Tarvent Journeys — Ideas & Best Practices

A journey is an automation that sends the right email at the right time — on autopilot. You set it up once, and Tarvent handles the rest: welcoming new subscribers, following up with leads, wishing customers a happy birthday, and more.

This guide isn't about clicking buttons. It's about figuring out what to build and why. Pick one idea, get it running, then build from there.

In this guide, you'll find:

1. What is a journey, really?
2. 5 guiding principles
3. Journey recipe menu
4. Where to start
5. FAQs

1 What is a journey, really?

Think of a journey as a helpful staff member who never sleeps. When someone signs up for your newsletter at 11 pm on a Saturday, a journey sends them a warm welcome email — no one on your team had to lift a finger. When a contact hasn't heard from you in six months, a journey can nudge them back with a "we miss you" message.

Every journey has three parts:

• A trigger — the event that starts the journey for a contact (they signed up, filled out a form, their birthday is coming up, etc.)
• A flow — the path through the journey, including any waits between emails
• Actions — the things Tarvent does along the way (send an email, add a tag, update their profile, and more)

You don't need to master all of that to build your first journey. Start with one of the recipes below — they're designed to be simple and immediately useful.

Good to know: Journeys run in the background while you focus on your business. Once a journey is active, every new contact who meets the trigger conditions enters it automatically.

2 5 guiding principles

These aren't rules — they're lessons from businesses that got good results without overcomplicating things.

1. Start with one journey, not ten

It's tempting to build everything at once. Don't. Pick the single journey that would help your contacts the most right now, build it well, and activate it. You can always add more.

2. Keep it short — 3 to 5 emails is plenty

More emails doesn't mean better results. A tight, focused series of 3–5 emails is easier to write, easier to manage, and far less likely to wear out your welcome.

3. Space your emails out

Sending 3 emails in 3 days feels like a lot. Spreading them over 2–3 weeks feels like a relationship. As a starting point, try 3–7 days between emails and adjust based on what your stats show.

4. One goal per journey

What's the one thing you want this journey to accomplish? Welcome someone? Re-engage a lapsed customer? Convert a lead? Pick one. Journeys that try to do everything usually do nothing well.

5. Test before you activate — and check stats afterward

Add yourself as a test contact and go through the journey before it goes live. Once it's running, check back in after a few weeks to see your open rates and click rates. That data tells you what's working and what to tweak.

Personalization tip: Using merge tags — like {{FirstName}} in your subject line — makes emails feel less like a broadcast and more like a note written just for that person. Every recipe below includes a reminder about where to use them.

3 Journey recipe menu

Each recipe is a ready-to-follow guide for one common use case. It tells you the goal, who it's for, what triggers it, and how to build the flow — step by step.

4 Where to start

Not sure which recipe to pick first? Here's a quick guide:

• If you're brand new to journeys: Start with the Welcome Series. It's the highest-impact, lowest-risk journey you can build. Every new subscriber benefits from it immediately.
• If you already have a welcome series: Build the New-Lead Follow-Up next if you're actively generating leads, or the Re-engagement journey if you have a list of contacts who've gone quiet.
• If you want something personal and low-effort: The Birthday / Date-Based journey is set-and-forget once it's running — and contacts love it.

One more thing: You don't need to build all four. Two or three great journeys running well will do more for your business than ten half-finished ones.

5 FAQs