Journeys — automatic follow-up sequences

A journey is an automatic follow-up: when something happens, wait, then send — and stop as soon as the customer replies. Use it for the messages you mean to send and forget to: a check-in the day after a visit, a nudge about an unpaid order, a recall six months on.

Journeys work on a contact, over hours or days. Rules on the Automation page work on a conversation, within seconds. See automation rules for those.

Can't find Journeys?

Some industry settings hide pages they assume you won't use, and Journeys is hidden for salons, gyms and tuition centres (clinics see it). If it's missing from the menu, click Show on the "features hidden by your industry" note at the bottom of the menu, or turn on Settings → Industry → Show every feature.

Start from a ready-made journey

On an empty Journeys page, Juno offers starters that suit your industry — for example Follow up after a visit, Recall reminder, Abandoned-cart reminder, Win back quiet customers and Answer a price question. Clicking one fills in the builder. Nothing is created until you click Create, so change anything you like first.

Build a journey

1. Open Journeys and click New journey.
2. Enter a Journey name.
3. Choose the Trigger — what enrolls a contact:

   Trigger	Enrolls a contact when
   Conversation resolved after (minutes)	A teammate resolves their conversation; the journey starts after the minutes you set
   Contact enters segment	They start matching a segment you choose
   Label added to contact	The label you choose is added — to the contact, or to one of their conversations
   Contact sends a keyword	Their message contains the keyword
   Order unpaid after (minutes)	An order is still unpaid after the minutes you set. Only offered to industries that take orders

4. Add Steps, in order:
   • Add text message — a message of up to 1,000 characters. For each one, choose Follow-up or Promotional (see below). You can put {{1}}, {{2}} … in the text; a Variables row appears for each one.
   • Add template send — an approved WhatsApp template. If it has placeholders, a Variables row appears for each {{n}}.
   • Add wait — a pause, in minutes. One day is 1440.
   • Add branch — a fork. Pick a condition (Contact replied, Order is paid or Contact is in segment), then which step to jump to if true and which else.

   Use Remove to take a step out. Branch targets are renumbered for you.

   For each variable, choose where its value comes from — Contact name, Phone number / ID, Contact attribute (type the attribute's name) or Fixed text — and, for the per-contact ones, a fallback in If empty, use…. A contact with no value gets the fallback. With no fallback, that step is skipped for them (reason: Skipped — a variable had no value and no fallback) and the journey carries on; nothing is ever sent with an empty placeholder.

5. Under Exit when, tick what should end the journey early: Contact replies, Order is paid, Contact opts out. All three are ticked by default.
6. Optionally set Re-enroll after (days). Leave it empty and a contact can go through this journey only once, ever.
7. Click Create. The journey is saved as a Draft.
8. Click Activate to start it.

Rules the journey follows

• Exits are checked before every step. With Contact replies ticked, a customer who writes back is taken out before the next message, so nobody gets "just checking in!" after they've already answered.
• One journey at a time per contact. A contact already on a journey isn't enrolled in it a second time. So a customer who sends "price?" and then "and for two?" gets the follow-up once.
• Sends only go out between 09:00 and 21:00, in your workspace timezone. A step that falls due at night waits until morning.
• Text messages need an open reply window. A free-form text can only go out within 24 hours of the customer's last message (why). When the window is shut, that step is skipped, not failed, and the journey carries on. To reach someone days later, use a template step.
• Template steps are WhatsApp only. Text steps also run on Instagram, Messenger and website chat.
• A placeholder is never sent empty. If a contact has no value for a variable and you gave it no fallback, that step is skipped for them rather than sent with a gap.
• Promotional steps follow marketing rules. Mark a text step Promotional if it's selling something. It then never reaches anyone who asked to stop promotions, and it counts toward the marketing daily cap. A Follow-up step is only stopped by a full unsubscribe.
• The plan's message allowance applies. If you run out of WhatsApp messages, a step waits a day rather than failing.

Keywords

A keyword must be at least two characters. English and other spaced languages match whole words only: price matches "What's the price?" and "PRICE", but not "prices". Chinese, Japanese and Korean keywords match anywhere in the message, since those languages don't put spaces between words. Matching is not case-sensitive.

Check who is on a journey

Click Enrollments on a journey to see how many contacts it has and where each of them is — their status (In progress, Completed, Left the journey or Failed), which step they're on, and a reason when they've stopped, skipped a step or are waiting. For example:

• Quiet hours — waiting for 09:00.
• Reply window closed — a text step was skipped.
• Skipped — a variable had no value and no fallback — a step was skipped for this contact.
• Left: they replied, Left: order paid, Left: unsubscribed — they left through that exit.
• No channel to reach this contact — Juno couldn't find a channel to reach them on.
• Journey edited — the steps were changed while they were part-way through (see below).

Everything is shown in the console's language; hover over a reason to see its internal code if support asks for it.

Change, pause or delete

• Edit opens the journey in the builder; Save changes stores it.
  • You can change the name, the trigger, the exit rules, re-enrolment, and what any step says or does — the text, the template, its variables, a wait's length, a branch's condition — at any time, even while the journey is active. Contacts already in it keep their place and get the new version from the next step they reach; a wait that is already running keeps its original length. A new trigger only affects who enrolls from now on.
  • Adding, removing or reordering steps (or turning one kind of step into another) needs the journey paused first — the builder says "Pause the journey to add, remove or reorder steps." When you save such a change, contacts still in the journey leave it (reason: Journey edited), because their place in the old list no longer means the same step. New enrollments start from step 1.
• Pause stops the journey without removing anyone. Activate resumes it.
• Delete removes the journey and stops it for everyone currently enrolled. It can't be undone.

Where to go next

• Contacts and segments — the audiences segment triggers use
• Send a broadcast — a one-off message to many people
• The 24-hour service window — why text steps get skipped