You can customize any prebuilt or custom journey by adding, editing, or removing steps. Steps determine how subscribers progress through your journey and allow you to tailor the experience to your messaging strategy.

Before you begin

This article assumes you’re familiar with:

• How journeys work
• Journey triggers and flow logic
• Subscriber movement through steps over time

If you're new to journeys, review Journey basics before starting.

Available journey steps

Below are the standard steps you can add to a journey, along with recommendations for when and how to use them.

• Wait
• Branch
• A/B test
• Send text message
• End journey

Adding steps is fully customizable and supports multiple levels of nesting. This means that you can create very straightforward journeys that send customers a message if they view a product, or create complex journeys that send different A/B test variants to customers based on their device type.

Wait Step

Use a Wait step to pause a subscriber for a specific amount of time before they move to the next action. This helps you control the pacing of your messages and prevents message fatigue.

Recommended use cases & timing:

• 30–60 minutes: Browse Abandonment, Cart Abandonment
• 1–4 hours:
  Short follow-ups, abandoned cart nudges, or time-sensitive reminders such as a post purchase message inviting to a referral program or a Thank You message
• 1 day:
  Standard drip sequences or post-purchase content.
• 2–7 days:
  Multi-message educational series or brand storytelling, including asking for a post purchase product review.
• 14+ days:
  Long-term nurture touchpoints (e.g., replenishment journeys).

Branch step

Branches allow you to route subscribers down different paths based on criteria such as:

• Device: Subscriber device details, like the device type or operating system.
• Subscriber past actions: Subscriber part activity like viewing or adding products to their cart.
• Subscription type: Whether or not the customer has opted-in to receive both transactional and marketing messages, or just transactional messages. For more, check out What are transactional journeys?
• Product data: Branch based on the name, category, tag, or availability of the product that the subscriber interacted with. For more, check out What is branching on product data?
• Segment: Branch based on the segment the subscriber is included in.

For more on how branching works, be sure to check out How branching works in journeys.

Example: send the customer a message if they left an item in their shopping cart without completing the purchase, or end the journey if they made a purchase.

A/B test step

Test up to six variations of a step to determine which performs best.

You can adjust:

• Traffic allocation
• Message content
• Timing
• Variant-specific settings

Recommendation:
Limit A/B tests to one variable at a time to ensure clean learnings. End tests only once you’ve collected enough traffic for a reliable result.

For more on A/B tests, check out Perform an A/B test.

Send text message step

Send an SMS message at a specific moment in the journey.

Supports:

• Copy, emojis, and formatting
• Images
• Personalization tags
• Smart Sending
• Quiet Hours
• Tracked links*

*You can add a URL, enable Google Analytics tracking, and optionally specify a UTM campaign. Both standard and anchor links are supported. After adding a link, select the short link in the message preview to view the full URL including tracking parameters.

Recommendation:
Use personalization and timely incentives to improve conversion. Ensure link tracking is correct before turning on the journey.

End journey step

Stops a subscriber’s progression and removes them from the journey.

Recommendation:
Use to prevent unnecessary messaging once a goal is achieved (e.g., purchase, signup) or when moving subscribers to another journey.

Edit or delete steps

To edit a step:

1. Select the step on the canvas.
2. Adjust its settings in the right-side panel.

To delete a step:

1. Select the step.
2. Click Delete.
3. Confirm removal.

Managing journey revisions and en route subscribers

When you turn on a new journey (not when scheduling it), Attentive lets you decide how your changes apply to subscribers who are already en route.

You’ll choose one of the following:

• En route subscribers receive the new revision
  • Subscribers already in the journey will smoothly transition to the updated version.
• En route subscribers finish the previous revision
  • Subscribers already in the journey will continue on their current path, while new subscribers follow the updated version.
• Evict all en route subscribers
  • Subscribers currently in the journey will be safely removed and won’t receive any further messages from it.

This combined table shows which journey updates can apply to en route subscribers, and which cannot.

How updates apply to subscribers

Changes only apply to subscribers who have not yet reached the updated step.

Example:
1. If you update two message steps, subscribers who already passed those messages will finish using the previous revision.

2.If a subscriber is already in the middle of a wait, changing the wait time won’t affect them. The updated wait time will only apply to subscribers who enter the wait after the change. 

Recommended use cases for immediate updates

Use this feature when you need quick corrections or content fixes:

• Fixing typos
• Replacing an expired coupon
• Updating link tracking
• Refreshing imagery after a branding change

When not to use immediate updates

Avoid using this feature for major journey restructures, such as:

• Converting from evergreen → seasonal (or vice versa)
• Adding extensive personalization
• Rebuilding message flows or branching logic

For large changes, we recommend duplicating the journey or planning a structured update.