Overview
A flow is a communication sequence that is triggered by an event for an individual customer. This is primarily by email (“Email Flow”), however, there may also be postcard flows. Once triggered the flow will move through the defined sequence of steps to market to the customer. In the past the industry has referred to this type of marketing as “auto responders”.
Creating a Flow
Navigate to the Flows sub-menu under Communications and click on New Flow as shown below.
The new flow dialog will appear as shown below.
Choose to create a new flow from scratch or choose a built in flow from the Public Library.
For a new flow you’ll be presented with the following form:
A description of all of the fields in the Flow Editor
| Field | Values | Description |
|---|
| Button | Description |
|---|---|
| Drain | Allows the Flow to stop accepting new entrants while continuing to process customers already in the Flow until completion. Useful for safely retiring a Flow without abruptly stopping in-progress communications. |
| Test Flow | Simulates the Flow logic using test data. This helps validate branching, timing, and conditions without impacting real customers. |
| Test Emails | Sends test versions of email steps within the Flow to a specified email address. This is useful for verifying formatting, content, and personalization variables. |
| Undo | Reverts the most recent change made in the Flow editor. Multiple undo actions may be available depending on session history. |
| Save | Saves all current changes to the Flow configuration. Changes are not applied until saved. |
| Take Offline | Immediately disables the Flow. No new customers will enter, and existing participants will stop progressing through the Flow. |
| Pause Flow | Temporarily pauses the Flow. Customers will continue to be enrolled into the first step for the flow. Existing customers remain in their current step but will not advance until the Flow is resumed. |
When to Use Each Action
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Use Drain when replacing or retiring a Flow but you want existing customers to complete the sequence.
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Use Pause Flow for temporary stops (e.g., promotions, troubleshooting).
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Use Take Offline when you need to immediately halt all activity.
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Use Test Flow / Test Emails before activating or modifying live flows to ensure correct behavior.
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Use Save frequently to avoid losing configuration changes.
How Image Processing Works
After an image is uploaded to an email flow, UltraCart performs background optimization and makes the image available via CDN. This process typically completes within one to two minutes. During this window:
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The image URL is already embedded in the email template
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A test email sent before processing completes will include the URL, but the image may not yet be fully available at that URL
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Some email clients, particularly iPhone Mail, will fail silently or display a broken image when the asset is not yet available at delivery time
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Desktop clients and some Android clients may render the image correctly because they are more tolerant of slow or delayed asset availability, or they re-fetch the image when the email is opened
Once processing completes and the CDN propagates the asset, subsequent test sends and all live sends will render correctly.
Best Practices
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Wait at least one to two minutes after uploading any new image before sending a test email. This ensures the image has fully processed and is available on the CDN.
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If a test email shows a broken image, send a second test before making any changes. Processing delay is the most common cause and requires no action.
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Use JPEG or PNG formats for email images. Keep file sizes under 1 MB where possible to reduce processing time and improve email client load performance.
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Test emails on both desktop and at least one mobile client (iPhone Mail and Gmail on Android cover most merchant customer bases).
Statistics
When you are ready to activate your flow, click the Review and Activate button as shown below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: How do I configure recipients to a flow?
Answer: You’ll set the flow trigger. Then you can apply additional filtering using customer filters.
Question: When reviewing a flow, the statistics are set to “1 day”, however, when I view the number of “Sent” to the number of waiting at the first wait step, the number waiting does not match, why is there a discrepancy?
Answer: When setting the reporting interval to 1 day that represents the date range with starting date set to “00:00:00” and the ending date hours at “23:59:59”, whereas the wait step hourly for the past day is showing as of the current time of day when viewing it. So, for example, if the flow statistics are showing are “1 day = 08/17/2025 00:00:00 through 08/17/2025 23:59:59”, and you are viewing the the wait step at 10:33, then the wait step is reporting on “1 day = 08/17/2025 10:33:00 through 08/18/2025 10:33:00”. So, there is going to be some deviation between the two reporting statistics.
Question: We have a flow running, we have disabled a wait step that had 20 people waiting. Since the step is now disabled, will these customers be moved to the next step or will diabling the step only affect new customers that enter the flow?
Answer: Traffic that has already reached the wait step will continue to wait until the designated time even if you disable the step.
NOTE: You can however click on the triple dot button and select release to send them on their way.
Traffic that reaches the wait step that is already disabled will proceed straight through it with no pause.
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