Steps you can add to an automation
Every step in the builder, grouped as the Add a step picker groups them: messages, timing, logic, offers and people.
- automations
- steps
Press Add step on the canvas, or the plus between two steps, to open Add a step. You can also drag a step in from the bar at the bottom. The steps are grouped by what they are for. An automation can hold up to 40 steps.
Messages
Send email: sends one of your emails. Press New email to write one, or reuse an existing one. The words live in the email, not in the step, so editing the email changes what everyone who has not received it yet will get. A given step sends its email to a person once. On an automation built around an event you also get Attach a calendar invite, which adds the event to their calendar without asking them to RSVP.
Send a message: sends a direct message from you, inside the community. Members only: it is skipped for contacts. It does not count toward the daily email limit or your send allowance, and it is available on the same plans as automations.
Notify coach: emails you and your admins a heads-up when someone reaches this step, so you can follow up personally. Up to 280 characters.
Timing
Around the event: times the next step off the event the journey is built around, for example two days before it starts. See Time emails around an event.
Wait: pause for a number of days, up to 365, then carry on. Under Then send pick As soon as the wait is up or a time of day. A time of day uses your community's clock, shared by every automation, so check the timezone under In this timezone. It lands on the first time after the days are up.
Wait until: hold for a date, a moment around the event, or a condition. Under Wait for choose A condition, A specific date & time or Before or after the event. A condition wait has Give up after: if the days pass first, people move on anyway. A date in the past carries on right away.
Logic
If / else: splits the journey into a Yes path and a No path on a condition. See Conditions: the questions an automation can ask.
Split paths: sorts people down several named paths, and the first one they match wins. You can add up to four paths, and anyone who matches none takes Everyone else. Reorder the paths to change which wins.
Go to a step: hands people to another step so branches can rejoin and you do not build the same ending twice. A jump that loops back needs a wait inside the loop, and an email inside a loop still sends only once per person. Drry tells you if a loop is not allowed when you try to turn the automation on.
End journey: people leave here and nothing sends after it.
Offer
Open an offer: opens a discounted price everyone in the journey can claim. Only the owner can add or change it. A journey can open one offer.
Close the offer: closes the journey's offer early, before its own end date.
See Run an offer for how offers are priced.
People
Tag someone: choose Add a tag or Remove a tag and pick the tag, or type a new one. Later steps, other journeys and your audiences can sort on it. See Tags in automations: what they can and cannot do.
Add to a list: choose Add to a list or Take off a list and pick the list. This is how one journey starts another: a journey triggered by Joined a list picks people up from here. Taking someone off a list does not unsubscribe them.
Neither of these sends anything, so they do not count as an email.