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A welcome series

This guide sets up a series of welcome emails that goes out on its own to everyone who signs up through a form on your site and confirms their address.

What you'll end up with

A public signup page, a list that fills as people confirm, and a flow that sends each new subscriber your welcome emails a few days apart.

You need these before you start:

  • An owner or admin login. Only owners and admins can publish consent wording, create forms and build flows.
  • A list for the signups to join. The New form card only appears once you have one. Create it under Lists first. Contacts and lists explains lists.
  • A verified sending domain and a plan. The public page stays unavailable without them, and a flow needs a verified domain to send from. Sending domains walks you through the domain.

Open Consent wording. This is the sentence people see above the subscribe button, and Wakio saves it with every signup as evidence of what they agreed to. Until you publish your first version, the box holds a suggested draft. Read it, change what you like, and choose Publish.

The Consent wording page for Northwind Coffee: a line reading Version 1 is in force, above a Wording box holding the current sentence and a Publish button
  1. The wording people agree to. Publishing it creates a new version.

What you should see: "Consent wording published." and a line saying which version is in force.

2. Create the form

Under Forms, fill in the New form card. Give it a Name for your own reference, an Address and the List that signups join, then choose Create form. The headline and intro are optional.

The New form card: fields for Name, Address and List on the first row, then Headline, Intro and a Create form button
  1. The address, which becomes the last part of your signup page's URL.
  2. The list that signups join once they confirm. Your flow will watch this same list.

What you should see: "Form created." and your new form under Forms, marked Not public. A form cannot be edited after you create it, so check the list before you move on.

3. Publish the form

Choose Publish next to the form. It goes live at the address shown under Public page. Next to it, Paste this into your site holds a snippet that shows the same form on a page of your own.

The Forms card for Northwind Coffee: a published form, Website newsletter, with its Unpublish button, its public page address and a Paste this into your site box holding the snippet, and below it an unpublished form, Wholesale inquiries, marked Not public with Publish and Delete buttons
  1. The public page. This is the address you share.
  2. The snippet for your own site. It only appears once your account can send.
  3. Publish makes a draft form public.

What you should see: "Form published." and the public page address. Subscribe forms covers the rest of the form page.

4. Create the flow

Under Flows, choose New flow. Give it a name that only you will see, pick the verified domain under Send from, and choose Create flow.

What you should see: "Flow created." and the flow's editor. A Before you turn this on: note lists what is still missing, starting with "This flow has no list to watch. Choose one before turning it on." The next steps clear that list.

5. Start it when someone joins your list

Under Flow settings, open the line that says when the flow starts. In Start this flow when, choose Someone joins a list and pick the list your form sends signups to. Choose Save trigger.

The trigger setting for the Welcome series flow, opened from its summary line Starts when someone joins Newsletter: under Start this flow when, the option Someone joins a list is chosen with the Newsletter list picked, the option A date field on the contact arrives sits below it with its Date field, Days and When boxes, and a box for letting someone go through the flow more than once is above the Save trigger button
  1. Pick the list your form feeds.
  2. Leave this unticked unless people should be able to go through the series again.

What you should see: "Saved." and the missing-list line gone from the Before you turn this on: note.

6. Add your emails

Under Add an email step, write a Subject and a Body, then choose Add step. Do this once for each email in the series.

A new step has no wait. For every email after the first, open Edit on its step, set Send this to an amount of minutes, hours or days after the previous email, and choose Save step. The first email goes out when the person joins, once sending hours allow it.

Wakio will not turn the flow on while a later email has a wait of zero, because it would go out at the same moment as the one before it.

The Steps table for the Welcome series flow, with one row per email. The three emails are sent on Day 0, Day 3 and Day 10, and each row shows how many people it was sent to, how many opened it and how many were skipped
  1. The Day column adds up your waits. This is what the table looks like for a three-email series.
  2. How many people each email has gone to.

To check an email before anyone gets it, open its Edit, use Test this email and choose Send test. Save the step first. This step is optional.

What you should see: each email in the Steps table once the flow's page is open, with a Day that adds up the waits so far.

7. Turn it on

Choose Activate this flow at the top of the editor. If the Before you turn this on: note still lists something, fix it first, because Wakio refuses to activate until the note is empty.

Turn the flow on before you share the form. Someone who confirms while the flow is still a draft joins the list but never enters the flow.

What you should see: "Flow activated." Open the flow from Flows and its status reads Active.

8. Try it yourself

Open the public page from step 3 in a private window and sign up with an address of your own.

The subscribe page for Northwind Coffee's Website newsletter form: the headline Coffee notes, once a week, the intro line, an Email address field, the consent wording that starts By subscribing you agree to receive email from Northwind Coffee, and a Subscribe button
  1. Type your address here.
  2. Your consent wording, as you published it.
  3. Choose Subscribe.

What you should see: a card titled Check your email.

A card titled Check your email, saying: If we can add you, you will get a message with a link to confirm. The link is how we know it was you.

A confirmation email arrives with the subject "Please confirm your subscription". Open its link within 30 days. Nobody joins your list until they do.

A card titled Subscription confirmed, saying: Thank you, you are on the list.

What you should see: Subscription confirmed.

Back in Wakio, open the flow. Under Who is in this flow you appear as Active, with Not started yet as your current step until the first email goes out.

If something's off

  • The public page says "This page is not available." The form is unpublished, you have no published consent wording, your plan does not include sending, or you have no verified sending domain. The page does not say which. Subscribe forms lists every cause.
  • People already on the list got nothing. That is on purpose. Turning a flow on never reaches back to the people already on its list. To bring a group in, add them to the list from Contacts and choose Add and enroll. Your account's warm-up caps how many can enter at once. Flows explains it.
  • An imported list did not start the flow. Importing never starts a flow.
  • The first email has not arrived. Check these in order. Has the person clicked the confirmation link? Nothing happens until they do, and the link lasts 30 days. Is the flow Active, rather than a draft or paused? Is it inside sending hours? By default they are 08:00 to 20:00 in your account's time zone, and an email that comes due outside them waits. Finally, no flow email goes out while your account's warm-up is held or your plan does not allow sending.
  • Testing twice sent only one confirmation. Signing up with the same address on the same form within an hour does not send a second confirmation email. Wait an hour, or use another address.
  • Someone who finished the series cannot go through it again. With re-entry off, which is the default, anyone who finished or was taken out never rejoins. Tick Let someone go through this more than once under Start this flow when to allow it.

Next

Read Flows for conditions, sending hours, the exit rule, and pausing or archiving.