JourneysOverview

Journeys

Journeys are multi-step, multi-channel customer workflows that orchestrate personalized experiences across your entire customer lifecycle. Using a visual canvas editor, you design the path customers take — from entry triggers through wait steps, branching logic, and destination actions — all executed automatically at scale.

Why Journeys?

Traditional campaign tools force you to set up disconnected, one-shot sends. Journeys let you think in terms of customer experiences rather than individual messages:

  • Multi-step orchestration — Chain actions across days, weeks, or months based on customer behavior
  • Multi-channel activation — Combine email, SMS, push notifications, ad audiences, webhooks, and profile updates in a single flow
  • Dynamic branching — Route customers through different paths based on traits, events, or random splits
  • Real-time responsiveness — React to customer actions as they happen with event-based triggers and wait conditions
  • Visual design — Build and understand complex workflows through an intuitive drag-and-drop canvas

How Journeys Work

Journey canvas flow
  1. Customers enter the journey when they match entry criteria — joining an audience, triggering an event, or being manually added
  2. The journey engine moves each customer through the canvas tile by tile, respecting wait durations and evaluating branch conditions
  3. Actions execute at each action tile — sending to a destination, updating a profile, or calling a webhook
  4. Customers exit when they reach an exit tile, meet exit criteria, or are manually removed

Journey Canvas

The journey canvas is a visual editor where you design your workflow by placing and connecting tiles. Each tile represents a step in the customer journey:

Tile TypePurposeExample
EntryDefine who enters the journey”Users who join the High-Value Customers audience”
WaitPause before the next step”Wait 3 days” or “Wait until user opens email”
BranchSplit into different paths”If lifetime value > $500, go left; otherwise go right”
ActionSend to a destination”Send welcome email via Braze”
Update ProfileModify customer traits”Set onboarding_stage = ‘completed‘“
WebhookCall an external API”POST to internal reward service”
Sub-JourneyLink to another journey”Enter the re-engagement journey”
ExitRemove from journey”Journey complete”

Tiles are connected by edges that define the flow direction. A journey must have exactly one Entry tile and at least one Exit tile.

Journey States

A journey progresses through a defined set of states:

StateDescription
DraftJourney is being designed on the canvas. No customers are processed.
ActiveJourney is live. New customers enter based on triggers, and the engine processes them through tiles.
PausedJourney is temporarily stopped. No new customers enter, and active members are held at their current tile.
CompletedJourney has been archived. No new entries. Existing members may still be processed to exit.

Key Capabilities

Entry Flexibility

Journeys support multiple entry mechanisms to cover every use case:

  • Audience-based entry — Customers enter when they join a specified audience
  • Event-based entry — Customers enter when they perform a specific action (e.g., “signed_up”, “cart_abandoned”)
  • Manual entry — Upload a list of customer IDs or trigger entry via the API

Branching Logic

Control the customer path with conditional logic:

  • Condition branches — Evaluate trait values, event properties, or audience membership to route customers
  • Percentage splits — Randomly divide customers for A/B testing (e.g., 80/20 split)
  • Time-based branches — Route based on time of day, day of week, or relative timing

Execution Monitoring

Track journey performance in real time:

  • Active members count — How many customers are currently in the journey
  • Per-tile analytics — How many customers have passed through each tile, with conversion rates
  • Error tracking — Monitor failed actions with retry status and error details
  • Pause/resume controls — Safely pause a journey without losing state

API Reference

Journeys are managed through the SignalSmith REST API:

# List all journeys
GET /api/v1/journeys
 
# Get a journey with its canvas definition
GET /api/v1/journeys/{id}
 
# Create a journey
POST /api/v1/journeys
 
# Update a journey (draft only)
PUT /api/v1/journeys/{id}
 
# Activate a journey
POST /api/v1/journeys/{id}/activate
 
# Pause a journey
POST /api/v1/journeys/{id}/pause
 
# Resume a paused journey
POST /api/v1/journeys/{id}/resume
 
# Delete a journey (draft only)
DELETE /api/v1/journeys/{id}

See the API Reference for full request/response schemas.

Best Practices

  • Start simple — Begin with a linear journey (entry, wait, action, exit) before adding branches. Validate the core flow before adding complexity.
  • Set exit criteria — Always define conditions under which customers should leave the journey early (e.g., they convert, they unsubscribe, or they’ve been in the journey too long).
  • Use sub-journeys for reuse — If you find yourself duplicating tile sequences across journeys, extract them into a sub-journey.
  • Test with a small audience — Create a test audience with known members and run them through the journey before activating with your full audience.
  • Monitor after launch — Check the execution dashboard within the first hour of activation to catch configuration issues early.

Next Steps

DebuggingCreating a Journey