Set message expiration in real-time journeys (preview)

[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

Customers can enter a real-time journey at any time. If your journey includes time-sensitive content such as event reminders, limited-time offers, or expiring coupons, you can prevent outdated messages from being sent by setting an expiration on a message tile. When a message expires, customers who reach that message after the expiration time don’t receive it and continue through the rest of the journey without interruption.

Important

This is a preview feature.
Preview features aren’t meant for production use and might have restricted functionality. These features are available before an official release so that customers can get early access and provide feedback.

What is a message expiration?

Message expirations let you define conditions that determine when a message should no longer be sent in a real-time journey. Once a message reaches its expiration condition:

The message is skipped for customers who reach it after the expiration time.
Customers continue to the next step in the journey.
The skipped message is tracked in analytics as Message expired.

Message expirations help you keep communications accurate and relevant without needing to frequently update or republish your journeys.

Supported channels

Message expirations are supported for the following message types in real-time journeys:

Email
SMS
Push notifications
Custom channels

How message expirations work

When you enable message expiration on a message tile:

You choose how the expiration time is determined.
Expiration always uses the journey’s time zone.
You must set expiration conditions to a time in the future.
If an audience member reaches the message after the expiration time, the message isn’t sent and the audience member continues to the next step in the journey.

Ways to define when a message expires

You can define message expiration in two ways: by a fixed date and time, or relative to a time provided by a trigger.

Option 1: Expire at a selected date and time

Use this option when you know the expiration in advance.

You select a specific date and time when the message expires.
The message expires at that exact moment in the journey’s time zone.

This option is useful for scenarios such as campaign end dates or fixed deadlines.

Option 2: Expire relative to a trigger-specified time

Use this option when the expiration depends on a time value coming from the trigger (for example, a birthday). When you choose this option, you select how the message expiration relates to the trigger time:

Before the specified time and you chose an offset.
At the specified time.
After the specified time and you chose an offset.

This option is useful for scenarios such as reminders before an event, messages valid only during an event window, or follow-up messages that should stop sending after a certain period.

Set a message expiration

Open your real-time journey.
Select a message tile (email, SMS, push, or custom).
In the message properties pane, go to the Message expiry section and choose how the expiration time is defined:
1. Expire on a specific data and time.
2. Expire at a time specified by a trigger, with the desired timing option (before, at, or after).