Learn how to create a Workflow that sends email notifications based on a user’s upcoming renewal.

Build Guide

In this article, you’ll learn how to:

• Create a segment to use in a Workflow
• Create a Workflow from scratch
• Configure Workflow start criteria 
• Create an Email node
• Add a time delay to a Workflow 
• Configure Workflow finish criteria

Step 1. Create a Segment

Before creating a workflow, you will need to define the audience you want to be eligible for the workflow. You can do this by either choosing to use an existing segment or creating a new one.

For this guide, we’ve chosen to create a new segment specifically for users who have an active subscription, have a Renewal Date within 90 days, and have a Billing Interval of 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year.

Step 2. Create New Workflow

Once your segment is defined, you can create your new Workflow!

Don’t forget to give your workflow a name!

Your new workflow will start with two nodes: a Start node and a Finish node. In the next step, we will configure the Start node.

Step 3. Set Start Criteria

The Start criteria lets you choose who can enter a workflow and what trigger will cause them to start it.

Clicking the Start node will open a setting panel with sections for the Audience and Trigger.

Under the Audience section, choose the segment you chose or created in Step 1. Since we want to target all users with an active subscription that has a renewal date coming up within 90 days, we will choose the “All segment members” option in the example, but feel free to get more specific with the “Only segment members where…” option.

In this example, we will want the Workflow to trigger as soon as a user becomes eligible for the segment, so we will choose to trigger the Workflow “Immediately”.

Step 4. Create First Renewal Email

Just below the Start node, click the plus sign (+) and choose the Email message option to create your first renewal email!

Give your email a name to identify it by, and then click the “Create” button to open the email builder.

Now comes the fun part! Use the email builder to create the first out-of-product message your users will receive when they have an upcoming renewal. Feel free to get creative with it and explore options like including a custom property in the message or adding a button that links them to relevant renewal information.

Congratulations on creating your first email! Next, we’ll decide how soon the next step of the workflow should be triggered.

Step 5. Add a Time Delay

Just below your first email node, click the plus sign to add another node. This time, we will choose “Time delay” under the Logic category.

In the time delay settings, choose to trigger the next step “after a period of time”, and set it for 30 days. With users starting the workflow when they are close to 90 days away from their renewal, delaying the next step for 30 days will result in the next step of the workflow triggering around 60 days before their renewal date.

Step 6. Create a Second Renewal Email

Add another node after the time delay, and create the second renewal notice email you want users in this workflow to receive.

Step 7: Set Finish Criteria

Click the Finish node at the end of your workflow. This is where you will decide when the user exits the Workflow and how to handle users who have already finished it.

First, you will choose when users should exit the workflow. In this guide, we will choose to have users exit the workflow once they get to the end of it, but we can also use advanced settings to further control how users enter and exit this workflow.

The User time-out threshold lets you choose when a user will exit the workflow if they have not progressed or met the finish criteria. We’ve chosen 90 days because if 90 days have passed since the user entered the workflow, their renewal period will be over by that time.

We have also toggled on users must match a Start segment so that users who no longer match the renewal segment will exit the workflow and stop receiving related messages. (If a user is no longer eligible for the segment, they have either renewed or their subscription has become inactive.

Because users will likely be 90 days within their renewal date more than once, we want to allow users to re-enroll for the workflow. In this case, we’ve chosen to wait 30 days before allowing users to re-enroll.

Step 8: Publish Workflow

Now that we’ve created all of the steps for our workflow, we can publish it to allow users to start receiving renewal emails!

Click the Publish button in the top right corner, and you’re done!