How to re-enter people into a journey or playbook campaign

Sometimes, you may need to re-enter a person into a journey or playbook campaign after the person has already entered and exited it. This may be because you have created additional messages or that you wish people to receive, or have added actions to automate person record updates, or send a notification related to the journey or playbook. 

This article described steps to take, plus considerations and advice for handling different types of re-entry, and messages and actions already received.

Further information on campaign entry including the effects of switching a campaign ON/OFF or modifying the conditions can be found at Understanding journey and playbook entry criteria.

Ensure people can be in the journey more than once

If you are modifying a journey, the first step is to set the People can be in journey setting to one of the following:

• Only once, and enter multiple times. Or
• More than once, and enter multiple times.

Assess your entry criteria

Next, take a look at your entry criteria (People enter when). You’ll need to take different approaches depending on whether or not your entry criteria uses “occurs” conditions.

Entry criteria with an "occurs" condition

If the entry criteria contains an “x activity occurs” condition, then the person can only re-enter the journey/playbook when they perform the activity (meet the entry criteria) again.

Let's look at some examples of different scenarios based on the entry criteria “New trial occurs”:

• No change is made to the entry criteria and the person performs the activity again, the person will re-enter the journey (provided you have your People can be in journey selection set to one of the options highlighted above).
• A change is made to the entry criteria (such as adding an additional condition), the person will not re-enter the journey (unless they perform the activity again). This applies regardless of whether the journey is switched OFF then back ON, or remains ON when you modify the entry criteria.
• The journey is switched OFF then back ON, the person will not re-enter the journey (unless they perform the activity again).

Entry criteria without an "occurs" condition

If the entry criteria is based on a field value or a “has occurred”-type condition, modifying the entry criteria or switching a campaign ON/OFF will affect people differently. Read the scenarios below to learn which approach will be most suitable for your needs.

Modify the entry criteria while the journey/playbook is switched ON. 

This approach is best for when you have people who no longer meet the entry criteria, but need to re-enter the journey/playbook. Using our “New trial has occurred in the last 14 days” example above, this approach is suitable for people who started a trial more than 14 days ago. 

An easy way to solve this is to prepare people who need to re-enter the campaign to meet the updated entry criteria. To do so, we suggest tagging relevant people then adding a “Tag is…” condition to the entry criteria, as follows:

1. Add a tag (e.g. “Re-enter onboarding series”) to the people you want to re-enter the campaign.
2. Modify the campaign entry criteria to add the condition “Tag is” with the relevant tag value (e.g. “Tag is Re-enter onboarding series”).
3. Save your changes.

This approach will evaluate which people are eligible to enter the journey/playbook and will trigger new people to enter the campaign (those who match “New trial has occurred in the last 14 days”) as well as people required to re-enter (those who match “Tag is Re-enter onboarding series”). 

Switch the journey/playbook OFF and back ON

This approach is best for when you have people who still meet the entry criteria, but need to re-enter the journey/playbook. Using our “New trial has occurred in the last 14 days” example above, this approach is suitable for people who started a trial in the last 14 days.. Switching the campaign OFF/ON will re-evaluate all the people who meet the entry criteria and cause all to enter (or re-enter) the campaign. This approach is generally only suitable if you have a single batch of people you want to re-enter into the campaign.  Should you need to re-enter another batch of people into the campaign at a later date, you will need to repeat this action (switching OFF/ON) in order to re-evaluate the people who will enter. If, like the above example, the entry criteria contains a date range, you would need to be mindful that some people you wish to re-enter may no longer meet the date requirement. Depending on your needs at the time, you may find it more beneficial to modify the campaign entry criteria (while the campaign is switched ON) – see the previous section for information on how to do this.

A note on modifying the entry criteria

If you choose to modify your entry criteria in order to re-enter people into a journey, consider how different condition types and AND/OR operators will affect the journey audience.

Limitations on using "occurs"

An “occurs” condition on its own will only enter new people into the journey. It can’t re-enter people unless those people perform the activity again.

“Occurs” conditions can only be used with the operator AND (not OR), so you may want to consider how that affects your journey audience if you want to add more than 1 condition to the entry criteria.

Using AND/OR in the entry criteria

If you take the approach of adding tags to people you want to re-enter, and adding a “Tag is…” condition to the entry criteria, be careful when setting the AND/OR condition.

Per the example shown above:

• AND: will only re-enter people who have had a new trial in the last 14 days and have the tag. It will not re-enter people who have the tag but have not started a trial in the last 14 days.
• OR: will re-enter people who started a new trial in the last 14 days, and people who have not had a new trial in the past 14 days, but who do have the tag.

Managing messages already received

Once you have your journey settings up to date, you may want to consider whether you want a person who re-enters the journey to receive any messages they have already received.

For example, you have a journey containing 2 email messages and you add a 3rd email message. For the initial 2 messages, you can set the individual message shape settings to determine whether a person can receive the message once or more than once. 

To do so:

1. At the message shape in the journey editor, click the more icon (...), then View.
2. At People can receive this message, ensure it is set to Only once. If not, click Edit to change and save the setting.

Managing actions already performed

In addition to managing messages already received, you may want to consider whether you want to repeat any actions originally performed when the person first entered the journey.

For example, you have an action to create a Salesforce record after a person performs a particular activity or meets a particular condition. You likely don’t want to create another record when the person re-enters the journey, so you can set the action to be performed only once.

To do so:

1. At the action shape in the journey editor, click the more icon (...), then View.
2. At This action can occur, ensure it is set to Only once. If not, click Edit to change and save the setting.