Run one workflow on several channels

If you publish several newsletters, you may want the same journey on each of them: one welcome series, say, rather than the same welcome series built and maintained once per channel. A company workflow is built once and runs on the channels you pick. Each channel runs its own copy, so its subscribers move through the workflow as if it had been built there, and its results stay with that channel.

For everything else the Automations area can do, see Working in Automations.

Note

Company workflows may need to be turned on for your account. If you don’t see Workflows under Newsletters, contact support.

Create a workflow

1. Go to Newsletters → Workflows and click New workflow.
2. Give the workflow a name.
3. Choose what starts it:
   • Someone subscribes
   • A subscriber’s status changes
   • A subscriber is tagged
4. Add your steps, such as emails, waits and tags, the same way you would in a channel’s automation series.

Steps save as you edit them, so you can leave and come back.

Pick the emails it sends

An email step uses one of your company’s active templates. If the template you need doesn’t exist yet, Create template takes you to your company templates. Create and activate it there, then come back to the workflow and pick it.

What a company workflow can’t do yet

Some things only make sense on one channel, so a company workflow leaves them out:

• Exit goals aren’t available.
• Test sends happen from a channel. Once the workflow runs there, open its copy with View on channel and send a test from that page.
• Anything only one channel has can’t be used in a step: a channel’s own template, a condition on one channel’s newsletters, or a suppression list. Use company templates and company-wide conditions instead. You’ll be told if a step needs changing when you turn the workflow on.

Pick the channels it runs on

Under Runs on, tick the channels the workflow should run on, then click Save channels.

Turn it on

Click Turn on. Each channel you picked gets its own copy of the workflow and switches on within a few moments. The channel list on the page updates as each one comes on.

If a channel you picked already runs its own workflow that starts the same way, for example its own welcome series, the workflow won’t turn on. Pause the channel’s own workflow, or take that channel off this one, so nobody gets two welcome emails.

Change a workflow that’s on

While a workflow is on, its steps and channels are locked. To change them:

1. Click Pause. The workflow pauses on every channel at once. People part-way through keep their place.
2. Make your changes to the steps or the channels, and save the channels if you changed them.
3. Click Turn on again. Your changes reach every channel, and people pick up where they left off.

You can’t remove a step while anyone on any channel is waiting on it. Change what the step does instead.

See results by channel

While a workflow is on, its page shows Results by channel: for each channel, how many people have Entered, are In progress, have Completed the workflow and have Unsubscribed from it. The All channels row adds them up.

These are the same figures each channel’s copy shows on its own page. To see a channel’s copy in full, click View on channel.

Delete a workflow

Deleting a company workflow also removes it from every channel it runs on. People already part-way through stop where they are.

Related

• Manage an automation series
• Automation triggers overview
• Create, edit, and activate a template