Use the Message step when you want the campaign to send an email at a specific point in the journey. You can create, copy, or attach the message that should send at that point in the flow.

After adding a Message step to the canvas, click it to open the Send Mail Options dialog. From there, you can rename the step and then choose how you want to supply the message for that step:

• Name: Use this field to give the Message step a clearer label on the canvas. A descriptive name makes the campaign easier to review later, especially when you have multiple message steps.

• Copy Existing Message: Choose this when you want to start from a message that already exists outside the campaign. You select the message from the Folder and Mailing lists, and then copy it into the campaign step.

• Copy Campaign Message: Choose this when you want to reuse a message that already exists in a campaign. You select the source Campaign and Mailing, and then copy that message into the current step.

• Create New Message: Choose this when you want to create a brand-new campaign message instead of copying an existing one. Some accounts may show this alongside Create New MD2 Message, so the exact experience can vary by account configuration.

• Create New MD2 Message: Choose this when you want to create a new message in Message Designer 2 (MD2). After you select it and click Create, the system routes you to Message Designer, where you choose a template and build the message content. This is also the option used in the import-content workflow for campaign messages.

• Create New From HTML Message: Choose this when you want to create a campaign message from an HTML message. After you click Create, you build the HTML-based message in Message Designer.

Any messages that you add to the campaign are listed on the campaign's Mailings tab, which gives you one place to review the messages associated with the campaign. If you delete a message from the campaign, it no longer appears on that tab.

Use the Notify step when you want the system to send an internal email notification after a contact reaches a certain point in the campaign. This is useful when someone on your team needs to know that a contact has reached an important milestone, such as a conversion point or a handoff point.

The Notify step sends a customizable plain-text email to a single email address, which can be an individual person or a distribution list. In practice, this means you can alert a staff member or team inbox without sending anything new to the contact in the campaign.

Use the Profile step to automatically add or remove a contact to or from an Interest based on that contact’s behavior in the campaign, which helps you refine targeting for future outreach.

This step is useful when you want campaign behavior to update how a contact is categorized. For example, if a person engages with content around a specific topic, you can use this step to reflect that interest so later targeting can be more relevant.

Use the Wait step to control timing and pacing in the campaign. In other words, this step tells the campaign when to pause and when contacts should be allowed to move forward.

A Wait step must come before every Decide step, and you can also place Wait steps after other step types whenever you want to add time between actions. This makes the Wait step central to creating a campaign that feels intentional instead of rushed.

The Wait step supports several timing methods.

• Fixed Amount of Time lets you pause the campaign for a set period and then define when it can resume, including date, time, not-before date, and time zone settings.

• Until Day of Week lets you wait until a specific weekday at a specific time in a specific time zone.

• Until Day of Month lets you wait until a specific calendar day each month at a specific time and time zone. If you choose an invalid date, such as February 31, the step defaults to the last day of that month.

• Until an Action Occurs lets you wait for a contact to open a message or click a link, up to a maximum amount of time. This option requires the campaign to include a message, or the campaign will report an error.

Use the Decide step when you want the campaign to branch based on contact behavior or membership criteria. This is the step that turns a linear campaign into a responsive journey by sending contacts down different paths based on whether they did or did not meet the condition you set.

In practice, you must place a Wait step before a Decide step so contacts have time to take the action you want to evaluate. For example, you might send a message, wait a few days, and then use a Decide step to check what happened.

A Decide step can evaluate three main types of conditions:

• In a Group: Use this option when you want to check whether a contact belongs to a specific Target Group at that point in the campaign. This is useful when the group itself represents something meaningful, such as a segment, a status, or a behavior captured elsewhere in your account. If the contact is in the selected group, they follow one branch; if not, they follow the other branch.

• Opened message in Step [x]: Use this option when you want to check whether a contact opened a particular campaign message before reaching the Decide step. This is useful when you want one path for contacts who showed basic engagement and a different path for contacts who did not open the message. A common example is sending a follow-up message to openers and a resend or alternate subject line to non-openers.

• Clicked link: Use this option when you want to check whether a contact clicked a link before reaching the Decide step. This is especially useful when the click represents stronger intent than an open, such as clicking a registration link, renewal link, donation link, or download link.
  
  The Clicked link option can work in two different ways:
   

  • Select Clicked link in Step [x] when you want the Decide step to evaluate whether contacts clicked a link in a message you specify. This is the better choice when the message you want to evaluate is clear and your goal is simply understanding whether a contact clicked a link in the specified message.

  • Select Clicked a specific link in any previous mailing when the same call-to-action appears in multiple earlier messages and you want the campaign to check whether the contact clicked that link in any of them. This option evaluates all prior messages in the current campaign path before the Decide step, not just one selected message. If the contact clicked the selected link in at least one previous message, they follow the Yes path; if not, they follow the No path. This check does not evaluate future messages or messages outside the current campaign.

A Decide step must have more than one connection so the campaign has somewhere to send contacts based on the result. If you do not connect all needed branches, the campaign flow is incomplete and you will need to correct it before activation.

Use the Campaign step when you want contacts in one campaign to flow into another campaign when they reach a certain point. This is helpful when you want to reuse existing campaign logic instead of rebuilding similar sequences from scratch.

When a contact reaches this step, the contact flows into the selected campaign while remaining in the current campaign as well. This makes the step useful for modular campaign design and for linking related journeys together.

Use the Comment step to add internal documentation directly on the canvas. This step is for your team, not for campaign recipients.

Comments are a good place to explain why a step exists, who owns part of the campaign, what can or should not be changed, what design guidance applies, or which metric the team should watch. Using comments generously is considered a best practice because it makes the campaign easier to understand and maintain over time.

Use the Date step when you want the campaign to branch based on a calendar date rather than on recipient behavior. This is especially useful for event promotions, deadline-driven campaigns, or any campaign where timing relative to a fixed date matters.

You configure a fixed date, and the campaign sends contacts down one path if the current date is before that fixed date and another path if the current date is after it. In most cases, the fixed date should be in the future so the campaign can change behavior when that date arrives.