How Do People Enter a Flow?

In this article:

A person can re-enter a Flow more than once
How to prevent people from re-entering a Flow
Example ways people can enter a flow
Advanced use cases for re-entering a flow/step

People enter Flows through Trigger Steps.

A person can re-enter a Flow more than once

By default, a person can re-enter the same Flow more than once. This is true even when a person leaves a Flow due to not meeting the criteria of a Filter Step or when a person goes through an End Flow Step.

Let's explore the following scenario:

In this Flow, every time the event "Team Member Invited" is performed by a person, that person will be added to the Flow.

Whenever a person is tagged with the team-member-invited tag they will be removed from the Flow through the End Flow Step.

This means if a person is currently in the Flow, the Flow will end for them. For instance, if they're on the Wait Step while the tag is added, the Flow will end for them on that Wait Step. They will not receive the 2nd email in the Flow.

However, if that same person performs the event "Team Member Invited" again they will re-enter the Flow once more. Regardless of the fact that they already went through the End Flow Step.

How to prevent people from re-entering a Flow

Currently, there is no way to prevent a person from re-entering a Flow. However, there are two things that you can do to prevent people to continue in the Flow.

Use a Filter Step to prevent the person from continuing in the Flow

You can use a Filter Step to stop the person from continuing to the next Steps in the Flow. You need to add a Filter Step between the Trigger and the next Step.

If we look at the same scenario, we can use a Filter Step Has Tag and allow people to proceed to the Send Email Step only if they don't have the tag.

The person would still enter the Event Trigger when they perform the event "Team Member Invited" but the Flow will end for them on the Has Tag Filter Step if they already have the team-member-invited tag. They will be ejected from the Flow due to not meeting the criteria of the Filter Step.

Every time they perform the "Team Member Invited" event they will enter the Flow and then be ejected on the next Step, that way using the Filter Step as a blocking Step that prevents people to continue in the Flow.

Make sure that people can't receive an email more than once

To protect you from over-emailing people, by default Encharge doesn't allow sending the same email to the same person more than once.

Let's look at the same scenario again, without a Filter Step. When a person performs the action for the second time, they will enter the Event Trigger but the email will not be delivered twice, effectively ending the Flow for them there.

If you'd like to send an email more than once, you need to turn on the appropriate feature in the setup of the Send Email Step:

Example ways people can enter a Flow

Let's explore some Triggers that you can use to get people into a Flow.

Form Submitted

The person enters the Flow every time they submit the form. Encharge supports dozens of different form tools, website builders, and webinar platforms like Typeform, Instapage, and Livestorm

In the example below, when a person submits a form in Elementor, they're going to receive an email and get tagged.

Entered Segment

When a person meets the conditions of a specific Segment, they're going to automatically enter this segment.

In the example below, once a person enters the segment "Engaged", we're going to send an internal notification to our team.

Time Trigger

The Time Trigger Step is used to do things at a specific time. For example, send a newsletter at 8 p.m. tomorrow to all subscribers. Using the Time Trigger a segment of people can enter the Flow at a specific time.

See the example below.

Segment.com Event

Encharge has native integration with the data piping platform Segment.com. Segment allows you to send user events to Encharge to create personalized, behavior-based flows. The Segment Trigger is great for sending reward emails.

Advanced use cases for re-entering a Flow/Step

In some cases, you may want people to enter the same Trigger and Action Steps multiple times. Here are two example use cases.

Scoring Leads

Let's say you're using multi-dimensional lead scoring to qualify leads. You could add 1 point every time someone visits the Pricing page.

Your Flow would look like this:

Calculations with Liquid Tags

You can use the Change Field Action Step in combination with liquid tag formulas to execute calculations in your Flows.

For example: Change the number of "Total requests submitted" with +1 every time someone triggers a "Request submitted" event: