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Wait Until...

Use the Wait Until item to hold a profile in an automation 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 profile progresses down the first path they meet conditions for.

• Conditions: Determine whether a profile needs to achieve certain attributes, perform an event, join a segment, and so on before they can progress through the automation. You can set multiple conditions.
• Event time (event-triggered automations only): Base your wait on a timestamp in your event data.
• Max. time: Set the maximum time a profile can wait. If a profile 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 profile will progress in your automation 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 profiles in the journey. A profile 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 profile 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 profile must meet before they continue the automation. You can choose one or more types of conditions. However, a profile will proceed through the automation when they meet any of the following:
   • Conditions: Attribute, event, segment, or message conditions that a profile must meet (or not meet) to move on. Multiple conditions in the same path are joined with And—a profile 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 automation 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 profile 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 profile 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 profile 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 profile has an attribute, doesn’t have an attribute, matches an attribute value, etc.
• Event: Wait based on whether a profile has, or has not, performed an event. Unlike Event time delays, this does not have to be an event that triggered your automation. You can also specify event properties to narrow down the condition.
• Segment: Wait based on whether or not a profile 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 automation, broadcast, or transactional message in your workspace. For example, if your automation follows up on a profile’s order, you might wait until after they receive a transactional message containing their receipt.

The following conditions are only available in object- or relationship-triggered automations:

• Object (Trigger): Wait until a condition on the object that triggered an automation is true. For example, you could set up a wait until Order.status is equal to delivered or Subscription.active is equal to true.

• Relationship: Wait until a condition on a relationship to an object is true. For example, if your objects are online courses, you could set up a wait until a profile’s relationship attribute for enrolled is equal to true.

  This can be a relationship to any object, not just the triggering object! So you could trigger an automation when someone signs up for an account (i.e. an account object is created). Then you could have them wait until they’ve activated a subscription, where subscriptions are separate objects.

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 profile’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 profiles might take in journeys.

For example, imagine that a profile enters an automation 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 profile 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 automations.

Evaluating multiple conditions

When you set conditions, you’ll see AND; these conditions are a part of a single path; a profile 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 profile 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 profile 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 profile 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 automation, broadcast, or transactional message in your workspace. In a message condition, you can check if a profile has ever been sent a message, or wait until a message is sent after a profile enters the wait.

The has ever condition is based on whether or not a profile has ever been sent (or another message status like delivered) a particular message. If you specify “has ever been sent,” and the profile 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 profile is sent (or another message status like delivered) a message after they enter the wait. This prevents profiles from inadvertently meeting wait until conditions based on messages sent long before a profile entered your automation or wait. If you specify “is sent,” and the profile 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.

Object and relationship conditions

In Wait Untils, you can set conditions based on objects or relationships when your automation is triggered by an object or relationship. Other automation types won’t have this option.

You can set conditions based on any object or relationship in your workspacel it’s not limited to trigger data. If your automation is triggered by an object or relationship, you’ll also see the option to have them wait based on trigger data.

Here are a few examples:

• Object trigger condition: You want someone to wait until a date associated with your triggering object, like an appointment time, before they receive a message.
• Relationship to trigger object: An automation triggers when profiles express interest in a webinar (a relationship is created with a webinar object). You want profiles to wait until a week before the webinar before you send them a reminder.
• Relationship to object that’s not the trigger: An automation triggers when someone signs up for your product (i.e. an account object is created). You want profiles to wait until they’ve activated a subscription, where subscriptions are separate objects, before sending them further messages.

In this example, you’ll see a couple conditions based on the trigger object:

Event time

If your automation is triggered by an event, you can make profiles 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 automation with an event called new_appointment, you could make profiles 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 automation. You can’t base this time on a different event.

Note, profiles 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 profiles 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 profiles 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 an automation triggered by scheduling an appointment:

1. It is June 13, and an appointment is just now scheduled for June 14 which triggers the automation.
2. The first step in the automation 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 profile passes the condition immediately and moves down that path.
4. The automation 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 profile is not held in the wait until and we consider that they’ve successfully met the condition. In this example, the profile 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, profiles move forward but don’t receive a reminder email. If this is false, profiles would enter a wait until and eventually receive a reminder email only 2 days before the appointment time.

The max time fallback

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

In this example, if a profile 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 profiles are not in a segment, profiles that were never in the segment will skip the wait. If profiles 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 profile 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 profile’s journey.

Modify Wait Until blocks in live automations

Change event conditions

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

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

• Profiles that have already waited more than two days will move on (or exit the automation)
• Profiles that 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 automation
• Exit the automation immediately

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

Copy a Wait Until to other automations

It’s easy to copy the Wait Until between automations 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 delay blocks

Meeting wait until conditions doesn’t ensure that someone receives your message at the right time; and it being the right time doesn’t mean that someone’s met your conditions yet. You can use conditions together so profiles meet your conditions and receive messages in the right timeframe!

For instance, you could wait for profiles to match specific conditions using a Wait Until block, but you’d need to use a Time Window if you also wanted profiles to only receive a subsequent message during a specific timeframe.

Combine Wait Until and Time Delay

You might add multiple flow control blocks to an automation to ensure profiles don’t receive a message too soon. For instance, maybe you want profiles to minimally wait 7 days after receiving their first message, and then they should receive their next message only if they’re a member of a specific segment.

1. Time Delay: Wait 7 days
2. Wait Until: Profile enters the segment
3. Email

Make sure you check the order of your blocks so you don’t make profiles wait unnecessarily in your workflow. You might switch the delay with the Wait Until if you want to make sure that profiles wait exactly seven days after satisfying the wait condition.

1. Wait Until: Profile joins the segment
2. Time Delay: Wait 7 days
3. Email

For Wait Untils, consider adding a second condition, like a max wait, so profiles aren’t held forever in the flow. This is also important if the subsequent message is time sensitive.

Combine Wait Until and Time Window

With both Time Windows and Wait Until blocks, you can add conditions to determine which profiles wait before continuing through your automation or just specify a static time or timeframe to wait. You’ll only need to combine them if you need to set a specific timeframe to wait.

For instance, if you want profiles to belong to a segment before receiving a message in a certain timeframe, you’d start with a Wait Until block, followed by a Time Window:

1. Wait Until: Profile joins a segment
2. Time window: Monday between 9AM and 5PM
3. Email

In this case, profiles wait until they’re in a segment, and then wait for 9am on a Monday (assuming it isn’t already that time). If the profile stops matching the segment condition while they’re waiting for the time window, they would still get the email on Monday at 9AM. If you want them to skip the message if they stop matching, add the segment condition to the email too.

For instance, let’s say you want an automation to send a reminder email 1 day before an appointment. Your automation could flow like this:

1. Trigger: When a profile books an appointment
2. Wait Until: 1 day before the appointment
3. Email

You might think to add a Time Window before the message so they receive it at a reasonable time. However, the Time Window could prevent them from receiving the message exactly 1 day before, especially if they booked their appointment less than a day ago. If receiving the message exactly 1 day before is the most important thing, don’t add a time window.