When you see a notification about 'subscribers waiting here' within a visual automation, it typically means that those subscribers have completed the previous step, but there is something preventing them from moving on to the next step.

There are a few different reasons that this could be happening.

☝️NOTE: You can view the list of waiting subscribers by clicking directly on the 'x subscribers waiting here' box.

Without further ado, here's what to look out for:

When you create a new automation, it'll be paused by default until you're ready to set it live. If you forget to set it live, and subscribers start entering that automation via its entry point(s), they'll be stuck waiting at the top until it is unpaused.

You can check if your automation is paused via the toggle near the top right of your screen. If it is paused, simply click on it to activate it!

That's it! Once your automation is live, those waiting subscribers should start moving along shortly.

NOTE: Because our automation pages are cached to improve performance, it may take several minutes before the 'subscribers waiting here' box disappears and the stats refresh.

Subscribers will only move to event steps once they meet the requirements for it. Otherwise, the event will act as a roadblock of sorts. 🚧

☝️ TIP: Events can be identified by their red-colored icon.

For example, if you set up an event for a future date and time, subscribers will be stuck 'waiting' before it until that date/time arrives:

Similarly, if an event is waiting for a particular tag to be added and the subscriber doesn't have that tag yet, that will also cause them to wait:

Simply put, subscribers will always wait before an event node unless (or until) that event occurs.

To learn more about how events work, check out our article here. We also have a video demonstration on how they can be used strategically in sales sequences!

If nothing above seems to explain why your subscribers are waiting, it's possible that they actually are moving along just fine, and the automation page is simply cached.

☝️ TIP: If you suspect the page might be cached, try clicking on the 'x subscribers waiting here' box and then click into the profile of one or more of the subscribers in the list. From there, you might be able to deduce whether they actually have moved along in the automation already (for example, if you can see that they have already been added to tags or sequences that should come later on in that automation).

If caching is the issue, everything should automatically update within the next several minutes (in rarer cases up to an hour), with no additional action on your part.

If none of the above seem to explain why your subscribers are waiting, or if it's been longer than an hour and the cached stats still haven't updated, please reach out to us and let us know the name of the automation so we can take a closer look.