How to manage messages within a flow

You will learn

Learn how to build out an automated series with as many emails and SMS messages as you'd like.

While flows are designed to be "set it and forget it," testing and optimizing are critical as you fine-tune your marketing strategy. Any message in an existing flow can be edited regardless of its status, so you can make live updates without pausing sending. You can also add new draft emails or SMS to your series, leaving them set to manual or draft, without disrupting any live messages.

To review and update an existing email or SMS, click on the card for that message. This will open the settings options on details sidebar.

Update the timing of a message

The timing of a flow message in a series is determined by the time delay(s) added before it. The time delay component is used to create wait periods between emails, SMS, or other components in your flow.

Existing time delays can be updated at any time. When you change a delay, however, this will only impact new individuals entering your flow and individuals who haven't yet reached this step in your sequence. If you update the time delay before an email, those already scheduled in the Waiting bucket will not be rescheduled.

If you would like to update the timing of a message, you will want to consider when this email or SMS should send relative to the trigger (e.g., 10 days after someone enters the flow) as well as the timing of the message relative to the one before it (e.g., 3 days after the previous email), if applicable. While time delays themselves represent the waiting period between two components, you will notice "hints" on the time delay sidebar as well as below each messsage card on the canvas. This will help you keep track of how far your flow is stretching from the trigger.

Check out our article on time delays article to learn more.

Update the sending status of a flow message

You can update the sending status of a flow message in the bottom of the message card as well as the Status field in the details panel.

There are three distinct send statuses for a flow message:

• Draft
  No recipients will be queued for this message. This is useful when you're still designing email or SMS content.
• Manual
  Recipients will be queued for this message, but no emails or SMS messages will be sent automatically. Instead, messages will be marked for review. You can manually review recipients and choose to send or discard the emails or SMS. 
• Live
  Recipients will be queued and messages will be sent automatically.

Updates to the sending status are effective immediately for all new individuals entering your flow. There are a few important things to note, however, about how changing the send status of an email or SMS impacts those that have already entered your flow.

• If a message is in manual, and there are recipients in Needs Review, turning this message live will not automatically send to those in Needs Review. You will still need to manually review and send these scheduled emails or SMS.
• If a message is live and there are individuals in the Waiting tab, turning this email or SMS to manual means these messages will not automatically send anymore. These recipients will end up in Needs Review. 

Update the name of a flow message

To update the name of a flow message:

1. Click on the name of the message in the flow.
2. In the details panel, click on the name field to change the name of the message.
   
3. Click save at the bottom of the panel to save your changes.

Clone flow message

To clone a flow message:

1. Click the Setting icon (three dots) on the message card.
2. Click Clone from the dropdown.
   

When you clone a live flow message, the new email's send status is automatically set to manual so the cloned message does not begin automatically sending.

Delete flow message

To delete a flow message:

1. Click the Settings (three dots) icon on the flow message card.
2. Click Delete from the dropdown.
   

When a flow message is deleted, all future recipients are cancelled. This action cannot be undone, so if you don't want to permanently delete a flow email or SMS, change the sending status to draft or manual.

Review message analytics

If you click Show Analytics, you will see the snapshot analytics section for each message. This shows recent statistics including:

• Waiting
  The number of emails/SMS that will be sent if they meet the flow filters and the message is live when the scheduled time comes.
• Needs Review
  The number of emails/SMS that need to be reviewed before being sent. These will only appear for flows in manual.
• Delivered
  The number of emails/SMS messages that were successfully delivered.
• Open Rate (Email Only)
  The percentage of recipients that opened emails sent during this period.
• Click Rate
  The percentage of recipients that clicked emails or SMS sent during this period.
• Conversion Rate (e.g., Placed Order Rate)
  The percentage of recipients that converted due to emails or SMS sent during a certain period based on your account's attribution settings.
• Conversion Value (e.g., Revenue)
  The value of the conversions from people who converted.

If you add an ecommerce integration, Klaviyo will automatically set the conversion metric to be Placed Order. You can update the conversion metric on the Dashboard tab. What you choose for conversions is specific to your user account, so different users in the same account may have different conversion metrics at the same time.

Additional resources

Get more details on how contacts move through a flow. 

Find out more about flow analytics.