Hi @jdannydavis and welcome to the Community!

This is a great question! Based on what I understand about your use case, I would actually suggest that you use campaigns instead of flows for this scenario. Flows are dynamic and are triggered at different times for each user that subscribes to the list. Although you can add time delays to set the distance between each message, you can’t set a specific date and time, so users would be receiving the newsletters at different, scattered intervals. To learn more about flows and what they’re typically used for, check out this Help Center Article on the topic.

If you are already planning on manually drafting and sending the newsletters, campaigns make much more sense. Campaigns are one-time messages sent to a pre-determined list or segment, and they can also be scheduled in advance for a specific date and time. In fact, our Help Center Article on campaigns even lists “regular newsletters” as the first example for the use of campaigns! (I’d highly recommend reading through that link, it explains exactly how to create campaigns and what they’re used for)

In order to accomplish your exact use case, you could start by designing a Newsletter template. Templates are email designs that you can create in advance and use later in campaigns and flows. This would be helpful for you, because you could create a design for a newsletter in advance and then just substitute the content for each campaign, so that all your newsletters have a parallel design. First, expand the Content menu on the left side and click on Templates:

From there, select Create Template towards the upper right. You can either select a pre-made template from our library to start with, or create one from scratch. Once you’ve designed your newsletter email as you like, we can move on to Campaigns on the left-side menu. 

First, click the Create Campaign button at the top right. It will prompt you to select Email or SMS, and then you’ll see the Recipients page. Then just name the Campaign (I’d recommend including the date/edition of the newsletter in the Campaign name to avoid confusion later on), and select the desired list from the dropdown:

Since it’s a regular newsletter, I would toggle the “Skip recently emailed profiles” option to “off”. While this is helpful to avoid badgering customers with excessive marketing, I assume you want everyone to receive the newsletters regardless. (but I could be wrong!)

Once you’ve selected the list, click “Continue to Content”, where you can write the subject, preview text, and alter the sender information if needed. Looping back to the template you created, click on the “Drag and Drop” option from the design menu. This will bring you to a library where you can select from our pre-made library template or tab over to your created templates:

When you select a template, you will be directed to the editor where you can adjust the content and populate your newsletter. When you’re done, click “Save & Exit”, and then advance to the “Review” stage. If everything looks good there, you can advance to the “Send or Schedule” page where you can select the desired date and time, or send it right away. 

This way, you can write newsletters in advance and ensure that all of your list subscribers will receive them at the same time, without having to think about the cascading effects of a flow. 

I hope this helps, and thanks for using the Community!

- Brian

Wow thank you for such a comprehensive answer! I’m glad to have such good info on flows vs campaigns.

However, I need it to start with volume 1 when someone joins my master list. So does that mean flow is the better path?

Also, I’d still love to know: if I add content to an active flow, will someone that already triggered that flow (& is receiving the emails) receive the new content when it progresses to that point?

Thanks for this help!

Hi @jdannydavis,

If the newsletter isn’t dated and you’d like to your subscribers to receive the volumes asynchronously, then you could definitely use a flow with a time delay in between messages.

Now, for the brunt of your question - you can certainly add emails to the end of a live flow that already contains customers. The customers will just receive that email when the time comes, and new subscribers will start from the beginning. However, if you include a time delay that’s less than the amount of time that’s passed since the subsequent email, you will have to back-populate in order for those users to receive that email.

Here’s another Community post regarding the different types of back-population and when they’re applicable:

I hope this helps!

-Brian