How to Back-Populate a Flow

Overview

Back-populating allows you to retroactively add qualified recipients into a flow. In this article, we explain how to back-populate. If you want more details on how back-populating works, read How Back-Populating Works in Klaviyo.

Callout: You cannot back-populate a flow that contains dynamic coupons. If you have any dynamic coupons, please change them to static coupons before back-populating.

Back-Populating in Klaviyo

To back-populate a flow, click on the Flows tab, and then on the name of the flow. Click on the Manage Flow dropdown in the header and click Back-Populate Flow Recipients.

Please note that if you are back-populating a flow with one or more SMS messages in it, you will want to review the message sending speeds associated with your account for a more accurate representation of when your text messages will actually go out.

Whether the flow is triggered by a list, segment, or metric affects your options for back-populating. There is no option for back-populating date property-triggered flows. To learn more, check out How Date-Based Flows Queue Recipients.

Metric-Triggered Flows

For metric-triggered flows, there is only one way to back-populate: profiles will be queued for messages relative to when they triggered the flow.

Say that you recently turned on a winback flow that sends to those who have not made a purchase in 75 days. If you back-populate this flow, you can bring in everyone who purchased within the flow’s timeline (i.e., the last 75 days). Recipients who purchased 50 days ago will be scheduled at the 50-day mark and have to wait 25 more days to get the winback message. People who purchased outside the flow’s timeline (e.g., 100 days ago) will not be added to the flow.

List- and Segment-Triggered Flows

For list- and segment-triggered flows, you have two options for back-populating, as shown below. You can either back-populate relative to the date someone was added to the list or segment or relative to when you click the back-populate button.

The first option is similar to back-populating metric-triggered flows; it schedules recipients for the step they would be at if the flow was live when they joined your list or segment. If your welcome flow lasts for 10 days, someone who joined two days ago will be scheduled at the two-day mark while someone who joined eight days ago will be scheduled at the eight-day mark. If they fall outside the flow’s timeline (e.g., they joined 20 days ago), they will not be added to the flow.

The second option, scheduling relative to when you click back-populate, will treat recipients as if they just joined the list or segment, so they will start from the very beginning of the flow. They will then travel through the flow just like any other recipient.

Choose which one you want. Then, click Back-Populate Flow.

Additional Resources

Find more information on back-populating in Back-Populating Flows in Klaviyo.
See how to Bulk Update Flow Statuses