Skip to main content
A Welcome Series is a sequence of emails and/or text messages sent to someone after they sign up to receive marketing from your business. It’s one of the most essential flows you can have — it introduces your brand, sets expectations, and capitalizes on the moment when a new subscriber is most engaged. Privy offers Welcome Flow templates for email subscribers, SMS subscribers, and a combined Subscriber Conversion Series that converts email subscribers into SMS subscribers. You can run them independently or together as part of a complete welcome strategy. Welcome emails see open rates around 80% — some of the highest engagement of any message you’ll send.

Create a new Welcome Flow

To get started:
  • Navigate to Flows and click New Flow in the upper right corner.
  • Select Welcome Email or Welcome SMS from the menu, depending on which type of welcome series you want to build.

Name your Flow

To name your new Flow:
  • Click on the title in the upper left corner.
  • Select “Edit Name” from the dropdown menu.
  • Update the name and Save.

Build your Flow

Our Flow builder allows you to fully customize the recipients’ journey. You can add and remove emails, customize the timing of each message, and even apply audience filters to target a specific group of contacts. To add a new emails, time delays, or audience filters to your Flow:
  • Hover between the blocks in your Flow until you see a blue plus sign appear.
  • Click the blue plus sign.
  • Select the desired action from the following menu.
Once your new block is added, you can edit its settings on the right side of the builder.
Need more guidance on using our Flow builder? Check out this step-by-step guide!

Customize your settings

To customize who enters and exits your flows, select the Trigger block at the top of your Flow. Your Flows’ settings will appear on the right side of the builder: Screenshot showing Flow Filters, exit criteria, and entry criteria for a Welcome Flow

1. Flow Filters

You can add the following filters to customize which contacts are allowed to enter this Flow:
  • Subscription Channel: Target contacts based on the channel they used to subscribe — Email or SMS. Use this to ensure contacts enter the right welcome flow (e.g., only SMS subscribers enter your Welcome SMS flow).
  • Subscription Source: Target or exclude contacts based on how they subscribed: display signups, Shopify, contact import, or manually added.
  • Subscription History: Target contacts based on whether they are first time signups or return subscribers.
Once a Welcome Flow is launched, it will trigger in real time based on the filter(s) you choose above. Welcome Flows are not retroactive.

2. Exit Criteria

Enabling this feature allows you to automatically remove any contacts who place an order while in the Flow.

3. Entry Frequency

Control how often contacts are allowed to re-enter this flow after they’ve already received it:
  • Immediate re-entry: Contacts can re-enter this Flow without a delay.
  • Delayed re-entry: Contacts can re-enter this Flow as long as a certain period of time has passed since they last received it.
  • No re-entry: Contacts will only be allowed to enter this specific Flow once.

Publish your flow

Once you’re happy with your new Welcome Flow, press the Publish button in the upper right corner, and your flow will start to trigger for new subscribers! You can review your Flow’s performance at any time.