How a flow sends
A flow decides who is due and when. Its Settings tab holds the rest: the campaign it runs, the HubSpot form it sends through, the pace, Verify, and who enters and leaves.
Campaign
A flow runs one campaign. When a contact's time comes the flow calls the campaign and the campaign chooses the message from its pools. The flow does not pick a pool.
How it sends
mxAURA does the sending on the flow's own schedule. For each contact that is due it has the campaign choose the message, writes it to the contact, checks it is there, and submits a HubSpot form with the email address. The automation behind that form sends the email.
A workflow in HubSpot (Professional and up) can still call mxAURA directly through the app. That needs no flow.
On HubSpot Starter
Starter has no workflows beyond the simple one behind a form, which is why a flow sends this way. The setup in HubSpot is one step per form, done once: open the form, go to its Automation tab, and add Send email with the email this flow should send.
Check it with the extension. With the mxAURA Chrome extension signed in, open the form's Automation tab in HubSpot. A card at the bottom right checks four things: a flow in this account submits the form, the workflow Send a follow-up email after form submission is there, its switch is ON, and its Send email step sends the email the flow's campaign is built on. Anything wrong has Show me, which scrolls to it and outlines it. The card reads the page and changes nothing. Click its title to fold it away.
Different forms can send different HubSpot emails. Give each flow its own form and you have several templates in play.
Choosing the form
The list shows the portal's forms. Only a form that asks for an email address and requires nothing else can be used; the others are listed with the reason. Forms mxAURA made are marked.
No form yet? Press Create form beside the list. mxAURA makes an email-only form in your portal named after the flow (mxAURA: and the flow's name) and chooses it; if a usable form of that name is already there, it is reused instead. Save, then follow Open this form in HubSpot: on the form's Automation tab add Send email with the email this flow sends, and turn it on. mxAURA cannot set that automation for you on Starter. Then verify.
Pace
- Contacts a minute: 60 unless you change it. HubSpot allows far more; a steady pace is kinder to deliverability.
- Most in one day: optional.
- The flow sends in the background at that pace, checked every minute. It stops at once if HubSpot asks it to slow down, and carries on at the next run.
- Five failures in a row pause the flow and say why on the flow. Fix the cause, verify, activate again.
Verify
A flow that sends through a form cannot be activated until it has been verified once. Enter an address that is a contact in the portal and press Send one to verify. It is a real send through the whole path. When HubSpot accepts every step the flow is marked verified. If nothing is sent, the reason is written under the button in plain words, for example that the campaign has no message for that contact right now. Then check the inbox: if nothing arrives, the automation behind the form is missing or points at a different email.
Choosing a different form clears the verification.
What each contact shows
Enrollments, under Performance, carry the last result: sent, no message (nothing in the campaign applied this time), or the step that stopped it. A contact whose send failed is tried again 15 minutes later.
Re-enrollment
A contact leaves a flow when they stop matching, meet an exit condition, or reach its limit. Settings says what happens if they match again:
- Not allowed: they stay out. This is the setting for a new flow.
- Pick up where they left off: their count and stage are kept. The next message is due one gap after their last, or now if that has already passed.
- Start over: their record in the flow is reset, so the count goes back to zero and the first-message delay applies again. Their progress in the campaign is cleared too, so the campaign begins again from its first message for them. A note is written to Activity each time. Anything else that calls the same campaign for that contact sees the same reset.
Timing and stages
The Schedule tab sets when each contact's turn comes. Every contact runs on their own clock, counted from when they enter the flow. The flow decides when; the campaign decides which message.
- First message: how long after they enter. 0 sends at once.
- Then: stages, used in order. Press Add a stage and say how many messages and how far apart. For example: the next 2 messages a day apart, then the next 3 every 3 days.
- After the stages, every: the gap from then on. With no stages this is simply the gap between messages.
- Each length is a number and a unit: minutes, hours or days. The shortest gap is 1 minute.
Time of day: As soon as it is due sends when the gap has passed, to the minute. Specific time and Random during day move each send to a time on the day it falls due, so use them with gaps of a day or more. The send window still applies to all three.
A turn where the campaign has nothing for the contact sends nothing and does not use up a stage. They are tried again after the same gap.
Limit
- Unlimited: the flow keeps calling the campaign for as long as the contact is in it.
- A number of messages: each contact gets at most that many from this flow, then they are finished.
- A date range: the flow sends only between the two dates. Leave either empty for no bound. After the end date contacts are marked finished.
Sending is checked every minute. New contacts are looked for every 15 minutes, or every minute if you set Polling Interval to that on the Schedule tab. With the minute check and a first message of 0 minutes, someone who starts to match gets their first message within a minute or two.
Performance
The Performance tab shows what the flow has done.
- Summary: how many contacts are in the flow now, finished, left, and ever enrolled; what was sent each day; and how each message did. Opens and clicks are kept by campaign, so when another flow or a HubSpot workflow uses the same campaign the message numbers are for the campaign as a whole, and the tab says so.
- Enrollments: who is in the flow, their step, and when they are next due.
- Errors: if the flow paused itself, the reason. Below it, Contacts a send stopped on: the step it stopped at, why, how many messages they have had, and when it is tried again.
The tab is built from daily counts and each contact's latest state. mxAURA does not keep a log of every send.