Troubleshooting a flow

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You will learn

Learn how to troubleshoot a flow when you notice that it is behaving differently from expected.

If your flow isn't working as expected, use the following form to get answers. This form is designed to answer common questions about the following issues: 

  • People entering a flow when they shouldn't 
  • People not entering a flow when they should
  • Flow messages are being skipped
  • Flow setup and configuration not working as expected (includes details about flow actions, flow options, and back-population)

The form will help you troubleshoot problems. If you have follow-up questions, try searching the Klaviyo Community, or reach out to our Support team. 

What's not covered

The form cannot account for every issue. For instance, this form cannot answer questions similar to:

  • Is my flow working properly?
  • Is my flow set up properly?
  • Why are people not being added to the list/segment that triggers a flow?
  • Why is data, metrics, or events not syncing from my ecommerce store?

In these cases, we encourage you to go to the Klaviyo Community or Support.

Flow troubleshooting form

Common issues

Many people are being skipped from an abandoned cart flow

Abandoned cart flows typically have a high number of skips due to people failing a flow filter. In the standard abandoned cart setup, the trigger is Started Checkout and there's a flow filter for Placed Order zero times since starting this flow. This means that everyone who starts to check out is added to the flow. If they finish placing the order, the filter removes them from the flow.

Having a high number of skips due to failing the flow filter is actually a good thing. It means the flow is functioning correctly and is not sending abandoned cart messages to people who placed an order.

Welcomes series isn't sending to new subscribers

There are two situations where a new subscriber who is added to a list will not also be queued up for a welcome series (or any flow) configured to trigger off this list:

  1. It isn’t possible to trigger flows off of lists that are synced through Mailchimp. If you are syncing all of your subscriber lists from Mailchimp, you will not be able to configure flows to send to these subscribers as they opt in.
  2. If someone is added to your newsletter list by clicking the Subscribe to Newsletter box at checkout, they will NOT be queued up for your welcome series flow. This is a default setting because typically the welcome series is designed for new customers/visitors. Someone could check this Accepts Marketing box for the first time during their 100th purchase, and it might not be appropriate for this person to receive your welcome series.

Flow filter based on items or collections has the string data type

A list is any array of values, e.g., ["Offer1", "Offer2"]. In Klaviyo, the list data type is used when the goal is to collect an array of words/phrases, where each single item in the array can be identified individually.

One common use case for this list data type in Klaviyo is when different tags are being collected as a single property, such as the Shopify Tag property. We store one “Shopify Tag” property and then as more tags get assigned to a customer, we just add them to the Shopify Tags array, such as: ["Tag1", "Tag2", “Tag3”]

Another common use case is when Klaviyo captures a Placed Order metric through an integration, and the data we receive along with this Placed Order metric includes an Items property. This Items property captures all items purchased in the order and it is always synced and stored as an array, which is the list data type in Klaviyo. This allows us to store the one property -- Items -- but have that property include a series of values (e.g., each item purchased in the single order), where each value in the array can be identified individually. The same is true for the Collections property synced along with Placed Order or Ordered Product.

If you are filtering based on Items or Collections and using “equals” where the data type is string, your flow will not work. Instead, the data type must be set to list and the condition will look like, “where [Items or Collections] contains _____."

Flow sending delays

During high-volume sending periods flow, messages may see up to a 15-minute delay from the time they are scheduled to send. 

Additional resources

 

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