a Contact was made.
ℹ️ Convert to Lead leaves the Prospect record in place. The two records do not share a record ID.
How Create CRM Task assigns
Where CRM Lead or Contact Owner is selected:
- Prospect linked to a Contact: the Contact’s owner gets the task.
- Prospect linked only to a Lead: the Lead’s owner gets it.
- Prospect linked to both: the Contact owner wins.
- Prospect linked to neither, with a fallback user set: the task is created for the fallback.
- Prospect linked to neither, with no fallback: no task is created and the Journey moves to the next step.
For all Assigned To options, an empty value falls to the Assigned To Fallback user. If that field is set to skip, no task is created at all.
Triggers
Two only: Email Opened and Email Link Clicked.
⚠️ Suspected bot opens and clicks do not fire Journey steps. Insightly filters them out, so any step depending on an open or click will not run for that activity.
Checks
| Check | Details |
|---|---|
| Check Prospect Field | Checks a field value, such as country. |
| Check Prospect Grade | Checks the grade, for targeting a threshold. |
| Check Prospect Score | Checks the score, for targeting a threshold. |
| Check Prospect Tag | Checks for a specific tag. |
| Check Membership List | Checks whether the Prospect is on a specified list. |
| Check Date and Time | Checks the current date and time. |
| Check is Corporate Email Address | Checks whether the address is corporate or from a public provider such as Gmail or Hotmail. |
| Check Prospect Custom Event | Checks whether a custom event was completed. |
| Check Redirect Link Click | Checks whether a redirect link was clicked. |
| Check Form Submission | Checks whether a specific form was submitted. |
| Check Prospect Viewed Page | Checks a page view. The URL must include https:// and supports a wildcard, as in https://www.insightly.com/*. The site is chosen from those set up in Domain Management. |
| Check Prospect Visited Website | Checks a website visit, returning true or false. Site chosen from Domain Management. |
| Check File Downloaded | Checks whether a Hosted File was downloaded, tracked from a third-party site or an email. Relies on web tracking. |
| Check Zoom Webinar Attendance | Requires Webinar ID and an active Zoom integration. |
| Check Zoom Webinar Registration | Requires Webinar ID and an active Zoom integration. |
The time window on checks
Six checks offer a time period: redirect link click, form submission, page view, website visit, file download, and by extension anything using the same control. Any Time in the Past is the default; In the Recent Past sets a window, minimum 1 week or day and maximum 90.
⚠️ The window is measured from when the Prospect reaches the check, not from when the Journey started. A check configured for the last week looks at the week before the Prospect arrived at that step. A Prospect who took a month to get there has the first three weeks of their behavior ignored.
Checks also support relative dates, so a check can be set to run a week or two weeks after a preceding step rather than on a fixed date. The source’s example: check a Prospect’s grade two weeks after they sign up for a webinar, and add them to a high-priority list if it has risen enough.
Journey lifecycle
Actions are reached either from the three-dot menu in the list view or from the Actions dropdown inside an open Journey.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Default on creation. Fully editable. |
| Running | Started. Prospects are gathered and step logs created as they process. Cannot be edited. |
| Paused | Editable, and resumes from the step each Prospect was on. |
| Completed | The status after stopping. Cannot be edited or restarted. |
Run. Available on Draft or Paused Journeys. A Journey never runs for Prospects until it is started.
Pause. Available on Running Journeys. Prospects stop advancing and resume at the same step when it runs again.
ℹ️ Pausing shifts scheduled emails. The number of days paused is added to any email already scheduled, so a pause does not cause a backlog to fire at once on resume.
⚠️ A paused Journey cannot be deleted. The delete option is disabled in both the list view and the record’s Actions menu.
⚠️ Adding a step to a paused Journey affects everyone behind it. Prospects who have not yet passed that point will go through the new step.
⚠️ Edits do not apply where there are pending actions anywhere in the Journey. Pausing and editing is not sufficient on its own; pending step logs block the update.
Stop. Available on Running or Paused Journeys, and confirmed by a warning. Execution terminates immediately for every Prospect, wherever they are in the Journey. Status becomes Completed.
⚠️ A stopped Journey can never be run again. Cloning it and running the clone is the only route. Stop is for ending something; pause is for editing it.
Clone. Available at any status. Opens an Add New Journey popup prefilled from the original.
Delete. Only really advisable on drafts, because deleting a Journey at any other status affects reporting. A running Journey has to be stopped first. Deleted Journeys go to the Recycle Bin and can be restored.
Change Record Owner. Defaults to the creator, changeable at any status.
Print. Prints the Details tab only. The Journey and Related tabs cannot be printed.
Prospects entering and leaving
- A new Prospect added to the recipient list while the Journey runs starts from the first step.
- Duplicate email addresses on the recipient list are treated as one Prospect and receive one email.
- Archiving the recipient list stops the Journey for the Prospects on it.
- Removing a Prospect from the recipient list stops them advancing. Re-adding them resumes from the point they left.
Reopening Leads
For accounts using both products, Prospects converted to Leads can have those Leads reopened through Journeys and Finish Actions, with statuses updated afterwards.
⚠️ This only applies to Leads reopened through a Journey or Finish Action. Closed Leads in the CRM that were not reopened this way cannot be reopened.
Journey statistics
Available on Journeys with a status of Running or Completed, on the Report tab of the Journey record.
Two figures appear above each step: the number of Prospects from the recipient list who reached it, and that number as a percentage. A Journey starting with 100 Prospects where 50 clicked a link shows 50% at the step after the link. The percentage moves up and down as Prospects take different paths.
Clicking any action, trigger or check opens that step’s statistics, and View Report opens a fuller report in a new tab.
What the counts include
The total count combines queued, sent, bounced and skipped emails.
⚠️ Skipped is not the same as failed, and it hides opt-outs. The skipped count covers Prospects who opted out from a list or are marked Do Not Email, plus Prospects removed from the list before processing and Prospects added after sending hours had passed. A high skipped count is worth breaking down rather than reading as a delivery problem.
Suspected bot opens and clicks are filtered out and do not appear in the open or click counts for a Journey email.
Email statistics from within a Journey
- Open a Journey containing a Send Email action.
- Click the Send Email step, then View Report.
- Select a prospect record from the report.
- Open that Prospect’s Timeline tab and select the matching email.
- Open the Statistics tab.
Measuring results
Delivery rate shows whether content is arriving at all, and feeds the sender score and spam placement. See Email Spam Check on the Emails page.
Open rate shows whether the content is enticing. Low open rates point at subject lines or at the list itself. A/B testing subject lines is the direct way to test the first.
Click-through rate shows interaction. Low rates often mean too many calls to action, or ones that do not stand out. More segmentation and more targeted messages help.