Send email step

Learn how to use the Send email step in Tarvent Journeys, what it does, and when to use it in your automation flow.

What we'll cover

1. Concepts
2. How to configure this step
3. Use cases and business examples
4. Step notes
5. FAQ
6. Need help?

1 Concepts

What this step does
The Send email step sends a campaign email to contacts who reach this step in the journey.

Common settings you will see

• Name
• Edit email
• Specify send time
• Include in engagement score
• Use Timejumper
• Apply to which contacts
• Delete
• Save

Note: Use waits before and after email steps when you want to space messages out in a sequence.

2 How to configure this step

Here are the steps:

1. Open the journey, and add or click the Send email step.
2. In Edit email, choose or create the email content.
3. Configure Specify send time if you want to control when the email sends.
4. Choose whether to Include in engagement score.
5. Review Apply to which contacts, and click Save.

3 Use cases and business examples

• New lead follow-up: Send a welcome or introduction email after a form submission.
• Customer onboarding: Send milestone emails based on account activity or timing.
• Renewal reminders: Send reminder emails before an important date or renewal window.

4 Step notes

Here is what to expect when this step runs in a live journey, including scheduling behavior, skip logic, and edge cases.

Send time

• If the campaign is set to Send Immediately, the email is sent as soon as the contact reaches this step in the journey.

Scheduled time of day

• If a delivery window time is configured, the system will schedule the email to send at that specific time of day based on your account's time zone.
• If the contact reaches this step within 5 minutes after the scheduled time, the email sends immediately rather than waiting until the next day.
• If the contact reaches this step more than 5 minutes after the scheduled time, the email is held and scheduled for the following day at the configured time.
• If the contact reaches this step before the scheduled time, the email is held and scheduled for later that same day at the configured time.

Allowed Days of the Week

• If specific days of the week are configured, the system ensures the email is only sent on one of those days.
• If the calculated send date falls on a day that isn't allowed, the email is pushed forward to the next allowed day.
• If there are no remaining allowed days left in the current week, it wraps around to the first allowed day of the following week.
• Day-of-week restrictions work in combination with the delivery window time; the email will be sent on the next allowed day at the configured time.

Time zone handling

• All scheduling calculations use your account's time zone to determine the correct local time.
• If your account does not have a time zone configured, all times default to UTC.

Failsafe Behavior

• If the system encounters an unexpected error while calculating the send time, the email is sent immediately to ensure delivery is not lost.
• If the sending domain for the email (from email address) doesn’t verify, the email will not be sent, and an internal retry mechanism will attempt several times to verify the domain and send the email.
• If criteria is specified and not met, the contact will skip the step and move to the next step.
• Contacts that have a status other than "active" will skip this step.

5 FAQ

6 Need help?

If you need help setting up journeys, contact support. We’re happy to help.