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Selling

Segments and Flows: Group Customers and Automate Messages

Group customers by orders, spend and loyalty, then build flows that send email and text messages on a schedule when something happens in your store.

Overview

A segment is a group of customers that match rules you set, such as everyone who has spent over a certain amount. A flow sends a series of messages, with waits in between, when something happens, such as an order being placed. If an email in a drip, or a cart reminder, keeps failing because the mail server refuses it, it is tried again over several hours; after five tries that customer leaves it and you get a notification (Settings → Notifications, "Marketing email could not be sent"). You can send an email campaign (Marketing → Campaigns) or a text broadcast (Marketing → SMS) to a segment, and limit a promotion to one. A flow is not aimed at a segment: it starts for whoever sets off its trigger, and a Branch step can split them by tag or loyalty points.

Segments and flows are on the Growth plan and above.

Build a segment

Go to Customers → Segments.

  • Quick presets create a common segment in one click.
  • Create segment lets you set the rules yourself: minimum and maximum orders, minimum and maximum spent, minimum loyalty points, days since the last order, and whether the customer has an email on file. A customer must match every rule you set.
  • Describe your segment turns a sentence such as "customers who spent over 200 in the last 90 days" into rules you can check before saving.

Each segment shows how many customers it matches.

Build a flow

Go to Marketing → Flows and click New flow.

  1. When this happens: choose the trigger, such as Order placed, New customer, Cart abandoned, Order delivered, Anniversary, Loyalty milestone or Win-back. New customer also starts for a visitor who confirms a newsletter or pop-up sign-up and was not a customer yet. Win-back starts for a customer who agreed to marketing and has not ordered in 60 days or more, when you approve the win-back assistant's suggestion for them.
  2. Then do this: add the steps in order, top to bottom.
  3. Send email with one of your store's email templates. A custom subject is optional.
  4. Send SMS with your text. Texts are paid from your Phone & SMS credit and go only to customers who agreed to receive them. Offers are not texted at night: a text that comes due outside your Calling rules hours where the customer is (by their area code) waits until those hours open.
  5. Wait for a set time before the next step.
  6. Tag the customer.
  7. Branch on a customer tag or their loyalty points, so different customers take different paths.
  8. Timing: a Start delay waits after the trigger before the first step. Smart send-time moves each send to a set hour between 9:00 and 18:00 UTC, the same hour for a given customer every time, so your sends are spread across the day instead of all going at once. If that hour has already passed on the day a step is due, it sends straight away.
  9. A/B test (optional): send part of your customers a different version of the steps. Each person always gets the same version, so the results stay clean.

Click Save draft to keep working, or Save and activate to switch it on. The list shows how many times each flow has run.

Good to know

  • Spend in more than one currency. Minimum and maximum spent compare your number with what the customer spent in each currency on its own, never added together or converted: a customer who spent 300 in CAD and 300 in USD has not spent 500.
  • Order shipped is in the trigger list but does not start a flow yet.
  • A customer is in a flow once at a time: the same event happening twice does not start a second run while the first is open.
  • Flow emails use your store's email design (Settings → Email design).