Making an automation wait for a condition
With the ‘Wait until…’ action, a subscriber remains at the same point in the automation until a condition is met, and only then moves on to the next step. If you place multiple conditions underneath each other, the automation will continue as soon as one of them is met.
If you do not want a subscriber to wait on the same path, but instead want to split the automation into two paths and determine at once which path the subscriber will follow, use if/then.
Waiting for a field value
The automation continues when a subscriber’s field has a specific value. To do this, configure these three elements:
A subscriber in an automation can come from different lists, depending on the selected starting point. If the subscriber comes from a list other than the one you select here, this condition will be ignored. You can add extra conditions for those other lists if needed.
Waiting for an action
The automation continues as soon as the subscriber opens an email or clicks on a link.
If you are waiting for an email to be opened, select whether any email counts or only a specific email. If you are waiting for a click, first indicate whether the click can be in any email or in a specific one. If you select a specific email, then determine whether any link counts or only a specific link from that email.
Waiting for a date or time
The automation continues as soon as a specific moment is reached. First select a unit of time: exact date/time, an hour, a day of the week, a day of the month, a month, or a year. Next, indicate whether the moment must be equal to the selected value, or earlier or later. Finally, select the value.
For example, you can set the automation to only continue on a Monday (day of the week is Monday), or only from April onwards (month after March).
Configuring a maximum waiting time
It is possible that a subscriber never meets your conditions, for example if they never click on the link you are waiting for. Therefore, configure a maximum waiting time. Once that time is reached, the automation will move on to the next step, even if none of the conditions have been met.
If you only want to wait for a fixed period of time without a condition, use the pause action. You can find a prepared example of this under series of emails at intervals.