Flows

A flow is a series of emails that goes out on its own. Someone joins a list, or a date on their record arrives, and Wakio sends them the first email, waits, then sends the next, with no one pressing Send. Under Flows you build the series, turn it on, and watch where each person is in it.

What a flow is

1. The day is the total of the waits so far. It is a guide to the plan, not a promise of when mail arrives.
2. How many people this email has been sent to.

Everyone in a flow is on their own clock. Two people who join a day apart get the same emails a day apart. Each flow has one status: Draft, Active, Paused or Archived. A new flow starts as a draft, and a draft sends nothing.

Everyone on your team can open Flows and see how a flow is doing. Building, turning on, pausing and archiving are for owners and admins.

Start a flow

Choose New flow, give it a name that only you will see, and pick the sending domain it sends from. The domain must be verified, and it cannot be changed later: to send a flow from a different domain, create a new flow. Wakio then opens the editor, where you choose what starts the flow.

Under Flow settings, each setting is folded into one line that says how it is set now. Choose that line to open the setting and change it.

1. The list that starts the flow.
2. Tick this to let someone go through the flow again after they finish or leave.

A flow starts in one of two ways:

• Someone joins a list. You choose the list. A flow watches one list.
• A date field on the contact arrives. You choose one of your date fields, a number of days, and Before or After. A flow set to 3 days before a renewal date starts for each contact three days before the date on their record. The number of days can be between 0 and 730. The day is read on the calendar of your account's time zone.

By default a person goes through a flow once. Tick Let someone go through this more than once to let them start it again after they finish or leave. Even then, nobody can be in the same flow twice at the same moment.

What starts someone in a flow

For a flow that starts when someone joins a list, two things start someone:

• A signup is confirmed. When a person confirms through a subscribe form, they join the list and enter the flow.
• You choose Add and enroll. Adding contacts to the list from Contacts shows a confirmation page when a live flow starts on that list. Add and enroll puts them in the flow, and Add without enrolling only adds them to the list.

A flow with a date trigger starts each person when their date arrives.

These never start anyone: turning the flow on, an import, the API, and the Add to button on a contact's page. Turning a flow on does not reach back to the people already on its list, and the note above the steps says how many they are, so nobody gets a welcome series by surprise.

Only active contacts who are not suppressed are enrolled.

When many people start at once, through Add and enroll or a date, your account's warm-up caps how many can enter the flow in one go. A new account's first stage is 500 people, and the cap rises as your sending grows and disappears once your account is fully open. Everyone still joins the list. The confirmation page says how many can enter the flow now.

Steps

A flow is a list of steps, run in order. There are two kinds:

• An email step has a subject and a body, written in the same composer as a campaign, with merge tags.
• A status-change step changes the contact's status to Unsubscribed or Never subscribed, and nothing else. It records that the person withdrew their consent.

Steps can be moved up and down, and removed. Removing a step keeps its send history on record.

Each step has a wait: an amount in minutes, hours or days. It counts from when the step before it actually ran, or from the moment the person joined, for the first step. The Day in the Steps table adds those waits up. Because sending hours can push a step later, the real timing can drift past it.

An email after the first one cannot have a wait of zero, because it would go out at the same moment as the one before it. Wakio refuses to turn the flow on until you give it at least a minute.

Conditions

Open a step's Edit and Only send this if... lets it run only for some people. You can check:

• Contact status.
• List membership.
• Opened an earlier email.
• Clicked a link in an earlier email.
• Any of your own contact fields.

Then If that condition does not pass decides what happens to a person who fails it: Skip this email and carry on moves them to the next step, and Stop the flow for this person takes them out.

The two engagement checks only count an open or click when Wakio has clear signs of a person behind it, so they can be stricter than the Opened column on a flow's page. See Opens and clicks for what is counted. A flow can only see opens and clicks that tracking recorded.

The exit rule

Under Take people out of this flow when, choose Never, or They leave the list that started this flow and pick that list. It is checked before every step, and it is the only exit rule a flow has. Someone who leaves the list partway through gets no more of the series.

Sending hours

Flow emails only go out during sending hours. By default they are 08:00 to 20:00 in your account's time zone, which starts as UTC. An owner changes both under Settings, in Send flow email between. A step that comes due outside the hours waits until they open.

1. A flow follows your account's hours unless you choose its own.

A single flow can have hours of its own. They replace the account's hours rather than narrowing them, so a flow can send outside the account's hours. A few details:

• A span that runs past midnight works. 22:00 to 06:00 means overnight.
• Set both times or neither.
• Setting both to the same time sends at any hour.
• A step already scheduled keeps its time unless the new hours rule it out. Then it waits for the next opening.

Sending hours apply to flows only. Campaigns send as soon as you press Send.

Turn it on

Choose Activate this flow at the top of the editor, which is only there while the flow is a draft. Above it, a Before you turn this on: list shows what is still missing, and Wakio refuses to turn the flow on until it is empty. The list can say:

• There is no list or date field to start from.
• The sending domain is not ready to send.
• The account cannot send right now. Check its plan and billing.
• The flow has no email step.
• An email has no subject or no body.
• An email goes out at the same moment as the one before it.
• A status-change step asks for a status a flow cannot set.
• A condition is incomplete, or points at a list or an email that is gone.
• The exit rule's list has been deleted.

Resuming a paused flow runs the same checks again.

Where each person is

A flow's page has two parts. Steps shows, for each email, how many people it was sent to, how many opened it and how many were skipped. Under Who is in this flow, each person has a status of Active, Completed or Exited, their current step and their latest event. You can search by address and filter by status.

The Opened column counts people once per email, leaves out automated opens and test sends, and has no percentage. A flow has no Clicked column. A message's own page under Deliveries shows its clicks, and Opens and clicks explains why Opened can read higher than what a condition sees.

What ends a flow for one person

A person's flow ends in one of these ways:

A bounce does not end a flow. If an address bounces for good, is not valid, or the contact is marked unreachable or never subscribed, each remaining email is skipped with a reason such as Not sent: we cannot reach this address, and the person walks on through the flow until it completes. A spam complaint counts as unsubscribing: the person leaves the flow at their next email, as they do when they unsubscribe or you suppress their address by hand.

With re-entry off, someone you take out of a flow can never rejoin it.

Separately, no flow email goes out while your account's warm-up is held, your plan does not allow sending, or your monthly allowance is used up. People simply wait, and carry on when sending is allowed again.

Pause, resume and archive

1. Whether someone can go through the flow more than once.
2. Pause sending parks everyone where they are.
3. Archive this flow ends it for good.

• Pause sending stops the flow. Nobody moves to their next step, and the people already in it wait where they are.
• Resume sending starts it again. Everyone becomes due at the next opening of the sending hours, and anyone whose wait ran out during the pause gets their next email then.
• Archive this flow is final. Everyone still in it leaves, and an archived flow can never be turned back on. It works on a flow in any status, including a draft.

You can edit steps while a flow is live. An edit only reaches the people who have not yet passed that step.

Test a step

Open an email step's Edit and use Test this email to send it to yourself before anyone else sees it. The address starts as yours. Test sends are not tracked and never appear in a flow's figures. Only owners and admins can send tests.

Good to know

• Owners and admins build and run flows. Members can see them.
• Settings sending hours are an owner's.
• A flow stops sending while your account's payment is overdue or your monthly allowance is used up. See Team, API keys and billing.
• A flow keeps its sending domain. If that domain is removed or paused, each email that comes due fails and is not sent again, while the flow still reads Active. Pause the flow first, then create a new one on a domain that is ready.

Related

• A welcome series, for sending a flow to everyone who confirms a form.
• Subscribe forms, for the signups that start a flow.
• Contacts and lists, for the lists a flow watches and the contact fields it reads.
• Opens and clicks, for what the Opened column counts.
• Settings, where an owner sets the account's sending hours.