Create a Marketing Automation Flow

Marketing automation flows help you create unique, automated marketing workflows for your contacts. Use automation flows to add tags, send targeted emails, and accomplish other important tasks for you.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create a marketing automation flow.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• Depending on your plan, you may not have access to all marketing automation flow tools. To find out what features are included in each plan, check out our pricing page .
• To learn more about automation flows, how they work, and what features come with your plan, check out About Marketing Automation Flows .
• Our flow templates use default triggers, along with default rules and actions. To learn more, check out Use Automation Flow Templates.
• This article shows you how to build a marketing automation flow. To learn more about other email automation tools, check out Create a Classic Automation .

Create an automation flow

You’ll create and manage your automation flow on the Automation flows homepage. You can build a new flow from scratch, or choose from a variety of flow templates. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a new automation flow.

To create an automation flow, follow these steps.

1. Click the Automations icon.
2. Click Build from scratch.
3. Enter a Name for your flow, then click the drop-down to choose an Audience.
4. Click Choose a trigger.

Good job! Now that you’ve created an automation flow, you can add triggers, actions, and rules that will determine each contact’s path. To do this, you’ll plot these steps on your automation flow map. This map will help you visualize how contacts move along different paths.

An automation flow map can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Review the different options, and choose only the ones that best suit your marketing needs.

Add a trigger

A trigger is the activity or event that adds a contact to a flow.

Each automation flow can have up to 3 triggers. For example, if you have a flow for high-value contacts, you could choose to add people to it based on two different triggers: added tag "VIP" or added tag "top donor."

To add your first trigger, follow these steps.

1. Click Choose a trigger.
2. Choose the trigger you want.
   To learn more about the different types of triggers, read All the Marketing Automation Flow Triggers.
3. Choose the specific settings for your trigger type. For example, if you choose Signs up for Email, you’ll then choose whether to include imported contacts.
4. Optional: Click Filter who can enter this flow to use segmenting conditions to filter your trigger.
5. Click Save Trigger.

Nice job! You chose the first trigger for your workflow.

Add up to 3 triggers with a Standard plan or higher. To add another trigger, first Add a step. Then click Add trigger and repeat steps 2-5.

Add steps

After you add a trigger, choose the rules and actions that make up your flow. These are called steps. Try any combination of rules and actions to create a unique customer workflow that meets your marketing needs.

• Conditional split
• Percentage split
• Wait for trigger
• Time Delay
• Send email
• Send email with a survey
• Send SMS
• Webhook
• Group/Ungroup
• Tag/Untag
• Unsubscribe
• Update contact
• Archive contact

To add a step, click and drag rules and actions from the side panel onto your flow. Or, use the plus icon (+) on the map, then select the rule or action you want to add.

Activate your flow

To activate your automation flow, follow these steps.

1. When your flow is ready, click Continue.
2. Click Turn flow on.

Nice work! Now, contacts will begin the automation flow as they meet the first trigger condition.

View stats and queue

On the All flows homepage, you’ll see the number of contacts who have started a flow, are in progress in a flow, or have completed a flow. To view stats for a paused flow, click View Report.

Key stats will also appear on Tag and Email actions as contacts reach those steps.

Next steps

After the automation is active, you may want to update or edit your flow. To learn more, check out Edit a Marketing Automation Flow.