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Help · Automations

Starting points

Every automation begins at a starting point. Each one is a working automation with its start, its timing and a draft of each message already in place, and nothing sends until you apply your changes and enable it.

Starting one

Create automation opens a set of starting points. Each one builds a real, working automation you can then change however you like, and each email inside it is a starting point rather than finished copy. Blank starts with nothing.

The screen says so:

Starters are suggestions. Each one comes with what starts it, proposed timing and
a draft email or text per step, ready for you to edit. Nothing sends until you apply
your changes and enable the automation. Blank starts with nothing.

Welcome

Welcome greets somebody who has just signed up, in the places you choose: any of your sign-up forms, and your Shopify store (ticking the box to get email at checkout, or signing up for an account there). It sends one email — at once for a sign-up on one of your forms or by somebody who has bought from you, and up to 15 minutes later for a new sign-up in your Shopify store by somebody who has not (see below) — and each person gets it only once, ever. If you would rather it went a little later, add a wait in front of the email.

Nothing is ticked for you. Creating it opens it on what starts it, where you tick the places people sign up. Until you tick at least one, Apply changes is refused with:

Pick at least one place people sign up. This welcome starts for nobody until you do.

A form made for one purpose, a contest or a quiz, is simply not ticked: the people who fill it in still give consent, and they are not sent your general welcome.

People already on your list are not welcomed again. The Welcome starts only when somebody's email consent is new: they had not given it before, or they had unsubscribed and are signing up again. Somebody whose consent was already on who fills in a form, or ticks the box at checkout again, is not sent a welcome. Somebody whose address we could not confirm when they signed up is welcomed once it is confirmed, as long as that happens within three days.

Sign-ups that look like bots are not welcomed. A sign-up looks like a bot when the person checked out without visiting your store first, has never placed an order, and has no Shopify tags.

A new sign-up from your Shopify store by somebody who has not bought starts up to 15 minutes later, so the bot check can see their checkout: Shopify can report a checkout up to about 14 minutes after your site saw it. The moment they place an order, get a Shopify tag or are marked This is a person, or we see that their checkout followed a visit to your store, they start at once. Buyers, and sign-ups on your own forms, start at once. This is true of every automation that starts on a sign-up, not only the Welcome — including one that starts on the event Consented to Email. Their profile, their consent and the sign-up on their activity are recorded as soon as Shopify tells us — only the start of the automation waits — and campaigns are not affected.

Each sign-up that is not welcomed because it looks like a bot is listed in the automation's report as:

they checked out without visiting the store first, so they look like a bot

If you know a person is real, open their profile and choose This is a person: the bot check never turns them away again. It does not send the welcome they missed — their consent is already on, so a later sign-up is not new, and people already on your list are not welcomed again.

Evergreen

Evergreen is a steady series of three emails that starts when somebody submits one of your forms, the forms you tick. Its first email goes a day after the form is submitted, which gives a newly typed address time to be checked. Nothing is ticked for you here either, and until you tick at least one form Apply changes is refused with:

Pick at least one form. This automation starts for nobody until you do.

Somebody already on your list who submits a ticked form starts Evergreen too, if they have never been through it. Each person goes through it only once, ever.

Welcome text

Welcome text greets somebody the moment they give consent to your text messages — by typing the code back on one of your forms, by agreeing in your Shopify store where Shopify saw them agree (at checkout, for example), or by replying START. It starts at the Consented to Text Messages event (the Text messages page says exactly when that is recorded), and each person goes through it only once, ever.

It holds one Text message step, as a draft like every new message. The words start with your store's name and end with “Reply STOP to opt out.”, the two things every marketing text must carry, and in between is a short thank-you to make your own. Attach your contact card is on, so the people you welcome can save your number in one tap. If you have not set up your contact card yet, the step says so and enabling the text waits until you do — or disable the switch to send the words alone.

Every store can build it, including one whose texting number is still being approved: nothing sends until you enable the text and the automation.

Somebody who has just agreed at checkout, or replied START, waits a moment. The first text a new number gets is the one that says what they signed up for, and your store sends it on its own. The Welcome text waits at its step until that has gone, then goes — usually within a quarter of an hour, or in the morning if they agreed at night. It waits only while that first text, or a form code, is actually on its way; if nothing is coming, or the person cannot be texted at all, the step is skipped for them at once, with the reason recorded, and the rest of the automation carries on. If what it is waiting for has not happened after seven days, it stops waiting and that person does not get the Welcome text.

The Welcome text does not go to the people already on your text list, or to anybody you import — only to people whose consent is new.

The three store credit starting points

Store credit earned, Store credit expiring soon and Credit for an unfinished checkout start from store credit that Shopify Flow records for you. Each one starts on an event our Shopify Flow actions write — Store Credit Rewarded, Store Credit Expiring and Abandoned Checkout Credit Rewarded — so until your store has recorded one of those at least once, its card waits and says which action to add:

Waiting for its first event. In Shopify Flow, add the “Record store credit given” action.

The card opens as soon as the first one arrives. An event with the same name sent from your own events API setup counts too.

All three go only to people whose email consent is subscribed. Store credit is the person's own, so the emails say "your store credit" and never offer a discount.

The amount and the expiry date in each email come from the store credit that Shopify Flow keeps on the profile. Where a profile has none yet, the email uses the words you set as the fallback instead — "Store credit" in place of an amount. An event sent through the events API records the event but does not update the profile's store credit, so those emails always use the fallback words.

If the app that gives the credit also sends its own email about it, a shopper can get two about one credit. Every event is recorded here either way. Enable one of these automations only for the events where you want our email to be the one that goes, and keep one sender for each event.

Blank is the one that starts with nothing decided, and it means that literally. It opens on one card, What starts this automation?, and nothing else: no steps to add and nothing to zoom, because deciding what starts the automation is the one thing you cannot skip. Pressing Choose an event, list or form opens the Start card with its search field ready to type in. Until you answer it, Apply changes stays shut and says why:

Choose what starts this automation before you apply changes.

Nothing is running and nobody is entering while it sits there, so there is no hurry; what there is not, is an automation quietly set to something you never picked.

Browsed product and Added to cart both leave on their own, because the person has moved on to the next automation. Anybody who places an order after entering leaves either of them. Anybody who reaches checkout leaves both — from there they are Abandoned checkout's. And anybody who adds something to their cart leaves Browsed product, because from there they are Added to cart's. Two automations chasing one person about one product is what nobody wants.

Those rules show on the Automation filter card as a sentence rather than as rows you can edit. They are in force exactly as written, and Remove this rule takes them off if you would rather write your own.

Back in stock is named on the empty screen, marked on the way, and is not something you can build here: no event an automation can start on says that a product came back. Back in stock has its own screen and its own messages, under Content → Back in stock.

Emailing people who reached checkout

The abandoned-checkout starting point mails people who got as far as checkout and never gave you consent to email them. That is lawful in some places and not in others, so one named person on your team must read the position and accept it before this automation can be enabled.

This is the position:

This automation mails people who got as far as checkout and never gave you marketing consent. In the United States that is allowed, as long as every message carries an unsubscribe link and your postal address — and every message this automation sends carries both.
It is not allowed everywhere. Under the GDPR in Europe and CASL in Canada, reaching checkout is not consent, and mailing on that basis breaks the law there.
You are accepting this for this automation alone — not for your store, and not once for good. Every message it sends is recorded against this basis, and you can disable the automation at any time.

One named person accepts it, once, for that automation, and the screen records who and when. Until then:

Not yet accepted — this automation cannot be enabled until it is.

There is no geography check. This app does not work out where a person lives and hold the email back. Accepting is your decision about your own audience, and it is per automation rather than a setting for the store.

The person who accepts is the same person who can enable the automation. We cannot accept it on your behalf.

And one honest limit. This automation only reaches people your site saw before they checked out, because that sighting is what makes the whole thing defensible:

Only when somebody was demonstrably at the keyboard.

If the tracking on your storefront is not working, checkouts arrive with nothing behind them, and those people are simply not entered — quietly, with no error anywhere. If an abandoned-checkout automation is enabled and almost nobody is going into it, that is the first thing to check.

Both of its emails carry a Return to checkout button, which takes each person back to the checkout they left — or to your store's home page if there is none. The Where a link goes page covers the link itself.