Starting a flow at a defined time (like a campaign.... but a flow.)
I want to build a Welcome flow for a defined group of people (people who have purchased in the last two days) Those people are in a Segment.
But it seems like a Flow is kicked off by a dynamic trigger .. “people who join a segment” … at some people in the future.
I know I can send a Campaign to a defined group at a specific time. But that’s just a single email. I’d like it to be part of a flow.
Can I kick off the beginning of a Flow to a defined group at a defined time?
(“Start this Friday at 9am to the Sale segment”….then continue the flow.)
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Hi @matt.steinruck
Thank you for your question!
In terms of your segment of people who have purchased in the last two days is this meant to backfill a group of recent customers or a segment that you’d continue to use?
When using a segment or list-trigger for a flow keep in mind that someone can only be triggered into a flow once (which you might want anyways for a welcome series, but I wanted to include that for reference).
Using the Segment-trigger will add users into an associated flow as someone meets the criteria for that segment which is why you are seeing new users enter the flow, but not past customers within your segment.
However, you can use the Back-Populate Flow feature to trigger existing people in the segment into the flow. When you are in the flow editor, in the upper-right corner click on the menu button “Manage Flow.” Then click on the option for “Back-Populate Flow Recipients”
From there, you’ll see two options:
In this case, you would use the second option “Schedule for each step relative to when I click the back-populate button” which will trigger everyone in the associated segment to enter the flow.
However, you may want to add a flow filter on the trigger to only allow users who have not been in this flow before to enter the flow to avoid having anyone who has already been triggered into the flow to receive it again or add a condition split to remove someone from the flow if they already received the first email in the flow.
Separately, depending on the ecommerce platform you use, you could set the flow to trigger based on placed order, include a two day wait step, and then trigger your welcome series in real-time to those users.
There are a couple of options but I hope this helps!
@In the Inbox
This is super helpful, thank you!
Yes, perfect.
In this specific instance, I’m creating a short 3-email welcome flow that would only apply to this 2-day segment. So I’d invite them in, show them the flow, then exit.
So that works great.
I do eventually also want to create an on-going educational flow, and I’d like to invite my entire existing list to it … as well as on-going entering customers. So your advice here is really good for that use case.
This helps me to confidently build this 1-time flow and get people in starting tomorrow. Thank you!
Hey @matt.steinruck,
I couldn’t agree more with @In the Inbox!
This is a perfect use case for the back-populate feature! If you need additional resources on this function such as how it’ll effect users going through the flow, I think the following Help Center articles would be helpful to review!
