Workflow Action: Wait
Using the Wait action in the Workflow Builder allows you to hold Contacts before advancing to the next Workflow step. This can be useful for many reasons, from appointment bookings/reminders to follow-ups. Now, let’s look at how to set up a Wait event.
Step 1: Adding an Action to the Workflow
- Click into the workflow and click the + icon to add an action
- Choose the Wait action from the list
Step 2: Under “Wait For,” choose the type of Wait action you wish to use
There are several options for customizing the Wait action, categorized as Time-based or NicheFit events. H re’s a brief description of each type of Wait action you can setup:
- Time delay: waits for a set amount of time
- NOTE: You can toggle on the “Advance Window, which will specify the time frame the waiting period counts (i.e., Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm). If you have a time delay set for 10 minutes, and someone enters the step on a Saturday, but you have a window set for Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, the time will start at 9am on Monday.
- Event/Appointment time: waits until before, after, or the exact time of the event/appointment time.
- Choose before or after, and the timeframe
- You can move the Contact to the next step or skip communications
- Condition: waits for a specific condition to be met (such as a tag being added) - you can customize filters for this to specify your exact condition
- Choose one or more “segments” (condition), and toggle on the timeout if you want to add that feature.
Note: “Time Out” feature works best with conditions like “Customer Replied”. If the lead does not reply, they will keep waiting at this step. If y you want to move this lead forward, you can set up the “Time out” feature to a certain number of days so that the lead can move to the next step whether they reply or not.
Also, When you select “Skip all outbound communication,” all email, sms or call events between the two wait steps will be skipped until the next wait step.
- Contact reply: waits for a contact to reply to a communication
- Choose “reply to” to select the sms/email event for the workflow.
- Toggle on the “timeout” setting to add this feature.
Please Note: This will need to be before the wait step. It’s recommended that the wait step directly follow a communication action, as certain actions like If/Else will break the connection to the wait step.
- Trigger link clicked: waits for the trigger link to be clicked
- Choose the specific trigger link and toggle on the timeout if you want to add that feature
- Email event: waits for specific email events
- Choose the step, determine which event(s) you wish the step to run on, and toggle on the timeout if you want to add that feature