30

Wait Until...

Use the Wait Until item to hold a person in a campaign until they meet a condition or enter a segment.

How it works

You can set three different types of waits. Each wait type adds a new path in your workflow. A person progresses down the first path they meet conditions for.

• Conditions: Determine whether a person needs to achieve certain attributes, perform an event, join a segment, and so on before they can progress through the campaign. You can set multiple conditions.
• Event time (event-triggered campaigns only): Base your wait on a timestamp in your event data.
• Max. time: Set the maximum time a person can wait. If a person reaches the maximum wait time without achieving any other conditions, they’ll progress through the workflow.

For example, if you set attribute conditions and a max time, a person will progress in your campaign if they either meet your attribute conditions or they reach the maximum wait time.

Each type of delay starts a new path

You can set up different types of waits in the same actions, creating multiple paths for people in the journey. A person will progress down the first path they meet conditions for.

You can either take advantage of different paths to send different messages based on the conditions the person met or, if the result of a conditional wait or a maximum wait is the same, you can place actions after the paths converge.

Set up a Wait Until

This video shows each of our delay options. Click to fast forward to the Wait Until section.

1. Drag Wait Until… into your workflow.

   

   
2. Click it and determine the conditions a person must meet before they continue the campaign. You can choose one or more types of conditions. However, a person will proceed through the campaign when they meet any of the following:
   • Conditions: Attribute, event, segment, or message conditions that a person must meet (or not meet) to move on. Multiple conditions in the same path are joined with And—a person must meet all conditions to satisfy the wait; you can also set up multiple conditional paths (joined by Or).
   • Event time: A timestamp specified in an event that triggers your campaign.

     For example, if you trigger your campaign with an event called event_reminder you could Wait until the remind_me_at timestamp in your event to send a reminder message. Your timestamp should be in Unix seconds since epoch.

   • Max. time: The maximum time that a person can wait before moving on in the workflow.

     

     

Conditions

When you set your Wait until delay, you can use attribute, event, segment, or message conditions. Within a path, can set multiple conditions joined by AND—meaning that a person must meet all conditions to progress down the path.

You can also set multiple conditional paths. See the section below for more information about setting up multiple condition-based paths.

• Attribute: Wait until a person matches a profile attributeA key-value pair that you associate with a person or an object—like a person’s name, the date they were created in your workspace, or a company’s billing date etc. Use attributes to target people and personalize messages. condition—whether a person has an attribute, doesn’t have an attribute, matches an attribute value, etc.
• Event: Wait based on whether a person has, or has not, performed an event. Unlike Event time delays, this does not have to be an event that triggered your campaign. You can also specify event properties to narrow down the condition.
• Segment: Wait based on whether or not a person belongs to a segment. See the Not in segment condition for more information about matching folks who aren’t in a segment.
• Message: Set a condition to check if someone has been sent or is sent a message. You can also base message conditions on other statuses like delivered, opened, clicked, and more. Choose messages from any campaign, broadcast, or transactional message in your workspace. For example, if your campaign follows up on a person’s order, you might wait until after they receive a transactional message containing their receipt.

Event property conditions

When your Wait Until condition is an event, you can click Add event data filter to evaluate the wait condition based on fields in an incoming event. You can even evaluate properties in your condition against a person’s attributesA key-value pair that you associate with a person or an object—like a person’s name, the date they were created in your workspace, or a company’s billing date etc. Use attributes to target people and personalize messages. or the trigger event’s properties. This helps you fine-tune the paths people might take in journeys.

For example, imagine that a person enters a campaign when they set up an appointment—they generate a new_appointment event with an appointment_id. You want to wait until the day before the event to send an email reminding a person about their appointment—but you don’t want to send a reminder if they already cancelled the appointment.

In this case, you can set up a Wait Until… condition to look for an cancelled_appointment event where the appointment_id matches the trigger event’s event.appointment_id. If the two values match, you don’t send the appointment reminder.

Learn more about editing wait until blocks in live campaigns.

Evaluating multiple conditions

When you set conditions, you’ll see AND; these conditions are a part of a single path; a person must meet all of the conditions to progress down a path.

But, unlike Event time and Max. time, you can set up multiple Condition-based paths. Each set of conditions creates a branch in your workflow. If a person meets the conditions in any path, they’ll progress down the associated path.

Paths for your different wait conditions are numbered, starting at 1. In the workflow, they’ll read left-to-right. If a person meets the conditions in multiple paths simultaneously, they’ll go down the path closest to 1 (farthest to the left) in your workflow.

Message conditions

You can set conditions based on whether a person has ever been sent or is sent a message. You can also base message conditions on other statuses like delivered, opened, clicked, and more. Choose messages from any campaign, broadcast, or transactional message in your workspace. In a message condition, you can check if a person has ever been sent a message, or wait until a message is sent after a person enters the wait.

The has ever condition is based on whether or not a person has ever been sent (or another message status like delivered) a particular message. If you specify “has ever been sent,” and the person was sent a message before they entered the wait until, they meet the condition and will move on in the workflow.

The is condition is only satisfied if a person is sent (or another message status like delivered) a message after they enter the wait. This prevents people from inadvertently meeting wait until conditions based on messages sent long before a person entered your campaign or wait. If you specify “is sent,” and the person was sent a message before they entered the delay, they do NOT meet the condition. If they were sent a message after entering the wait until, they do meet the condition and will move on in the workflow.

Event time

If your campaign is triggered by an event, you can make people wait until a timestamp value in the triggering event before they move on to the next step in the workflow. For example, if you trigger your campaign with an event called new_appointment, you could make people wait until the day before the appointment_time in the triggering event and then send a reminder message.

The timestamp in your event can be either:

• Unix timestamp (in seconds)
• RFC 8601-formatted time (for example, 2022-06-04T10:24:34-0400).

Unlike event conditions, your timestamp must be a part of the event that triggers your campaign. You can’t base this time on a different event.

Note, people will wait until the current time is equal to or after the time specified by the wait condition. For instance, if you set an event time path of “2 days before the time specified in the appointment-time” of the trigger event, then people will meet the condition and move forward when it reaches not just before 2 days, but also within 2 days of the appointment_time. It’s possible then that some people move down this wait until condition if it’s 1 day before the appointment time.

To demonstrate that last statement, let’s continue with the example of a campaign triggered by scheduling an appointment:

1. It is June 13, and an appointment is just now scheduled for June 14 which triggers the campaign.
2. The first step in the campaign sends a confirmation email immediately.
3. The second step is the wait until set for two days before the appointment, which means before or after 2 days. Because it’s 1 day before the appointment, the person passes the condition immediately and moves down that path.
4. The campaign immediately sends an email reminder for the appointment.

Since the current time is already after the wait until condition of “2 days before appointment_time”, the person is not held in the wait until and we consider that they’ve successfully met the condition. In this example, the person would receive the confirmation email and reminder email close together.

To avoid this behavior, you can add a True/False branch to your workflow. For this example, you could set an event attribute condition to “appointment_time is a timestamp before 2 days from now”. When this is true, people move forward but don’t receive a reminder email. If this is false, people would enter a wait until and eventually receive a reminder email only 2 days before the appointment time.

The max time fallback

By default, people will wait until they meet your conditions. If they never meet your conditions, they could get stuck waiting in your campaign forever! Use the Max time option to let people exit the campaign or move on to the next action.

In this example, if a person isn’t in the specified segment after one week, they’ll move on to the next action in the workflow.

Segment “Not in…” conditions

If you base your wait condition on whether people are not in a segment, people who were never in the segment will skip the wait. If people are already in the segment, they will be held in the wait until they leave the segment.

Why did someone skip the wait?

If a person meets your wait conditions before they enter the wait, they’ll skip it entirely. We evaluate the conditions as soon as someone reaches the Wait until block; someone doesn’t have to meet the conditions again to progress past it.

For example, imagine that someone performs an event—they signed up for a class at a local school. You want to send them a reminder message a week before the class starts.

If someone signed up late for the class, and the class starts in less than a week, they’ll skip the wait and move on to the reminder message, which you can see on the person’s journey.

Modify Wait Until blocks in live campaigns

Change event conditions

You can edit the conditions of your Wait Until if the campaign is live; just be aware that doing so might cause people to quit waiting.

For example, if you reduce an Event time condition from seven days to two days:

• People who have already waited more than two days will move on (or exit the campaign)
• People who have not yet waited two days will continue waiting

Delete a Wait Until

If you delete a Wait until, you can choose what to do with anybody currently waiting.

• Continue to the next action in the campaign
• Exit the campaign immediately

It’s up to you! If people have been waiting a long time, you may not want to continue sending messages in the campaign.

Copy a Wait Until to other campaigns

It’s easy to copy the Wait Until between campaigns within the same workspace, because your segment conditions remain the same.

If copying between workspaces, you’ll need to re-add your conditions, and we’ll show you a warning note both in the workflow and when editing the item.

Combining Wait Until and Time Delays

You might combine a delay and a wait, but pay attention to the order of your delay and wait blocks, so that you don’t make people wait unnecessarily in your workflow. For example, you might set up a delay and wait such that your workflow has the following blocks:

1. Delay 7 days
2. Wait until person enters a segment
3. Email

In this case, people will wait seven days,and then as long as it takes to enter your segment. In this case, a person will always wait at least 7 days before progressing to the email in your campaign, but they could wait longer after that.

However, you might set the delay after the wait, making sure that people wait exactly 7 days after satisfying the wait condition.

1. Wait until user enters segment
2. Delay 7 days
3. Email

Example wait and time window

Time windows and wait delays both use conditions to determine when a person progresses in your campaign. You might change the order of a time window and wait depending on whether you want to prioritize the time condition or your wait conditions.

Time Window first

1. Wait for time window: Monday between 9AM and 5PM
2. Wait until user enters segment
3. Email

In this case, people wait until Monday at 9AM, and then move into the Wait until block. They’ll then wait as long as it takes for them to meet the segment condition before they receive an email. If people are not in the segment between 9 and 5 on Monday (even if they’ve entered and left it before), they won’t receive the email.

Wait Until first

1. Wait until user enters segment
2. Wait for time window: Monday between 9AM and 5PM
3. Email

In this case, people will wait until they enter the segment, and then begin waiting for Monday at 9AM (assuming it isn’t already that time). If the user stops matching the ‘Paying Customers’ segment condition while they’re waiting for the time window, they will still get the email on Monday at 9AM.