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Using CRM Journeys & Automations (Preview)

Create custom journeys and automations for your CRM to guide leads through your onboarding journey with ease.

Gabriella Redfern avatar
Written by Gabriella Redfern
Updated this week


Thank you for being a tester on this Public Preview!

Overview - what can you do with CRM Journeys and Automations?

Automate email touch-points with new leads and customers based on the criteria you decide -including welcome emails as soon as they register their interest. Chase up on leads who haven't started trials or purchased memberships in the timeframes you've outlined with emails or in-app messages to stop potential customers slipping away and auto-assign tasks to your coaches as leads hit certain criteria to delegate to your team effectively.



This article covers 4 steps:

Step 1 - Setting up a journey

Step 3 - Creating different journey types (including from custom campaigns)

Step 3 - Building bespoke automations

Step 4 - Editing journeys/ automations


Step 1 - Set up a Journey

You can have one simple journey that every single lead goes through from lead > trial > customer. Or, you can create multiple journeys to really customise the experience for all your different types of clients -e.g Yoga, CrossFit, Jiu-jitsu, Teen, Women's Only etc (this will be covered in Step 2).

From your sidebar menu go to CRM > Automations and this will take you through to your Journey page.


In the top right corner select 'Add New'


This will now open up the pop up to add your new journey (image below).

We've named this 'Catch-all' and given a basic description (only you/ coaches will see this).

As this journey will be for everyone from Lead > Trial > Customer simply add all 3 stages into the 'Target Stages' box as in the image below and then click 'add journey'. (We will cover all those other configurations in step 2 when we look at building unique journey types).


Once created, you'll now see this Journey listed. Click 'View' on the right to open up the Journey page - this is a blank canvas page now where you can start adding all the automations you want to exist and which points you want these to send out to this person (see step 3 for how to add automations to a journey).

For some gyms, this one journey type will be all they need/ want to create. You can easily guide all leads through this one journey type and then have communications set up for when they purchase trials, turn in to customers, and lots of lovely customer success emails and in-app messages for the following months as they integrate into part of your gym.

If you do have different needs for different customer types that show interest in your gym, check out step 2 which is all about creating unique journey types.

Step 2 - Creating Unique Journey Types

Let's now look at building out different Journeys. You can click 'Duplicate Journey' on an existing journey you've made - this will duplicate the full journey and any associated automations you've made and allow you to simply change the catchment criteria and then go in and tweak the automations as needed.


​Or, click 'Add New' again from the top right.

Now, from the pop-up you can start creating unique journeys for all the different stages of your CRM funnel.

-You might have some Journey types that are specific to just new Leads.
-Some that are for Trial customers who are in their trial period.
-And, some that are for your paying Customers.

This time, we are going to create a journey for Leads that has specific criteria so only certain people come onto this journey type.

​So add in a Title and short Description as in the image below:


Under Target stages - add that this journey type is for Leads.

Then, we have left the TeamUp Memberships section blank - this is because if this is a brand new lead they likely don't already have a membership with the gym so we don't need to do anything with this information.

We've also left 'Campaigns' blank but will cover this at the end of this step as this is a great tool for creating Journeys relating to specific campaigns you have been running.

Form Answers will bring in all the multiple choice or check yes/no questions from your CRM landing page so you can also include these to capture specific people into a journey. Here we have just added the one question type of 'Which class are you interested in?' with 'Yoga' as the answer to bring just those prospective clients into this journey.

​However, you could get really specific here and add lots of different questions from your landing page form. You could ask clients for their age/ gender/ other info to help you make your journeys really targeted. For example if you are running a new yoga class for women who are going through perimenopause/ menopause you could add in the gender / women question and age ranges above a set number to capture your intended clients.

Once you are happy that you have set the correct criteria to capture the leads you want to in this bespoke Journey type you can click 'add journey' and this will now show in your list of Journeys.


​If you have more than one journey it's important that you order them in the list in order of priority. You can use the drag and drop to do this and a star will clearly show next to the journey in the top priority spot with a star symbol.

The order is important because if some leads/ customers fit into more than one criteria catchment, you can still decide which automations are most important for them to receive.

You can also toggle Journeys as active or disabled to turn them off/ on easily.

What other journey types might you want to create?

'Customer Retention' (image below) - here you could toggle this as a 'customer' journey for when leads have purchased a membership from the gym to start sending this set of automations to them. Here we have excluded a few membership types from this journey eg. our '40 day blast and FM 2 week course' as these membership types don't count as 'full memberships' to us.


Custom Campaign Journey (as image below) - This journey type is really useful for working with custom campaigns you are setting up as part of your CRM. You can see our full guide on setting up campaigns here.

For example, here we have already built a campaign called 'Summer Hot Leads'. So, if you are running a summer offer where you have created a bespoke campaign link - and then posted this out onto your social media pages and website, all leads that are coming through that specific campaign can be funnelled through to a separate journey. So you might want to send them specific automations and communications based on the fact they have come through from the summer offer.


You can keep going and create as many unique Journey types as you wish - looking at step 3 below and the automations you can use might help you decide how many journey types you think you will want/ need.

Step 3 - Build Out Automations

In the examples here, we will build out automations for the 'Catch-All Journey' we created first in step 1, click to view a Journey and in the top right, you'll see three options.


You can search any existing automations you've already created and add them in here, or disable the journey. If this is the first journey you've created, you won't already have a library of automations to use, so click 'Add Automation', and this will open up a page with all the automation options to build from.

You will see all available 'triggers' to choose from to start automating the communications and tasks that leads will flow through as part of this journey.



So, the first type of trigger you'll want to set up is 'Lead New'. Click on the trigger and from the pop up on the right, configure what you'd like to happen when a new lead is created in your CRM.


So, in the example below. We have set up this trigger now so that whenever a new lead registers through your BoxMate sign-up form, or comes to you in any other way they can online e.g through your hosted TeamUp capture form on your website or social media, the following things will happen.

We've set the delay time at 1 minute after the lead registers, or you could leave this blank to trigger immediately, and we've also set that an email will ping out at the 1 minute mark with the following information. In this example, we have a friendly general email from the gym letting them know a coach will be in touch soon with a link to register for the trial membership package we offer.

You can use the 'Name, Gym and Email' tags to further personalise the email.


​You have the option to add a TeamUp membership type directly into the email from the 'TeamUp Membership' tab, or, you can add in a custom URL to send the lead to a link / page of your choosing.

Now click 'Save and Set Live' and this automation will be saved to the journey and start sending as soon as 'A New Lead' comes into your system and hits the specified delay criteria, in this case, 1 minute after they register.

Now you will see this automation 'Live' inside your catch-all journey.


Now, if this is all you want to happen as part of this journey, you could leave this as it is. But, you probably want to add some more steps here to support and guide this person through the first few months of being part of your team. So, it's time to add another automation.

Click 'Add Automation' and let's decide what other steps we want this new potential customer to follow.

Let's start with assigning a task to one of your coaches when a new lead comes in so that as well as that automated friendly email that's just been sent out, one of your team is now being delegated to and asked to reach out to this new lead too!

So, click the 'Lead New' trigger again, and this time, we're going to choose 'Task' as the action to perform.

You can leave the coach box as 'unspecified admin' so that it comes through as a 'general' task for any coach to pick up, or if the way you run things is to have the same coach responsible for reaching out to all new leads, then select them and assign this role to them.

Now, in this below example, 10 minutes after the lead has come through to us, the assigned coach 'Gabriella Redfern' is going to have a task created for them to reach out to this potential new member. Click 'Save & Set Live' and this second automation will now show in your Journey along with the first email trigger we created.



Next, we might want to start adding some automations in for when things "don't happen" and a lead doesn't sign up to your trial / membership in the time you'd ideally like them to once they've had that first email and contact from your coaching team.

So, this time let's go again and 'Add Automation' and select 'Lead Stuck' which will trigger something to happen when this lead doesn't convert to a trial within a specified amount of time.

If a lead does go ahead and book into the trial before the time set on this automation then the automated email will not send to them. However, if they haven't progressed as you'd like them to, this email will catch up with the lead and remind them of the link/ info you want them to have.

In the below example, we've set an automation to email the new lead at 8am, 4 days after they originally signed up with the link again to book their drop in session and also some more info about getting in touch with questions etc.

Of course - this is just an example, and you can configure the delay time, time of sending and email wording to say whatever you'd like to match with the way you like to on-board new customers to your gym. You could also add in a task automation to assign a coach to reach out again to the prospect after a set amount of time has passed without them purchasing a trial membership.


Again, click 'Save and Set Live' and now this 3rd automation will show underneath the 'Catch-all Journey'.

You can keep going like this to build out as many automations as you'd like to live in any particular journey as in the examples below:


One journey might have multiple action points that cover all basis from someone becoming a lead, to a trial, to a customer and then following that customer through the first months/ years of their time with you at the gym as below:



​You'll see that at the moment the three action choices you have are 'Email', 'Task' or 'In App Message'. The TeamUp SMS is greyed out for now but will be live in the next few weeks.

'SMS' - This is through our TeamUp integration and will give you the option to send out SMS / text messages directly to members as part of your automation process.


As an overview let's take a quick glance at what some of the other triggers do too:

Trial New


Trial New triggers when your lead converts to a trial membership. So this might be a friendly email saying thanks for booking in/ further instructions about what they need to know before their first session / anything else you'd like them to know at this point. It could also be a task for a coach to directly perform an action once this member has purchased a trial membership.

Trial Stuck


Obviously we hope that when a lead has purchased a trial membership with us, whether a free drop in/ starter session pack etc that they will love it and our coaching team will on-board them personally and they'll sign up to a full membership package - but it doesn't always work this way for a number of reasons.

Whatever the reason, these triggers allow you to set either an automated email, or task for a coach to reach out to that potential client if that trial hasn't turned into a proper membership within the timeframe you'd usually expect with - Trial Stuck.


Customer New


This triggers when the prospect purchases a full membership with you and converts to a customer. You might want to send an email with instructions for downloading BoxMate, a link to a Welcome News Post, the member handbook or anything else that would be handy and welcoming for a new customer to have as they join your team.

You might have several automations under this trigger as part of your onboarding process. E.g after their first week/ first month and first 3 months perhaps there is a coach task to do a 1-1 check-in / review with the member etc.


First class booked - this triggers something to happen / send once the lead/ customer books their first ever class

Before first class - this triggers at a set time you choose, e.g 1 hour, 2 hours before their first class so you could add some helpful information in here about where to park/ what to bring/ a picture of the front door etc

After first class - this is a great one for if you don't mark attended/ no-shows on TeamUp and will just go at a set time after the class ends.

First class attended - this one is good for if you DO mark attendances. This way the trigger will only send out to the customer if you actually marked them as attended. This works the same way with First class No Show so you could message and check in why they didn't make it to the class etc.

Then we have a few 'count' automations which are great for customer success as the person joins and becomes integrated with your gym. E.g - Classes Count - you can choose the count you want, e.g 10 classes and send out a nice celebratory in-app message or email to say well done. You can also use 'no show count' or 'late cancel count' either to let new members know about any charge policies you have in place, OR to make sure you catch them with a friendly message if it seems like they are regularly not making it to class. E.g you might set a task for one of your coaches to reach out to a member once they hit 5 no shows for example.

Once you have started making a library of automations, you can search through these to easily use them again to save yourself time adding new automations, or when building out bespoke journey types.


Once you've found the automation you've already built you will see it as a duplicate - then you can tweak or edit the automation slightly - e.g if you've already built it out as you want it but want it to send as both an email AND in-app message, you could duplicate it and then just chance it from in-app to email.


If these were automations for a different journey, for example our 'Customer Retention' journey, we will build out different types of automations. For example, in a customer specific journey type we would have 'Customer New' as our first automation trigger so that this customer gets communications from us as soon as they convert to a customer in the criteria of the specific journey you've created.


Here we might build out triggers such as a welcome email/ text/ in app message as soon as they convert to a customer, followed by a coach task to check in with this new customer 3 days later, followed by another email 4 weeks after they first converted, followed by another coach check in after their first 2 months. We might also add in a range of different triggers such as 'First Attendance' to say well done for coming to their first class/ ask how they found it etc.

Step 4 - Editing your Automations and Journeys


Once you've finished building out all the automations you'd like to be within the journey(s) you've created - they are finished and will work hard on your behalf. You can come back to the automations page at any time to view your journey and see which leads are at which stage/ automation.

On the list of all your journeys, by clicking the 3 dots next to the journey and 'edit journey' you can update the criteria of who you want to come into this journey. By clicking 'view' you'll be taken through to the full journey page where you can change/ delete any of the automations you've made or add more.

You can also fully remove the journey or duplicate it here too.


​By going back into a Journey and hovering over any automation type you will see a range of options for you to use.

You can click on the eye symbol to view any scheduled leads that are waiting in the queue to receive this automation.


​This will bring you up a list of any leads that are waiting to have this sent to them.


The actions on the side of the lead let you perform some quick actions from here. The first button will retry the automation, the middle will bring up a pop up preview of what they are waiting to receive. And the final button will let you delete this specific lead from this queue.


You can also click 'Manual Send/ Test'


This will open up the below pop up and you can either send yourself this automation as a test to see what it looks like. Or, you could choose a specific lead/ customer to send this out to.


You can also pause an automation, edit it or delete it from a journey by hovering over it.​


Thank you for testing this new feature inside DRIVE. Your feedback at this early stage is so valuable to us so we can make sure we get this working right for you before full launch.

For help getting your CRM configured, if this isn't already done, please see our help tutorial video - https://youtu.be/MFsWlqxOMjg

A video tutorial of using journeys and automations will be made once these features are finalised and out of the testing/ beta phase.



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