A MailInApp journey turns a welcome drip into a real conversation: the second email is a Poll block a new subscriber taps from their inbox, and a branch step right after it reads what they picked to route them into one of two tailored follow-ups — automatically, with no manual list-splitting.
Most welcome automations are a fixed sequence of static emails sent on a timer. A journey is a graph instead of a sequence: a trigger enrolls a contact, send and wait steps carry them through a few emails, and a branch step can change what happens next based on something the contact actually did — not a guess baked in at build time.
How the poll actually drives the branch
The mechanism is two ordinary steps, not magic. After the poll email goes out and a subscriber taps an option, an update-field step writes that answer onto the contact's own record. The branch step right after it reads that field — "did they pick Promotions?" — and routes the run down one of two paths accordingly. Nothing about this needs a field to exist ahead of time; the update-field step creates it the first time the journey runs.
The graph, step by step
- Trigger: list joined. Point the journey at a contacts list — a new subscriber added by CSV import, a signup form, or an API push enrolls automatically.
- Send: the welcome email. A short, plain intro — no interactivity needed for the very first touch.
- Wait: one day. Gives the intro time to land before the next email goes out.
- Send: the poll. A one-question Poll block — "what do you want to hear about?" — with two or three options.
- Wait: a couple of days, giving a subscriber time to actually tap an option.
- Update field, then branch. The poll answer lands on the contact record, and the branch step reads it to pick a path.
- Send: the matching follow-up. Each branch ends in its own send — a promotions-focused email with a discount, or a tips-and-guides digest, for example.
Why a real poll beats a guess
A static welcome sequence that tries to personalize usually does it by segment at signup time — plan tier, signup source, maybe a UTM parameter. A poll asks directly, and because the vote is a real MailInApp interaction (the same one the fallback engine renders as plain working links in any client that can't show the poll's styling), the branch step reads an actual answer instead of an inferred one.
Starting from the built-in example
Building this from a blank canvas is entirely optional — Welcome series is one of five one-click starter journeys, available from the Journeys list page. Installing it creates all four real email projects (the intro, the poll, and both follow-ups) and the whole graph above, pre-wired to a contacts list you pick. It installs paused, so you can restyle every email to your own brand and review the graph before turning it on — nothing about a starter is a locked-down template.
Safety rails that apply to every journey
A welcome journey shares the same protections every journey gets: quiet hours push a due send to the next allowed local hour rather than firing at 3am for a contact in a different timezone; a per-contact daily send cap defers rather than drops an email if a run somehow tries to send more than a few in one day; and a journey whose sends fail three ticks in a row auto-disables rather than silently burning through your list.
Getting started
Install the Welcome series starter from Journeys, or build one from scratch: pick a contacts list as your trigger, add a plain intro send, a Poll block send, and a branch step reading the field an update-field step just wrote. See Journeys for the full step reference and starter journeys for what installs out of the box.