Hi @mrosique,

Thanks for your question. Here are two articles about back-populating flows:

How to add past profiles to a flow

Understandig how adding past profiles works in Klaviyo

Unfortunately, since your flow is based on date, you may not be able to back populate the flow (according to the second article.)

I don’t know if this is the best solution, but here’s an idea:

1 - Clone the anniversary flow and have the trigger be a list.

2 - Create a segment of customers who have an anniversary date that falls before you created the anniversary flow.

3 - Add those customers to the list that triggers the cloned flow, and they would then receive the email(s).

Once everyone is through that flow, you could then delete the list, if desired.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jess! 

Thank you so much for your support.

Yes, you are right, the back-populating is not possible when the flow is based on date. I didn’t know it.

Your idea seems good, however I think when the segment is uploaded to the clonned flow, all emails will be sent at the same time. I mean, if the first order of one client was 2nd June 2023, and today is 1st May 2024, and I upload the segment today, all emails will be sent today, rather than next 2nd June 2024.

What do you think? Do you think the whole emails will be sent at the same time? I can test it placing a delay between the trigger and the email for checking, but before doing it I need your idea.

Thanks!

Hi @mrosique,

Yes, you are correct, all the emails would be sent at once, unless you put a time delay between the trigger and the email send(s).
How many profiles have their first order date before you created the anniversary flow? If there are a lot, I might need to think more about how to set up a flow to send them at the right time. :-)

A lot 

@mrosique,

Haha, I thought so!  I’ll do some more thinking about it.

In the meantime - @bluesnapper, @Bobi N. @retention - do any of you have a good solution for Miguel? I might be out of my league on this one.

@mrosique,

Ok, I have an idea that might solve part of the problem. Is the first purchase date a profile property from which you can create a segment? If so, try this:

 - Create a segment where first purchase date is between 365 and 366 days ago. (Since this year was a leap year, you might want to make it 366 and 367, or just play with the numbers until you get what you want)

 - Clone the anniversary flow and make the segment the trigger.

 - Add a profile filter that excludes customers who are already in the original anniversary flow, so it won’t send them another email when they qualify for the this flow.

I think this will work for customers who purchased from a year ago today (or whatever day you start it) through the time you created the anniversary flow.

For customers who purchased MORE than 366 days ago - my only idea is to create a segment with the farthest back purchase date (ie, purchased between 400 and 401 days ago, or whenever it happens to be), and follow the steps above, making sure to exclude profiles who qualify for the original anniversary flow and second one. You could change the message slightly, since it’s not really an anniversary for them - “thanks for being our customer for over a year!” or something like that.

I’m not used to working with date-based flows, so it’s kind of clunky! Let me know what you think.

Thanks for the shout-out @JessFosnough and for thinking this through!

Unfortunately, your approach won’t work.

A segment-triggered flow is triggered only when someone is added to the segment organically. If you add a necessary time delay to add past segment profiles to the flow, it will add those segment profiles as far back as the time delay. However, the scheduled send is based on when they were added to the segment/flow and the flow time delay, not their first purchase date defined in the segment.

So, for example, if I create the segment on 2nd May 2024, the flow time delay is 1 day, and I add past profiles to the start of the flow, then all profiles in the new segment are added to the flow, but their scheduled send will be 3rd May 2024  i.e 1 day after they were added to the segment/flow, and not 1-year after their first purchase date.

Also, it’s not possible to clone a date-triggered flow and change the trigger to a list/segment trigger, only change to a date trigger.

I’ll give more thought to @mrosique use case asap - I need to dash out - unless you or others have any other ideas. 

Regards

Andy

@bluesnapper - Thanks for your reply! I think I understand what you are saying about adding past profiles with a time delay.

But, if instead of back-populating - if a new flow is created that is based on a segment, would that work? What I was trying to accomplish was to create a segment that would pull in customers who purchased 365 days before today - whenever “today” is, so they would come in organically - and send them the email(s), with out a time delay. Does that make sense?

I didn’t realize that date-triggered flows couldn’t be cloned and triggered with a segment, but it does make sense now, haha! 

Thanks for your input!

No problem @JessFosnough 

When a profile meets the segment's conditions ‘organically,’ I mean a non-manual change has occurred to the profile’s data so that it meets the segment's conditions. The profile is then added to the segment and any flows that are being triggered by that segment.

When you manually update a segment, such as initially creating it, it is not ‘organic’ so the added profiles won’t trigger the flow (unless you add past profiles to it).

Have I explained that OK?

Regards

Andy

Just chiming in here, thanks for the shoutout @JessFosnough.

I did ponder about a way to add those past profiles who’s purchase anniversary is coming, but before the date triggered Flow was created… but I think I came to some of the same conclusion you guys have discussed in this thread. 

Instead, I’d offer this workaround similar to what we do with Birthday anniversaries in the similar situation.

We create monthly groups of those folks that *should* have received an “anniversary” and send it at the 1st of each month.  It’s not as snazzy as sending it on the actual 1-year mark, but I think it’s a good compromise.  

Klaviyo has a “day is in the month of” condition that’s handy for this scenario.

Here’s an example of the “Birthday Months” (for May in this case) - but you can adjust it for your Purchase Anniversary date field for each of the Months:
 

You can create those Segments ahead of time, and schedule them ahead of time (check the box for Determine recipients at send time) until you’re at the month when you’re all caught up to the Flow.  

Not the perfect solution, but perhaps an acceptable one?

Good approach @retention thanks for sharing!

Regards

Andy

@bluesnapper - thanks for the explanation, it definitely makes sense! I think we are just getting our wires crossed, haha!

If the segment I was envisioning worked correctly, it would pull in everyone who made a purchase 366 days before “today”. (366 b/c of leap day) Of course, the customers who were added the day it is created would not go in the flow. But tomorrow, when the original customers no longer qualify, and customers are pulled in who made a purchase 366 days before “today” (which is now tomorrow), then they would go through the flow. I have screen shots of my idea and what it returns, using the Birthday field, since I don’t have a First Purchase date in my account.

Here are the results:

Here is my profile with a (fake) birthday of 2023-05-02

What I don’t understand is why the other record (United - MW Newsletter) is in the segment, when the Birthday for that profile is 2023-05-03. It is another test account that I use.

So, perhaps this approach doesn’t work, either. Sigh….Well, I tried! 

Thank you for your help, @bluesnapper and @retention!

@mrosique - Good luck, and I hope Joseph’s idea can help you!

Thanks to all! Amazing community.

You are right @retention, your suggestion isn’t as snazzy as sending it on the actual date, but we are talking about First Order rather than Birthday, so may seem strange to receive and email saying “Happy Birthday” on June 1st when you were born on June 23rd  However, if someone receive an email saying “Congrats! Happy 1st Order Anniversary!” on June 1st, nobody remember when was the actual date when they bought in my store. 

We provide an exceptional customer experience, but I don’t think my clients will remember the first time they purchased in my store just like they remember their birthdate 

Ok, so I am going to implement the suggestion of @retention , therefore, Must I create a segment for each month? How to define th flow?

Or Must I create a flow for each month?

Thanks!! Thanks @JessFosnough for your interest!

Your solution works perfectly ​@JessFosnough!  I don’t know why other people are saying it won’t.

For reference, here’s the segment I created (below) and each day new users are being automatically inserted into my flow triggered by this segment on their 1 year anniversary).  Great idea - Don’t be so quick to accept all these men telling you that you’re wrong!

​@garethowen,

Awesome! So glad my idea was helpful to you - thank you for letting me know! :-)