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A journey is an automation: something happens, and a sequence of emails goes out on its own, without anyone opening Marketing again. A welcome series for new enquiries is the usual first one.

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What you’re looking at

The Journeys tab lists each journey as a card, with its steps beneath it in the order they run, top to bottom. Above the cards sits a line like 2 of 3 journeys active. Drafts are never counted. A workspace with none yet sees No journeys yet and a description of what a journey is for, rather than an empty grid.

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What starts a journey

A journey has one trigger, chosen when you build it. Today the only trigger that fires is A new contact is added — a new contact reaching your Contacts list, however it got there.

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Build the sequence

A journey is a list of steps, run top to bottom. There are four kinds.
1

Open the Journeys tab

Select Journeys in Marketing, then start a new journey or select Edit on an existing one.
2

Name it and choose the trigger

Give it a name your colleagues will recognise on the card, and set Starts when to A new contact is added.
3

Add the steps in order

Add Send an email, Wait, Branch and Exit steps in the order you want them to run. The timeline redraws as you go, so what you see is the order people will experience.
4

Write each email

Every Send an email step has its own subject and body, written in the journey editor and saved with the step. There is no separate campaign to go and find — the email belongs to the step.
5

Save it as a Draft

A journey stays Draft until you activate it. A draft enrols nobody and sends nothing, so you can leave one half-written for as long as you like.

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Turn it on

1

Select Activate

A confirmation names exactly what is about to start: from now on, this journey runs automatically whenever its trigger happens, and every email it sends obeys the same consent and frequency rules as a campaign.
2

Confirm with Activate journey

The status badge changes to Active and the journey starts enrolling.
Activation is refused if any Send an email step has no content written yet, and the message names the step that is missing it. A journey that reaches an empty step cannot send, and finding that out from a contact is worse than finding it out from the button.
Activating starts sending real email to real people. Every email a journey sends counts against your monthly marketing send allowance in exactly the same way a campaign does. Read the confirmation before you accept it.

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Enrolment is not retroactive

Activating a journey today does not email the contacts you added last month. Only contacts added from the moment of activation are enrolled. This is deliberate. A journey that reached back into your history would mail your entire list at once the first time you switched it on — the opposite of what a drip sequence is for, and the fastest way to a wave of complaints. If you want to reach the people already on your list, send a campaign to a segment instead.

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The rules a journey always obeys

These apply to every journey on every plan. None of them is a setting, and none can be switched off.
  • An unsubscribe exits every journey the person is in. Not at the next step and not at the end of the current branch — they are removed from all of them, within minutes. Someone who has opted out never receives the rest of a sequence.
  • Two marketing emails in any seven days, across everything. The limit is counted across all your campaigns and all your journeys together, not per journey. When a journey step meets the limit, it waits for a slot and sends afterwards — it does not skip the email. A skipped welcome message is a hole in the middle of the story you thought you were telling.
  • Someone marked do-not-contact, or who has already unsubscribed, is never enrolled at all.
  • Each person receives each journey email once. A retry after an interruption resumes where it left off rather than starting the sequence again.

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Pause, resume and archive

Pause holds the journey. People part-way through stay exactly where they are and carry on from that point when you set it back to Active — pausing does not discard anyone’s progress, and it does not restart them at step one. Archive ends the journey. It stops enrolling and stops running.

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When a journey pauses itself

If a journey stops because one of its steps is broken — its email no longer exists — the journey shows as Paused with the reason on its card. Nobody is silently advanced past the missing email, because that would deliver a sequence with a gap in the middle that nobody could see. Open the journey, fix or replace that step, and select Activate again. Enrolled contacts continue from where they stopped.

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How many journeys you can run

Only Active journeys count. Drafts and archived journeys are never counted, so you can build and keep as many as you like and choose which ones are running. If you are at the limit, pause one before activating another, or see Change your plan.

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Who can do this

Building a journey and turning one on are separate permissions, for the same reason that writing a campaign and sending one are: drafting is reversible and switching on an automation that mails people for months is not. See Staff permissions.

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Check it worked

  • The journey’s badge reads Active, and the counter above the list has gone up by one.
  • Add a test contact to your Contacts list. Within a few minutes the journey’s enrolled count includes them.
  • The first email arrives at that contact’s address, with the subject you wrote on the first Send an email step.

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Common issues

That step is a Send an email step with no content saved yet. Open the journey, write its subject and body, save, and activate again.
Enrolment starts at activation and is never backdated — contacts added before you turned it on are not enrolled. Add a contact now and watch the count.
Either you do not have permission to activate journeys, or you are already at your plan’s limit for active journeys. The counter above the list shows which.
A step in it is broken — its email no longer exists. The reason is on the card. Fix that step and activate again.
They may be waiting on a Wait step, or waiting for a sending slot because they have already had two marketing emails in the last seven days. The email is not lost; it goes out when a slot frees up.

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FAQ

Yes. The two-emails-in-seven-days limit still applies across all of them together, so being in three journeys does not mean three times as much email.
They continue from the step they are on. Changing a step they have already passed does not send it to them again.
No. Marketing opt-out is separate from the everyday messages your practice sends about someone’s care. Opting out of a sequence never quietly stops an appointment reminder.
Not yet. A new contact is added is the only trigger that fires today.