Segment entry and exit-based automation is a flexible and powerful feature that allows you to create targeted and personalized workflows for your subscribers.

By utilizing segments in your automations, you can reach out to customers who are newly added, re-added, or have recently dropped out of a segment. This helps you stay connected with your audience and provide them with tailored content and offers that meet their needs and interests.

To set up automation based on the customer entry or exit of a particular segment, you will need to:

You may set up this type of automation by picking Custom workflow options or changing the trigger for any preset automations.

You may trigger the Customer to enter or exit the flow in the automation workflow settings. Here are a few essential facts about this trigger:

You should also choose whether you want to trigger the flow when contacts are re-added to the Segment. If you wish to turn on this option, ensure the Frequency setting is disabled.

💬 Check the instruction on the Segment-based trigger to find out what information can be added to the message.

It is totally up to you whether you want to add the Exit conditions to the automation flow, but we want to emphasize that you can use both Customer enter/Customer exit sequence rules there.

You should add an exit condition, "contact exists the segment," when you don't want the customer to go through the workflow if they are not in the segment anymore.

In this case, the exit condition is necessary because only with this exit condition the customer who is not in the segment anymore will immediately exit the automation while going through the sequence.

You can find more information on the Exit conditions set up in the corresponding article.
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By changing the Frequency setting, you may choose whether to trigger the sequence when the customer is re-added or removed from the Segment for the second time. If you leave Frequency disabled, the same contact can re-trigger the workflow; otherwise - no.

Let's simplify and say we have a segment based on the customer's city. One of our customers is from London. We then create a segment with the rule where the city is set to London. This customer qualifies with the rule, he enters the segment, and the automation gets triggered.

After some time, the customer updates the city to New York (exits the segment) and, after some time, changes it back to London (re-enters the segment). This is where your Frequency and Re-triggering settings click in and define whether the automation should be sent repeatedly (if chosen Yes) or not (if chosen No).

Whenever you make any changes to the rules of a segment that is used by automated workflows (entry or exit based), you will be prompted to question whether we should continue sending the automated emails based on the new rules.

Once the rules of the segment are changed, there are two options:

If any customers were in the middle of the flow (e.g., received 2/5 messages) and stayed in the new segment, they would continue to receive the rest of the messages. If they left the segment due to the new rules, they would not receive the left messages (the rest 3/5).

Automation workflows that contain segment entry or exit rules can be affected by the manual import of customers in case those newly added customers appear on the segments in use.

However, you have total control over whether you want to use them in automation. Every time you import your contacts manually, you are prompted to ask what should be done with these newly added contacts.

There are two options you can go with:

When it comes to automatically imported contacts (from your store) and contacts added after filling a form, those are considered organically added to a segment, and automation for them is sent automatically.

Suppose you wish to re-trigger the automation for the customers added to the Segment already. In that case, you can start from the video recording or look through the instructions below.

1. Disable the Frequency setting in the Automation workflow

When disabled, it allows a re-trigger of the automation for the customers who have entered the sequence already.

2. Remove contacts from the segment

Before we can push your contacts to re-enter the Segment and re-trigger the workflow, we need to remove them from the Segment. We suggest adding the rule that none of them will follow to remove contacts.

For example, you may add a date added parameter set to the date when your store isn't connected to Omnisend. Since your contacts will only meet this rule, they will be removed from the segment.

Once you apply the rule, you need to click on the Update button → Switch the toggle to send automated messages → Update.

3. Re-add contacts to the Segment

To re-add contacts to the Segment, you only need to remove the fake rule we added in the previous stage. However, at this point, we also need to let this change affect your automation performance.

Have any questions? Please email us at [email protected].