All of our automation workflows are triggered by specific events, such as an order being placed in your store, an abandoned cart, or a new opt-in. But what if you've just set up the automation and don't want to miss out on following up with orders that were placed a day or two ago?

For instance, if you've enabled the Customer Reactivation workflow with a 30-day delay, you don't have to wait for 30 days for the first email to be sent. You can simply use the "trigger retrospectively" setting in the preset automation workflows, which allows you to trigger the workflow retrospectively.

In this article, we'll walk you through which presets can be triggered retrospectively and how to set them up so you can maximize the potential of your automation workflows.

Enabling automation with retrospective triggering can be a powerful tool for reconnecting with customers who have previously engaged with your business. When you turn on this workflow, all contacts who met the filter conditions and took the triggering action before the automation was enabled will be added to the workflow based on the first delay. However, any contacts who fall outside the first delay time frame will not trigger the workflow.

For example, if your Customer Reactivation workflow has a 30-day delay, customers who placed an order 35 days ago will not be added.

With the delay setting, you have control over when the workflow is triggered and how far back in history it reaches. By setting the delay to 30 days, for instance, the Order Placed trigger will activate all workflows for orders placed within the previous 30 days. This allows you to stay connected with your customers and maximize the potential of your automation workflows.

The message from the sequence will be sent with the same delay. In other words, today, we will send the message for the order placed 30 days ago.

It's important to note that contacts added from the past will not receive messages immediately. Instead, they will go through the workflow based on when they took the triggering action.

For instance, if you enable the Customer Reactivation workflow today with a first delay of 30 days, customers who placed an order 20 days ago will receive the email 10 days from today. This allows for a more personalized and timely approach to reaching out to your customers.

If you use API integration, Shopify, and BigCommerce, you will see the Trigger retrospectively setting in your Customer Reactivation and Order Follow-up presets enabled by default.

Trigger Retrospectively setting is available with all event-based triggers. While it may be hidden in some presets, you can easily access it when creating a custom workflow and selecting an event-based trigger.

Please note if you use WooCommerce or other platforms, workflows created from the Customer Reactivation or Order Follow-up preset will be triggered retrospectively. If you don't want your automation to be retrospective, just create a custom workflow with the appropriate trigger.

If you wish to trigger some other workflow, you can choose the preset having the same trigger. For example, Order Feedback and Cross-Sell automation can be replaced with the Order Follow-up preset.

💬 Learn how you can save the design of the Email to the Templates and reuse it in a different flow.

If you'd like Omnisend to look back into your order history, you should select the workflow from the presets menu. To do this, proceed to the Automations tab → click on the Create workflow button → select the Order Follow-up workflow.

💡 Retrospective automations are checking the last order status and will be triggered with Placed Order trigger → current order status.

Welcome automation can be triggered for new contacts, subscribing to the Sign-up form created, or integrated with Omnisend. If you wish to trigger the workflow for existing contacts, you can use either one of the following options:

However, before any of these options can be used, you need to create a Segment for newsletter recipients.

💬 Learn how you can push contacts to the Segment.

If your Welcome sequence has a complicated setup with multiple messages, Splits, and A/B testing, the best solution is to change the trigger to the Segment-based one and push your contacts to the Segment.

💬 Find instructions on how you can trigger the flow for contacts that are added to the Segment already.

One of the most straightforward solutions is to save the content of your Welcome sequence as a template and use it in the Email Campaign design. You can also launch an SMS or Push Notifications Campaign to send your Welcome invitation.

If you still have any questions or need any assistance, do not hesitate to contact our Support Team via in-app chat or at [email protected].