Architect Journey: Wait for Some Time

  • Updated on Oct 24, 2025
  • Published on Feb 8, 2021
  • 2 minute(s) read
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Wait for some time allows you to arrange the duration to align with the action you expect users to take. The users in the journey can Wait for Some Time or Wait for a Dynamic Duration.

Take, for example, a retail company. New users sign up on average within one hour after coming to the website. Also, users purchase within 15 minutes of adding an item to their cart. Lastly, 76% of users open your emails within one day.

  • If you consider engaging users to make them sign up after you interact, you can determine a one-hour wait duration. After that, you can check whether they have signed up or not.
  • In the case of sending a cart abandonment email, you can determine a 15-minute waiting time duration and then check whether users are still cart abandoners or have already become buyers.
  • If you want to follow up on an email you previously sent, you can determine a one-day wait time duration before checking their ‘open’ action on the email to design your next step in the flow accordingly.

Use Cases

With the Wait for Some Time element, you can:

  • Send a follow-up email after a specific time-space to not make the communication too frequent.
  • Let users take desired actions by giving them the time according to your industry standard.

How does Wait for Some Time work?

Wait for some time creates time gaps in the journey by letting users wait for a specific or dynamic duration before they enter the next element. To determine the duration, you can consider how long it takes for particular user behavior to change and how long it takes for them to take specific actions.

Wait duration starts when the user arrives at the Wait element. For example, your journey flow is Starter > Wait > Check > Email. The wait duration is 30 minutes. You launch the journey today at 1 pm. The user enters the journey at 2 pm. The user arrives at the wait element at 2.01 pm. The user will proceed to Check the element at 2.31 pm. Users are held in the Wait element on the flow until the time duration is over.

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To ensure seamless orchestration across high-volume or multi-source data environments, we recommend using a “Wait for some time” step (e.g., 10 minutes) when journeys rely on recently updated user attributes or external events.
This buffer ensures the platform captures upstream attribute syncs and external API updates before triggering downstream actions—especially in complex architectures where external systems (e.g., CRM, offline POS, third-party systems) may write data asynchronously.
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  • A single Wait element's time duration can be set to a maximum of 3 months.
  • The total wait time, from start to end, for each path in your journey can't exceed 6 months.
  • Wait elements of the same type cannot be added consecutively.
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