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Automation flows are the perfect way to create and send multi-stage communications triggered by a certain event (e.g., subscribing to texts, abandoning a cart, etc.).
How a Welcome Series Benefits You
- Introduce your brand. Use your welcome series to introduce your brand's SMS experience, establish brand voice, or educate subscribers on your brand or mission.
- Send coupons for signing up. Use your welcome series as an opportunity to send subscribers a discount or promotion code after signing up for your SMS program.
- Interact with your subscribers. Welcome series can also be used as an opportunity to learn what products your subscribers are interested in so you can send an automated, personalized product recommendation in return.
- Share your brand's contact card. Invite subscribers to add you to their contact list by including a contact card in your first welcome series message.
Create a Welcome Series Flow
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- Select Messaging in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Flow Builder.
- Select Create Flow in the top-right corner of the page.
- Select Use a template or select Create a new flow.
- Choose Automation as your flow type. Then click Create Flow.
- Name the automation. Choose a name that will allow you to easily identify your Welcome Series and track this flow in the future.
- Select the trigger Subscriber Created. A trigger is an action that will begin the automation flow. For your Welcome Series, we want an individual to enter the flow when they are created as a Subscriber in your list.
- Add Subscriber filters. User filters can help you narrow down which subscribers can receive your Welcome Series. With the settings in the example above, this Welcome Series will only send to subscribers who have previously triggered the keyword ELLE.
- Add a cancellation trigger. The cancellation trigger tells Postscript when to remove a subscriber from an automation flow. We encourage using "Checkout Started" as the cancellation trigger. This will remove a subscriber from your welcome series flow, and move them into either an abandoned cart or post-purchase automation.
- Save. Select Save in the bottom right corner of the Automation properties editor.
Want to keep it simple? No worries! Adding subscriber filters or cancellation triggers are all optional ways to customize your automation flow.
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- Add actions. You can begin building your Welcome Series by dragging and dropping a Send Message action, a Delay, an A/B Split, or a Wait for Event Split. Welcome
- When adding a Send Message action to your automation flow, you may consider using some of our message enhancements located in the bottom right corner of the Message Editor to spruce things up.
- Add emojis by clicking the square smiley face icon.
- Add merge tags like subscriber first name, your shop link, or your shop name by clicking the overlapping tags icon.
- Add a Postscript-generated coupon by clicking the percentage icon.
- Add a Shopify-generated coupon and discount link by clicking the hyperlink icon. Note: Links and tags are trigger-specific. Not all link or tag options will be visible for all trigger types. For example, an abandoned cart link can only be added if the automation flow trigger is Checkout Started.
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If you're ready for subscribers to begin receiving your flow immediately or if you'd like to schedule when the flow will begin allowing subscribers to enter, select Schedule or Activate in the top-right corner of the page. You have two options when sending a flow:
- Activate immediately: This option will immediately begin the flow allowing subscribers to enter the automation based on the selected properties.
- Activate at a scheduled time and date: Choose when you'd like the flow to begin allowing subscribers to enter.
Note: Postscript adheres to TCPA-defined quiet hours for flows. Flow messages scheduled to send outside these quiet hours will send during the next waking hours window. Learn more about quiet hours here.
Types of Welcome Series
Opportunities for developing unique Welcome Series flows are endless. Here are a few types of Welcome Series we love for their creativity and conversational approach.
Subscribers are most engaged with your SMS program during the first 30 days they are subscribed. Take advantage of this window by using Event Branching to provide subscribers with personalized product recommendations when they are at the highest buying intent of their subscriber journey.
Ever wondered if the morning or evening is better to send an SMS? What about if a dollar-off incentive is more effective than a percentage-off incentive? Find out what works best for your brand with A/B testing!
An Educational Welcome Series is an excellent way to inform subscribers of your brand's mission or story. You can also use an Educational Welcome Series to offer tips on how best to use your products.
Using Event Branching in your Welcome Series automates the process of engaging with your subscribers so you can get time added back to your busy day and still deliver high-quality content.
FAQs
- Can I add a trigger filter to my automation properties? Trigger Filters are not supported when using the automation trigger Subscriber Created.
- Can I add a subscriber frequency filter? The trigger for a Welcome Series is Subscriber Created. While an individual can opt out of your SMS program and then opt back in, they can only be created once on your SMS list. Because a subscriber profile can only be created once ( and their profile indicates if they are active or inactive), the welcome series has a default once-per-subscriber setting. In other words, no subscriber frequency is needed when using the trigger Subscriber Created.
- Will my Welcome Series send to manually uploaded subscribers? A Welcome Series is triggered when a subscriber is created by a keyword, popup, or through our API (think: integrations). The subscribers you manually uploaded to your account will not receive your Welcome Series. If you'd like to send these subscribers a message, consider requesting a subscriber tag on the upload form, and then sending this list a campaign. Check out more information here.
Get Support
Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!
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