How to make sure your flow is ready to start sending

You will learn

Learn how to review your entire flow to make sure it is ready to start sending to your subscribers. Because flows consist of many highly customizable components, it is best practice to check each part of the flow before setting the flow’s status to live.

Continue with this guide once you have properly set up a flow and are ready to start sending. Sections that are optional to a flow are collapsed, and can be expanded by clicking on them. Review each section below to learn how to review the different components of your flow.

Before you begin

If you have not done so already, please see our guide on how to get started with flows. The guide below is meant to provide you with quick steps to review your flow once it is ready, but our getting started guide has more in-depth information on how flows work and what each component of the flow does.

Review your flow trigger

To review your flow trigger:

1. Click on the flow trigger at the top of the flow builder.
2. View the Flow Trigger section in the left sidebar.
   

List- and segment-triggered flows

It is possible to have similarly named lists or segments. To make sure you have chosen the correct trigger, in the Flow Trigger section of the left sidebar, click on the name of the list or segment to view it.

Metric-triggered flows

In the Flow Trigger section of the left sidebar, make sure you have chosen the appropriate metric for your ecommerce integration. There is an icon corresponding to the ecommerce integration next to the name of the metric. Click on the name of the name of the metric to view it in your account’s Metrics tab.

Date property-triggered flows

In the Flow Trigger section of the left sidebar, make sure you have chosen the appropriate date property for your ecommerce integration. 

1. Click Date Property to view the configuration.
2. Check that the flow is set to start when you intend.
3. Make sure an appropriate time and timezone is configured.
4. Make sure the flow is set to repeat if or when you intend.
5. If you made any changes, click Save at the bottom.

Change the trigger if necessary

If you need to change the trigger of your flow, you must clone the flow:

1. Navigate to the Flows tab and find the flow that you would like to change the trigger for.
2. On the right, click the arrow next to Edit Flow to reveal the dropdown and select Clone.
   
3. After clicking Clone, update the name and, optionally, change the flow trigger.
   

Review time delays

Review the following for your time delays:

• There is a time delay between the trigger and your first message, unless the first message is meant to send immediately.
• There is a time delay between messages to give customers time to receive and read each one.
• Time delays have appropriate lengths depending on your business strategy and preferred sending frequency.
• If any time delays are set to delay until a specific time of day, they have the correct timezone configured or are set to Recipient’s Local Timezone.
• If any time delays are set to delay until a specific day(s) of the week, they have been configured appropriately.

Review message content

Review the following for your message content:

• Messages have appropriate branding.
• Text contains proper spelling and grammar.
• Content is personalized using variables to improve inbox placement.
• Links work and lead to the correct destination.
• Links are used in an appropriate amount.
• Images are optimized to reduce message size.
• Text to image ratio is balanced to prevent spam filtering.
• Transactional messages do not contain marketing content.
• SMS messages with links have link shortening turned on, which is required for conversion tracking.

Change flow status to start sending

After confirming all components of your flow have been configured as you intended, change the statuses of the messages in your flow to start sending.

1. When you first create a flow, click the Review and Turn On button in the top right corner to update the status for every configured action in the flow at once.
2. Note that unconfigured actions will remain in draft even if you bulk update the flow's statuses.
   
3. When the confirmation modal appears, choose Live from the Action status dropdown if you want your flow to start sending messages immediately or Manual if you’d like to manually approve messages before they send.
   
4. Click Turn On to confirm.

If you need to change the statuses of flow actions again after you have set the flow to either live or manual status, click Update Action Statuses in the top right.

Learn more from our article on how to enable a flow to start sending.

Understand how changes affect your live flow

You may want to make changes to your flow after setting it live. 

Contacts are scheduled for all steps in a flow one at a time, and they must move through one step before being scheduled for the next. This means for those moving through a flow, any changes made to steps still ahead of them will impact their journey.

Review the effects of different changes below:

• Reordering or adding steps
  If someone is already scheduled (in Waiting) for a given step, they will remain scheduled for that step even if you move it elsewhere in the sequence. Additionally, say they are scheduled (in Waiting) for a first email, and you adjust the flow to add steps before this first message, they will not receive these steps above unless you back-populate the flow.

• Modifying time delays
  If someone has already been scheduled for a step based on the time delay before that step, changing the time delay will not reschedule them. Any time delays after that step will affect them.

• Updating message content
  If you change the content of a message before someone has received it, they will receive the updated version.

Additional resources

Learn how to optimize the structure and content of your flow:

• How to optimize your flow sending frequency
• How to A/B test flow branches
• How to A/B test a flow email