COHERENCETimed Campaign Journeys
Arrange campaign emails into a recipient-relative drip journey
The Workflow canvas defines the emails each enrolled recipient receives and the wait between them.
Every recipient has an independent timeline. If one person enrolls today and another enrolls three weeks later, both begin with the first enabled step on their own enrollment date.
Journey changes save automatically after you stop editing.
Before creating the journey
You need:
- A campaign.
- At least one unassigned email in the Emails library, or an email already in this campaign.
- At least one active provider under Campaigns → Sending, selected under Sending provider in the campaign's Workflow setup.
You can configure the Journey while the campaign is in Draft. Messages become due only after the campaign is published and Active.
Add journey steps
- Open the campaign.
- Select the Workflow tab.
- Select Add email at the position where the message should appear, then filter by email name or subject.
- Select an email. It is linked to the campaign and added to the Journey immediately.
- Adjust the step name if needed.
- Set the delay in minutes, hours, or days.
- Optionally set Send at to a specific local time, such as 9:00 AM. Leave it empty to send as soon as the wait ends.
- Select the remaining messages and arrange them in order. The Journey saves automatically after each change.
For the first step, the wait is measured from enrollment. For every later step, the wait is measured from the previous email.
If a step has a Send at time, Coherence applies the wait first and then chooses the next occurrence of that time in the campaign timezone. For example, a two-hour wait that ends at 11:00 AM with Send at 1:00 PM sends at 1:00 PM that day. If the wait ends at 2:00 PM, it sends at 1:00 PM on the next allowed delivery day.
Example:
| Step | Wait | Send at | Recipient experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome | 0 minutes | 9:00 AM | Next 9:00 AM after the recipient becomes eligible |
| First lesson | 2 days | 1:00 PM | Next 1:00 PM after two days have elapsed |
| Second lesson | 3 days | ASAP | As soon as three days have elapsed, within send hours |
Set campaign delivery hours
Select the Workflow entry node, choose Edit campaign setup, and use Entry & schedule to configure:
- The campaign start date and time.
- The IANA timezone used by the campaign.
- The weekdays on which Journey emails may send.
- An optional earliest and latest delivery time.
These are campaign-wide guardrails. An email whose delay ends outside the allowed days or hours moves to the next valid slot. A step-specific Send at time must be inside the campaign delivery window.
The campaign timezone is saved with the campaign, so a workspace timezone change does not silently move a running Journey. Queued delivery timestamps are stored in UTC and continue to observe daylight-saving changes in the saved timezone when later steps are calculated.
Reorder, disable, or remove steps
- Use the up and down controls to change the order.
- Disable a step to keep it in the journey without sending it.
- Remove a step when it is no longer part of the program.
- Pause briefly after making structural changes so autosave can finish.
Review changes carefully when recipients are already active. Their durable progress identifies where they are in the journey, and the next enabled step is scheduled as prior work completes.
Campaign status and timing
- Draft — Journey configuration is allowed, but messages do not become due.
- Scheduled — The campaign is published but waits for its future start date.
- Active — Due steps may be delivered.
- Paused — Delivery waits. When the campaign is reactivated, overdue work may be processed.
- Completed or Cancelled — The campaign should not continue normal journey delivery.
Users who join later
When Enrollment has Include users who join later enabled, each matching new user gets a fresh enrollment. Their first-step delay starts from their own join/enrollment time, followed by the complete journey in order.
For a ten-email learning program, a later user therefore receives all ten emails beginning with Email 1; they do not start at the step currently being received by older users.
Delivery safeguards
Journey progress and step delivery are durable. Worker retries and service restarts do not intentionally restart a recipient's journey. Suppressed addresses are not sent marketing email, and a provider acceptance advances a step only once.
Next: Configure who enters the journey under Enrollment.