Journeys Part II: Create/Edit Journey

Journeys Part II: Create/Edit Journey

1. Journeys are ways to automate workflows for onboarding, drip campaigns, outreach, etc. They allow users to automate sending emails and scheduling tasks/adding to-do items to the task list. Before setting up a Journey, be sure to read our Journeys Part I: Overview tutorial to become familiar with the way Journeys works.
2. To access Journeys, on the CRM Main Menu, click Communications and then select Journeys from the sub-menu.

   

3. This will take you to the Journeys Index page. Here you will see a list of all of your configured Journeys.

   

4. You can search the configured Journeys using the keyword and status filters at the top of the screen. Enter a keyword and/or select a Journey status and then click the Filter button. To clear the filters and see the entire list, click the Reset button.

   

5. For any configured Journey, you will see:
   
   
   • the Journey name
     
     
     
   • the trigger (the action that will cause a contact to be pulled into the journey)
     
     
     
   • the last updated by and date
     
     
     
   • the # of Active Contacts (in the journey)
     

     
     
     

   • the total # of contacts that have entered into the journey (inception to date) - this is a total of # of active and # completed and # exited
     
     
     
   • the # of contacts for whom their current step in the journey could not be completed (# of Contacts Failed)(generally the failure is for a "send email" step that could not be completed because the contact has no email address, the email on file is bad/undeliverable, or the contact's communication preference for email is set to no)
     
     
     

     

6. If you click on the number in the # of Active Contacts, # of Contacts That Have Entered the Journey, or the # of Contacts Failed next to any Journey, a pop up screen with the details of the contacts that meet that criteria will appear.
   
   
   
   • You can search the list using the filter at the top left of the screen. Type part or all of a contact name or a search term and click the Filter button. You can clear the filter and see the entire list by clicking the Reset button.

     

   • For any contact that failed a step (send email), there will be a drop-down to the right of the contact. From this drop-down, you can opt to retry (sending the email) - select this option after you have corrected the problem with the contact's email/communication preference, skip the failed step and have the contact proceed to the next step, or choose to kick the contact out of the journey (exit).

     
     
     

   • When a contact has failed a step in the journey, you will see a red caution sign for that Journey under Journey's widget on View Contact (contact's profile) page. This means that contact is stuck on that step and will not move to next step of that journey.
     
     
7. On the Journeys Index page, you can click the drop down to the right of any journey and:

   

   • Edit the journey (Please Note: all steps in a journey can be edited EXCEPT the initial trigger. If you need to change the Journey's trigger, you will need to create a new journey with that trigger from scratch).
   • View the Change Log - the Change Log records all of the changes (and by whom and when the changes were made) made to the journey configurations. You can filter the criteria and find the particular result.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
   • Activate a draft Journey
     
     
     
   • De-Activate an active Journey - if there are active contacts in the Journey, you will be presented two options: Inactivate Immediately (which will kick all active contacts out of the Journey) or Inactivate (which will stop accepting new contacts from entering the journey but will allow active contacts to finish the journey).
     
     
     
   • Re-Activate a previously active but now inactive journey
     
     
     
   • Rename a Journey
     
     
     
     
     
   • Delete (a Journey cannot be deleted if there are active contacts in it. You will need to "inactivate immediately" first and kick everyone out of the journey and then you will be able to delete the journey).
     
8. To create a new Journey, click the New Journey button in the lower right.

   

9. In the resulting Create Journey pop up, select a Name/Title for your Journey (this should be descriptive as to the target audience and purpose of the journey, such as "New Contact Onboarding Flow" or "Welcome Emails to New Members."
   
   
10. Next, select the trigger/condition under which contacts will be pulled into your journey. That is, select the criteria a contact must meet to be pulled into this workflow and have the steps applied to them such as receive the specified emails or have the specified tasks scheduled for them. For example, if we wish to send special onboarding/welcome emails  to our new Board Members, we would set the trigger to be when the Board Member contact type is applied to a record so the trigger would be "contact type" and the sub-menu choice would be "board member." If you choose Contact Type, Tag, or Smart Tag, you will then need to select the specific contact type/tag/smart tag in a second drop down field that will appear. Please Note: there can only be one active journey per SPECIFIC trigger. For instance, there can only be one active journey for the "new contact created" trigger, the "contact type: donor" trigger, the "smart tag: [specific tag name]" trigger, etc.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

     

11. When you have finished setting up the journey name and trigger, click the Save button to proceed (at this point, your draft journey is created (and is in draft mode). You can leave at any point after that and return to setting up your journey later).

    

12. On the next screen, you will add the steps/flow that contacts pulled into the journey will go through. There are five kinds/types of steps that  you can add (you can hover over the question mark icon to get a definition of each step type):

    

    • Create Task - this option will schedule a task for the contact. As with all tasks, you can assign a staff person to the task and schedule a reminder email to be sent to the assignee. Scheduled tasks will show up on the contact's engagement history as well as in the task list. For more information on working with tasks, view this tutorial.
      
    • Decision - will create a divided Yes/No decision tree in which you can specify different actions based on whether the contact meets the criteria set in the Yes/No decision. For example, you might want to assess if a donor has made a donation in the last six months. If yes, the donor will be sent an email inviting them to an upcoming donor event; if no, the donor will be sent an email asking them to renew their gift/make a donation (and not be invited to the donor event).
      
    • Delay - this option will hold the contact with no action for the specified amount of time (hours, days, or weeks) before proceeding to the next step
      
    • Send Email - this option will automatically send an e-blast email using the template and configurations that you specify. For more information on configuring e-blast templates, please see this tutorial. (Please Note: keep in mind that if your trigger is  smart tag and your first step is to send email, the email will send at MIDNIGHT of your CRM account's time zone. If you want the email to send during during the day, then make your first step Delay and set how many hours to wait before sending the email).
      
    • Wait - this option will wait for a particular action to be done before moving to the next steps of the journey.
      
13. Your journey can consist of as few or as many steps as needed. Below is an example picture of a configured journey. In this journey, contacts are pulled in based on having the contact type donor. Once the contact is pulled into the workflow, the system will wait 1 day, then after the 1 day waiting period, the system will automatically send an email to the contact, then wait 1 week, then check if the contact has made a donation in the last seven days - if so, then nothing will happen; if not, then the system will automatically send a second email.

    

    

14. Lastly, you can configure an Exit Condition - the criteria in which contact would be kicked out of/excluded from the journey. This is optional. In our example image above, we have configured an exit condition to exclude any contacts who are also members or who were added to our database prior to July 1, 2020 (a contact may have been added previously but not become a donor  until very recently. In our example, we have opted to exclude those contacts from being part of this automated workflow).

    

15. All changes made to your journey's configurations are saved automatically. When you are done configuring your journey click the Activate button in the lower left-hand corner (please note: your journey must have at least one step in order to be activated). You can exit without activating (leave the journey in draft mode) and activate it later. You can also make edits to the steps/flow after activating as well.
    

    

16. Once the Journey is activated, it will begin pulling in qualified contacts immediately. Journeys operate in real time so contacts that meet the criteria GOING FORWARD (from the time the Journey is activated) will be pulled in immediately and start moving through the flow immediately. The only part that is an overnight process is adding/processing Smart Tags on contact records. Everything else is real time. However, be aware that sending Journey emails may take anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours since each contact's email is sent as a batch of 1/as an individual email (since processing is real time) rather than all emails for the journey going together in a batch (because of this, you will see many e-blast batches on your Communications: History tab with batch size of "1" - these will generally be generated by your Journey(s).
17. You'll be able to view which contacts have entered the Journey on the Journey Index page as well as on the Journey widget on each contact's record (on View Contact) (see the Journeys Overview tutorial for more information).
18. It is best practice to review the "failed" list of contacts for each Journey regularly to either fix the fatal error and retry, to have them skip the step they are stuck on, or to exit them from the Journey altogether.