Building automated journeys for families and leads

A journey is a sequence of messages and waits that fires automatically when a family hits a trigger. Used right, journeys do the boring follow-up that humans forget.

Common journeys to set up

• New lead follow-up. A lead submits the signup form. Send a welcome email immediately, an SMS 4 hours later, and a follow-up email 2 days later if they have not booked a trial.
• Trial booked. A lead schedules a trial class. Send a reminder text 24 hours before, send a follow-up "how did it go?" email the next day.
• Trial no-show. A lead did not show up. Send a soft re-engagement email with a "let's try again" link.
• New member. A family enrolls. Send a welcome packet with the dress code, schedule, and what to bring.
• Lapsed. A family's attendance drops to zero for 14 days. Send a check-in email from the head instructor.

Building one

1. Go to /journeys and click New journey.
2. Pick the trigger (lead created, trial scheduled, attendance dropped, etc.).
3. Add steps. Each step is either a wait, an email, an SMS, a push notification, or a tag change (move a lead from "new" to "contacted", for example).
4. Save and turn it on.

Testing before sending to real people

Every journey has a dry-run mode. Toggle it on and the journey logs what it would have sent without actually sending. Use this to confirm the timing and copy before you go live.

When you flip dry-run off, the journey starts firing for anyone who hits the trigger from that point forward. It does not retroactively fire for past leads.

Personalizing the copy

Inside email and SMS templates, you can use placeholders like {{first_name}}, {{class_name}}, {{trial_date}}, and {{school_name}}. They are replaced at send time with the right value for each recipient.

SMS rules

SMS is a regulated channel. Two rules to remember:

1. The family must have opted in. Rosterra captures opt-in at signup. Do not import a list and start texting from it.
2. Every marketing-style SMS must include an unsubscribe path. Rosterra appends "Reply STOP to opt out" automatically.

Transactional SMS (a reminder for a class they are signed up for) does not need an explicit opt-in or unsubscribe.

Watching results

Each journey shows you how many people entered, how many opened the email, how many replied to the SMS, and how many converted to the next stage. Trim the steps that are not pulling their weight.