How to Set Up Your Contact Journey

The Contact Journey is a built-in Client Relationship Management (CRM) tool designed to help you visualize and manage the progression of a contact into an active client within your business.

Understanding the Dashboard

When you open the Contact Journey under the Contacts tab, you will see an overview of your sales pipeline:

• Total Sales & Conversion Amount: The potential and actual revenue currently in your pipeline.
• Stage Cards: Each stage (e.g., New Inquiries, Active Trial) is displayed as a card showing the clients currently in that phase.
• Client Data: Next to each name, you can see their lifetime value, 30-day value, and how long they have been in that specific stage.

The 6 Default Stages

OfferingTree provides six pre-built stages to get you started. Each one is powered by a rule about what a contact has actually booked and bought:

1. New Inquiries: Added within the last 30 days, with no class registrations and no appointments yet — people who joined through a contact form or a manual add but haven't taken further action.
2. Booked / Drop-in: Has attended at least one class or appointment, but has no active intro offer, package, or membership.
3. Active Trial: Currently using an intro offer.
4. Decision Zone: No membership and no package with more than 2 credits left — and either their intro offer has expired or been used up, or a package is down to its last 1–2 credits.
5. Active Clients: Has an active membership, or a package with more than 2 credits (or unlimited credits) and no intro offer still running.
6. Lost: Spent your full journey period (90 days by default) in the same stage without becoming an Active Client.

Two details that explain most surprises:

• Three credits is the healthy line. A package with 1–2 credits left counts as a low balance and pulls a client into the Decision Zone. More than 2 credits, or unlimited credits, counts as healthy and puts them in Active Clients.
• An active intro offer takes priority. If a client is still working through an intro offer, they stay in Active Trial even if they have already bought a package. They move to Active Clients once the intro offer is finished.

How Contacts Move Between Stages

• It happens automatically. As soon as a contact books, buys, or uses up a credit, they are re-checked and moved to the stage that matches them — usually within a few minutes.
• One stage at a time. Every contact sits in exactly one stage. If they match the rules for more than one, they are placed in the right-most stage they qualify for — the furthest along your pipeline.
• Nobody disappears. If a contact stops matching any stage's rules — for example, a New Inquiry who passes 30 days without booking — they stay where they are until your journey period runs out.
• The journey period is measured per stage. The 90-day clock (or whatever you set) counts from the day a contact entered their current stage, not from the day they were added to your contacts. When it runs out, they move to your Lost stage.
• Your "won" stage is protected. Contacts in a stage marked as a Conversion Goal — Active Clients by default — are never timed out into Lost, no matter how long they have been there.
• Lost is a one-way door. The only way out of Lost is to become an Active Client, or to match any other stage you have marked as a Conversion Goal. Contacts will not drift back into the middle of your pipeline, and the same rule applies to manual moves — you cannot drag someone from Lost into a mid-pipeline stage.
• Two different refresh speeds. Contact placement updates continuously as people book and buy. The totals and revenue figures on each stage card recalculate once a day, overnight.

Step-by-Step Guides

1. How to Customize Your Journey

You can tailor the journey to your specific business model:

• Add/Edit Stages: Click the top right corner to add a new stage or click the Settings icon on any card to change its name and icon. A brand-new stage has no segment attached yet, which means it matches every contact — so connect a segment (step 2) before you rely on it.
• Reorder Stages: In the settings menu, you can drag and drop stages to change the sequence of your pipeline. Because contacts land in the right-most stage they match, reordering can also change where some of them sit.
• Set a "Lost Lane": Designate a specific stage (usually the last one) to represent lost leads.
• Mark a Conversion Goal: Flag the stage that represents a won client — Active Clients by default. Conversion Goal stages are never timed out into Lost, and they are the only stages a contact can move to out of Lost. You can mark more than one if you have several "won" outcomes, such as a membership and a class pack.
• Set a Journey Period. We defaulted to 90 days, but this can be changed to reflect your intro offer and new client nurture length. Remember that it counts from when a contact entered their current stage.

2. Connecting Customer Segments

Stages are powered by Customer Segments. When a client meets the "rules" of a segment, they can be moved automatically.

• Go to your Customer Segments page to see segments marked with a "Contact Journey" tag.
• In the Stage Settings, choose which segment(s) should be tracked for that stage.
• You can add multiple segments to a single stage. A contact who matches any one of them qualifies for that stage.

3. Setting Win Probabilities

To forecast your revenue more accurately:

• Open a Stage's settings and enter a Win Probability Rate. This setting can vary stage by stage.
• Example: If you know that 5% of "New Inquiries" typically become paying clients, set the rate to 5%. This helps calculate your potential "Conversion Amount" at the top of the dashboard.
• How the forecast is built: each contact's lifetime spend is multiplied by the win probability of the stage they are in, and those amounts are added together. Lost sits at 0%, so it never inflates your forecast.

Tips:

• Trust the Automation (But Keep Control): While segments move clients automatically based on behavior (like buying an intro offer), you can always move a client manually if needed. The one exception is Lost — contacts there can only be moved into a Conversion Goal stage.
• Define Your Timeframe: Set a journey period (e.g., 90 days) that matches your typical sales cycle. Consider your intro offer length when deciding this.
• Nurture with Automations: Use the Contact Journey stage triggers for email automations — one fires when a contact enters a stage, another when they leave it. For example, when someone enters the "Decision Zone," trigger an email with a special discount to encourage them to buy a full membership.

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