Segments and Flows: Group Customers and Automate Messages

Overview

A segment is a group of customers that match rules you set, such as everyone who has spent over a certain amount. A flow sends a series of messages, with waits in between, when something happens, such as an order being placed. If an email in a drip, or a cart reminder, keeps failing because the mail server refuses it, it is tried again over several hours; after five tries that customer leaves it and you get a notification (Settings → Notifications, "Marketing email could not be sent"). You can send an email campaign (Marketing → Campaigns) or a text broadcast (Marketing → SMS) to a segment, and limit a promotion to one. A flow can start when someone joins a segment (Entered a segment), or be limited to a segment's members with Who can start it.

Segments and flows are on the Growth plan and above.

Build a segment

Go to Customers → Segments.

• Quick presets create a common segment in one click.
• Create segment lets you set the rules yourself: minimum and maximum orders, minimum and maximum spent, minimum loyalty points, days since the last order, and whether the customer has an email on file. A customer must match every rule you set.
• Describe your segment turns a sentence such as "customers who spent over 200 in the last 90 days" into rules you can check before saving.

Each segment shows how many customers it matches.

Build a flow

Go to Marketing → Flows and click New flow.

1. When this happens: choose the trigger, such as Order placed, Order shipped, New customer, Cart abandoned, Browsed, didn't buy, Order delivered, Anniversary, Loyalty milestone, Win-back or Entered a segment. New customer also starts for a visitor who confirms a newsletter or pop-up sign-up and was not a customer yet. Win-back starts for a customer who agreed to marketing and has not ordered in 60 days or more, when you approve the win-back assistant's suggestion for them. Entered a segment asks which saved segment to watch; see Entered a segment.
2. Who can start it (optional): Only customers in a saved segment, and rules they must all match: Order total (for order triggers), Customer tag or Loyalty points. They are checked when the trigger happens. If the segment is later deleted, nobody starts the flow until you choose another.
3. Then do this: add the steps in order, top to bottom.
4. Send email with one of your store's email templates. A custom subject is optional. Products they looked at is the template for Browsed, didn't buy: it is picked for you when you choose that trigger on a new flow.
5. Send SMS with your text. Texts are paid from your Phone & SMS credit and go only to customers who agreed to receive them. Offers are not texted at night: a text that comes due outside your Calling rules hours where the customer is (by their area code) waits until those hours open.
6. Wait for a set time before the next step.
7. Tag the customer.
8. Branch with two sides, If yes and If no. Each side can continue to the next step, go to a later step, or end the flow. A branch checks either the customer (a tag or their loyalty points, as they are when the step runs) or an earlier email: whether they opened it, clicked a link in it, did not open it or did not click, within a number of hours of it being sent (1 to 720). It decides as soon as they have done it, or when the hours are up. Opens and clicks are counted on marketing emails only, so a branch on a receipt or order update always takes the "did not" side.
9. End flow: the customer leaves the flow here. Put one at the end of a "yes" path so it does not run on into the "no" path's steps.
10. Timing: a Start delay waits after the trigger before the first step. A flow that starts with a Wait step waits that long too. Smart send-time sends each email and text at a set hour between 9:00 and 18:00 on the customer's own clock: their province (from their address) or the area code of their phone number, else your store's time zone, else Eastern time. Your store's time zone is the one you set for appointments, team hours, a location or a till; the clocks changing is taken into account. The hour is the same for a given customer every time, so your sends are spread across the day. A step that comes due before that hour waits for it; one due later in the day, before 18:00, sends straight away; one due after 18:00 goes at that hour the next day. Texts also wait for your Calling rules hours, as above.
11. A/B test (optional): send part of your customers a different version of the steps. Turn on Split into two versions, then use the Version A and Version B tabs above the steps to edit each. Each person always gets the same version, so the results stay clean.

Click Save draft to keep working (you stay in the builder), or Save and activate to switch it on. The list shows how many times each flow has started.

Test a flow

In the builder, under Test (save the flow first; a test uses the saved version):

• Send test emails every email step now, with [Test] at the start of the subject, to you or to another address on your team (Settings → Team). It never goes to a customer, any other address is refused, and text steps are listed but not sent. Nothing is tracked or counted in the report.
• Preview path for a customer: enter a customer's email to see whether they would start the flow now (and if not, why), and every step they would get, with the date and time in their time zone. Branches on the customer are answered from their record as it is now; for opened or clicked branches, tick Assume they open and click the emails to see the other path. Nothing is sent.

Flow reports

Click Report on a flow in the list. Choose the last 7, 30 or 90 days. It shows:

• Entered, Sent, Opened, Clicked and Attributed sales, with how many people are still in the flow, finished, or left early and why (a branch ended it, they ordered, the flow was paused), and the steps that were skipped and why (for example, not agreed to marketing).
• Each step: sent, skipped, opened, clicked, how many went each way at a branch, and its sales.
• With an A/B test, each version side by side.

Attributed sales are orders a customer placed within 5 days after opening or clicking an email from the flow, each order counted once, for the latest such email before it. They are counted as sales: what the orders came to with shipping and tax, the part paid by gift card included, and gift cards bought left out until they are spent. Only paid orders count, test-mode payments are left out, and each currency is shown on its own.

Opens and clicks are counted on marketing emails only (the ones that go to customers who agreed to marketing); receipts and order updates a flow sends are not tracked. Opens by mail scanners and privacy proxies are left out where they can be recognised. Flow emails also appear in Marketing → Deliverability, as "Automation: " and the flow's name.

Entered a segment

A flow with this trigger starts for a customer who joins the segment you choose. Your store checks every 15 minutes. The first check after you switch the flow on only notes who is already in the segment, so they are not sent anything; from then on, each customer who joins starts the flow once. Someone who leaves the segment and later joins again starts it again. If the flow is off, or nobody could check, for more than a day, the next check notes the members again without starting anyone, so a backlog is never mailed at once. A customer with no email address is noted but not started.

Flows and email sequences

An email sequence (Marketing → Email sequences (legacy)) and a flow can answer the same event: a purchase, an abandoned cart, a delivered order, a new customer or a win-back. A customer goes into only one of them for that event: if they are already in a live sequence for it, the flow does not start for them (the report counts them as kept out), and if a live flow has them, the sequence does not enrol them. When neither has them, the flow does. Both pages show a warning while a live flow and a live sequence share an event; pause the one you no longer want.

Browsed, didn't buy

This trigger starts a flow for a customer who looked at products in your store and left without buying. Your store checks every 15 minutes. A customer starts the flow when all of this is true:

• They were signed in to their account while browsing. Visitors who are not signed in are never included, because the store does not know who they are.
• They viewed product pages in the last 4 hours, and their last product view was at least 1 hour ago, so nobody is emailed while they are still shopping.
• Since they started browsing, they did not add anything to their cart, did not start checkout and did not place an order.
• They are not already being reminded about a cart: no cart they left in the last 7 days that has not been recovered, no open run of a Cart abandoned flow, and no active abandoned-cart email sequence.
• They agreed to receive marketing email from your store, and their address is not unsubscribed or on a do-not-email list. This is the same check your email campaigns use, and it is checked again when each email goes.
• At least one product they looked at is still active, shown on that storefront, priced for it and in stock (or sold on backorder).
• They have not started this flow in the last 30 days.

The Products they looked at email shows up to three of those products with their picture, today's price on the storefront they browsed (including any sale), and a link to each product page. The links carry utm_source=flow, utm_medium=email and utm_campaign=browse_abandoned, so the visits show up in your traffic sources. Prices and stock are checked again when each email is sent: anything withdrawn or sold out by then is left out, and if nothing is left the email is not sent. If the customer places an order at any point during the flow, the flow stops for them before the next email or text. The email is sent from the storefront they browsed, with your store's name, postal address and an unsubscribe link, like every flow email.

Another template sends without the product list, except Custom, which adds the products under your text.

Good to know

• Spend in more than one currency. Minimum and maximum spent compare your number with what the customer spent in each currency on its own, never added together or converted: a customer who spent 300 in CAD and 300 in USD has not spent 500.
• A customer is in a flow once at a time: the same event happening twice does not start a second run while the first is open.
• Flow emails use your store's email design (Settings → Email design).