Delays and Smart Wait

Two steps control timing, and they answer different questions.

Delay

Waits a fixed period, then continues. "Wait two days, then send the second email."

Use it for pacing a sequence.

Smart Wait

Waits for something to happen, up to a limit. "Wait up to three days for them to place an order; if they do, continue down one path, otherwise the other."

Use it when the next step depends on what the contact does, not just on elapsed time. An abandoned checkout flow is the classic case: you want to stop nudging someone who has already bought.

Choosing the length

The most common mistake is delays that are too short. An abandoned-checkout email an hour later reads as attentive; three of them in a day reads as harassment, and complaints are what stop campaigns — the tolerance is roughly one complaint in twelve hundred. See Why is my campaign paused?.

If unsure, longer is safer.

Delays hold real people

A contact sitting in a delay is genuinely paused mid-flow. Two consequences worth knowing:

• Editing an automation does not retroactively change people already in it. Someone part-way through continues on the path they entered. If you fix a typo in email 3, people already past it will not see the fix.
• Pausing an automation stops those contacts progressing. They do not silently jump ahead when you resume — they carry on from where they were.

So if you change a live flow, expect a period where people are experiencing both the old and new versions. For a significant rewrite it is often cleaner to build a new automation and retire the old one.

Delays are why a flow feels quiet at first

A flow with a two-day first delay produces no email at all for two days after you activate it. That is not a fault. Before concluding an automation is broken, check whether anyone has actually reached a Send Email step yet.

Next: open your automation and check the length of the first Delay — it is usually the setting worth getting right first.