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Using SMS within Journeys

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What is SMS in journeys?

SMS is available as an action step inside journeys, alongside automated emails. The journey builder works the way it already does — you choose a trigger, decide who's enrolled, and build out your sequence with actions and wait steps. Text message appears as an option whenever you add a step.

 

If you have both email and SMS enabled, SMS is simply a new action you can add to any journey alongside your automated emails. If SMS is the only channel enabled on your account, you'll see the Journeys tab for the first time — journeys work the same way, just built entirely around text messages.

 

Adding a text message step to a journey

Text messages are drafted directly within the journey step itself, rather than being created ahead of time and referenced later. If you want to include SMS in a journey, you create the message from inside that journey.

To add a text message step:

  1. Add a step to your journey and choose Text message.
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  1. Select the phone number to send from and give the message a name.

  2. Write your message copy, and add any links you want recipients to click.


     

  3. Preview the text before continuing.

Note: The drafting experience will be similar to creating a regular text message elsewhere in the platform — you're just doing it inside the journey builder.

 

Branching a journey based on SMS activity

You can create a conditional split off of an SMS step, the same way you would with an email step. Available split types for SMS include:

  • Click the "+" to add a new event 

  • Under the "Logic" heading, choose "Conditional Split"

  • When adding a tex event you can choose the following Conditional Split Options
    • Click Event
    • List Membership
    • Percentage Split

Note: Open events aren't available for SMS steps, since opens can't be confirmed for text messages the way they can for email.
 

Important: link changes can break a conditional split

A click-event split is tied to the exact link that was in the message at the time you built the split — not to the message step in general.

If you go back and change that link after the split is already built, anyone who reaches that step afterward is evaluated against the new link, not the one the split was originally built around. In practice, this means someone could click the new link and still be routed down the "did not click" branch, because the system checks clicks against the original URL the split was configured with.

Tip: If you need to update the link in a message that has a conditional split built on it, the safest option is to recreate the journey with the new link already in place, rather than editing the link in an active journey.


How replies are handled within a journey

If you respond to a text message within a journey, that response doesn't change your path. You continue through the journey exactly as it was built, regardless of how you reply.

 

Viewing SMS analytics within a journey

Click into any SMS step in an active or completed journey to see:

  • Text settings — general details about the message (sender number, message name, content)
  • Delivery stats — details like sends and failures, consistent with what you'd see for a regular text message
  • Responses — a summary of replies to that message

From there, you can also jump into the inbox to see the full detail behind any response.
 

Journeys based on your permissions / what is shared with you

Your permissions determine what you can see and do within a journey. Access is based on your individual user permissions for sending and list management — not on the journey itself.

Selecting lists
You can only select lists within the trigger step that you have access to send to. This is based on the totality of your email and text sending permissions.

Adding send steps
You can only add send steps for channels you have access to send to:

  • Email send steps require email sending permission
  • Text send steps require text sending permission

Adding list steps
You can only add an add/remove from list step if you have the ability to manage lists.

Publishing a journey
You can only publish a journey if you have publishing permission.

Note: Workshop does not re-check individual step permissions at the time of publishing. If you have publishing permission, you can publish any journey — regardless of whether you have permission for every step within it.

How restrictions appear
If you don't have permission to perform an action, the related step type will simply be disabled for you. Permissions are evaluated per user, so what you see may differ from what a collaborator sees on the same journey.

Shared journeys with text steps
If a journey is shared with you and it includes text steps, but you don't have text sending permission:

  • You can still edit those text steps, both before and after the journey is published
  • You cannot add new text steps while building or editing the journey
  • You cannot open the individual text message to view its details — you'll only see what's shown within the journey itself

This differs from email: since you can access the email index even without email sending permission, you're able to click into an email step to view its full details. Without text sending permission, you don't have access to the Text tab at all, which is why individual text message details aren't available to you.

 

Best practices for building SMS journeys

  • Finalize your link before building a click-event split. Since the split is tied to the exact URL in the message, decide on your final destination link before setting up the branch logic.
  • If a link must change, recreate the journey rather than editing it live. This avoids silently misrouting recipients who click the new link but get treated as "did not click."
  • Don't rely on open events for SMS. Use a click-event split, list membership, or a 50/50 split instead — open events won't return usable results for a text step.
  • Set expectations around replies. Since replies don't affect journey progression, avoid designing a journey that assumes a response will change the recipient's path.
  • Use the inbox for the full picture. The journey view summarizes delivery and response data, but the inbox is the place to see complete detail on any individual response.

Frequently asked questions

Can I branch a journey based on how someone replies to a text? 
No. Recipients continue down the same path regardless of how they respond to an SMS step.

What happens if I edit the link in a message after building a click-event split on it? 
The split keeps checking clicks against the original link it was built with. Anyone who clicks a newer version of the link may still be routed down the "did not click" branch. There's no in-app warning when this happens, so it's best to recreate the journey instead of editing the link.

Why am I seeing the Journeys tab for the first time? 
If email wasn't previously part of your plan, journeys weren't available to you before. Now that SMS supports journeys, you have access to build automated, multi-step text sequences.

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