What a flow is

Every salon has a list of things it means to do and doesn't: thank people after a visit, say happy birthday, chase the client who hasn't been in since March. A flow is that list, done by the software, every time, without anybody remembering.

Apps → Marketing → Flows.

Three pieces

Every flow is a trigger, some steps, and usually a goal.

The trigger is what starts it. Fourteen to choose from, and they're events in the salon rather than dates: an appointment completed, booked or cancelled; a set number of days before an appointment; a new client added; a client's birthday; a sale closed; a membership started or cancelled; a package sold; a form submitted; membership or package credits about to expire. There's also Manual only, for a flow you start people through yourself.

The steps are what happens next, in order. Send a text, send an email, wait two days, then send another. A step can also branch on a condition — one message for clients tagged VIP and a different one for everyone else — or A/B split to try two versions against each other. Beyond messaging, a step can add or remove a tag, credit a balance, grant an offer, send a portal link or create a task for the front desk.

The goal is what you wanted to happen: books an appointment, starts a membership, buys a package or a gift card, submits a form — within a window you set. The flow then tells you what share of the people it enrolled actually did it, which is the difference between knowing it ran and knowing it worked.

How that differs from a campaign

A campaign is one message, to a group you choose, at a moment you choose. A flow is one message per client, whenever the thing that starts it happens to them.

That's why a campaign has an audience and a flow has a trigger. "20% off this Friday" goes to a list. "Thanks for coming in" can't — it has to wait for each person's visit to end.

The other real difference is attention. A campaign is a decision you make each time; a flow is a decision you made once and are now living with. Which is the whole point, and the whole risk.

Draft, active, inactive

A flow you're building is a Draft and sends nothing. Activate is the moment it becomes real — from then on it enrols clients and messages them with no further action from you.

Deactivate stops new enrolments. Archived files it away for good.

The list shows all of it at a glance: the trigger under each name, how many steps, how many clients are enrolled, and what share reached the goal — with the same totals across every flow in the strip above.