Workflows are custom, multi-step processes that send users personalized messages based on their interactions with your brand.
Once triggered, workflows can analyze user behavior, apply filters and delays, split users into different groups, update user profiles, change subscription preferences, call webhooks, trigger other workflows, and more. Workflows are a great way to build multi-step welcome or cart abandonment campaigns.
This document describes how to create a basic workflow and gives a high-level overview of the various pieces of a workflow.
Table of contents
Managing workflows
To manage your project's workflows, navigate to Messaging > Workflows.
This screen lists all the workflows in the current project.
Viewing the campaigns associated with a particular workflow
There are two ways to view the campaigns associated with a particular workflow:
- Twirl open the workflow's Campaigns indicator. Clicking a campaign will open it in context of the workflow send node that uses it.
- Alternatively, hover over the workflow and click the View Campaigns within Workflow link that appears. This brings up the list of the workflow's campaigns in an interface that shows details such as unique clicks, unique opens, etc.
Creating workflows
The following sections describe how to create a simple workflow.
Instructions
To create a simple workflow, follow these steps:
Navigate to Messaging > Workflows.
Click Create a New Workflow.
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Configure the workflow's green Start When trigger node by double-clicking it and adjusting its settings as necessary. When you're done editing it, click its Update Node button.
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Drag a send node (Send Email, Send In-App, Send Push, Send SMS, or Send Web Push) onto the workflow canvas.
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Connect the trigger node to the send node by dragging an arrow between their connection points.
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Edit the send node by double-clicking it:
Specify a Campaign Name, a Custom Conversion Metric, and Labels (as necessary).
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Select a template to use as a starting point for the campaign's content. Note that you can't create a new template while editing a workflow send node.
TIP
To edit an existing template before selecting it:
- Right-click the name of a template and open it in a new browser tab.
- Edit the template as necessary.
- Click Save Template.
- Back in the original browser tab, close the workflow node.
- Double-click the Send node to re-open it.
- Select the edited template.
At this point, Iterable must generate the campaign associated with the new send node. To make this happen, save the send node by clicking Update Node and save the workflow by clicking Save (in the upper-right corner).
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Open the send node again to configure its campaign:
Edit the template to specify the content for your campaign, and save it by clicking Save Template. Then save the node by clicking Update Node.
Save the workflow by clicking Save (in the upper-right corner of the workflow).
Enable the workflow with the toggle in the upper-left.
The workflow is now active. After some time passes, use the send node's Campaign Analytics tab to check on its performance. For more details, read Workflow Analytics.
NOTES
A workflow campaign remains in the ready state until a first user enters its associated workflow nodes. At that point, they transition to the running state. After any campaign is in the running state, you can no longer modify its lists, suppression lists, or custom conversions.
While creating a campaign in a workflow send node, it's possible to create an experiment by clicking Create A/B Experiment. Doing this navigates you to the experiments interface. Experiments do not display directly in the send node.
To use selective push or selective in-app messaging with a workflow campaign, open the campaign from Messaging > Campaigns and toggle the setting on.
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To rename a workflow campaign, navigate to the Campaign Analytics tab of the workflow node and double-click its name:
Types of workflow nodes
A workflow can contain various kinds of nodes:
- Trigger nodes, which kick off a workflow. These nodes are colored green and found at the top of a workflow. There are various kinds of trigger nodes, such as API triggers, custom event triggers, and many more. For details, read Workflow Triggers.
- Action nodes, which let you do things to users in a workflow: send them messages, modify list membership, update their user profiles, and more. For more details, read Workflow Actions.
- Filter nodes, which help determine which users move to which steps in the workflow. For more details, read Workflow Filters.
Cloning workflow nodes
To create a copy of an existing workflow node, select it and then click Clone Selected in the top-right action bar.
To clone multiple nodes and their connections, toggle Select On and then
click and drag over the nodes that you would like to clone. Then click
Clone Selected (as shown below). Hold down the <shift>
key to select
multiple nodes and connections.
NOTE
It is possible to clone nodes in both disabled and enabled workflows. If there are users actively passing through the nodes that are being cloned, they will remain in those nodes and the already existing flow will be unaffected. Those users will not be copied over to the new nodes.
Limiting workflow entrances
When editing a workflow, the Advanced Options button in the upper-right corner brings up a window with two options:
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Limit simultaneous entrances per user
This option prevents users from entering the same workflow multiple times simultaneously. This can useful for shopping cart abandonment workflows, since you do not want to send an email to a user for every item they leave behind in their carts.
Generally, you will want to turn this option on for marketing workflows and leave it off for transactional workflows (such as a password reset).
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Limit lifetime entrances per user
This option prevents users from entering a workflow multiple times, ever. This can useful for welcome series and other workflows that a user should only ever pass through once.
Changing a workflow campaign's template
To edit or switch a workflow campaign's template, double-click the send node associated with the campaign. Then, click Back to Select Template.
When you change the template, the campaign name will remain the same.
Enabling a workflow
To enable your workflow, switch the toggle in the top-left from Disabled to Enabled.
Testing workflows
To learn about testing and troubleshooting workflows, read:
Workflow analytics
There are various types of metrics associated with workflows: basic workflow metrics, workflow analytics, and workflow campaign metrics. To learn more about these metrics, read Workflow Analytics.
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