How to set up purchase follow-up workflows in Flodesk

Post-purchase workflows in Flodesk help you automatically follow up with customers after a purchase is completed. These workflows can be used to request reviews, cross-sell products, or build long-term customer relationships.

This article explains how the feature works and how to set it up.

Note: This feature is currently in beta and is being gradually rolled out, so it might not be available to all members yet.

A purchase follow-up workflow is an automated series of emails sent to a customer after they complete an order. These emails are designed to:

• Request feedback or reviews

• Recommend related products

• Encourage repeat purchases

Important: All emails within a post-purchase workflow are standard marketing emails; therefore, only confirmed/active subscribers will receive the emails in these workflows.

Flodesk currently integrates with Flodesk Checkout or your Shopify store to detect completed purchases. When an order is marked as complete:

• The workflow is triggered automatically

• The customer receives emails based on the sequence you design

Important: Subscribers added to a waitlist for a Flodesk Checkout product will not trigger the workflow. They will only trigger once an actual purchase has been completed.

Step 1.

Navigate to Workflows in your Flodesk dashboard and click + New Workflow

Step 2.

Choose Purchase follow-up and select one of the Purchase follow-up workflow templates to customize

Step 3. 

Choose a starting trigger: “Makes a purchase” > “On the store [currently: Flodesk Checkout or Shopify]”.

In the below example, we have selected Flodesk Checkout as the connected store. 

Once you select a store from the dropdown, you will have the ability to toggle whether the workflow is filtered by a specific product that has been purchased.

• If the toggle is [Off], the workflow will trigger any time a purchase is made on the store, regardless of which product(s) are purchased.

• If the toggle is [On], the workflow will only trigger if the purchase includes the specific product selected from the dropdown.

Important: Once toggled to [On], a dropdown will appear where you can select one single product to filter on. This is not multi-select. Only one product can be selected per workflow.

• If the selected product is already being used as the trigger for another published workflow, you will see a notification informing you of this. However, you will not be blocked from publishing the workflow.

• For Flodesk Checkout, you can select draft, published, or unpublished Checkouts. 

For third-party integrations, like Shopify, the product lists are sorted alphabetically.

Step 4. 

Customize the rest of the workflow based on your needs by adding/editing Time Delays, Emails, Conditions, Actions.

Step 5. 

Once you’re ready, click the Settings button in the top right corner to

• Enable/disable subscribers to go through this workflow multiple times

• Prevent subscribers from entering or continuing in this workflow

Prevent re-entry when:

• You only want to send follow-up once per customer (e.g., as part of a thank-you or welcome strategy).

• You offer a one-time use incentive, like a discount or gift that shouldn’t be re-issued for each order.

• You want to avoid overwhelming customers with repetitive messages if they order frequently in a short time.

Example: If someone buys three times in a week, they may not need to get three separate sets of follow-up emails.

Additionally, use the "Wait time before repeating" option to control how often subscribers should be able to repeat your purchase follow-up workflow.

Over time, some subscribers may stop engaging with your emails—and continuing to email them can harm your sender reputation. You may want to exclude unengaged subscribers from your workflow, or those in your "Do Not Disturb" segment.

Another common reason to exclude certain subscribers from a workflow is to ensure they don’t receive duplicate or irrelevant communications.

Example: If someone signs up for your membership program, you might add them to a specific segment tied to that membership. Within the membership, you may already have a separate process in place for collecting feedback. In this case, you’d want to exclude those subscribers from entering this workflow—so they’re not asked for reviews in two different ways.

Excluding them helps you maintain a more tailored and professional subscriber experience.

Step 6. 

If everything looks as you intended, click Publish > Publish now to take your workflow live.

Review Request Email

• Sent 5–7 days after purchase completion

• Includes product image and link to review page

Cross-sell Workflow

• Sent 3–7 days after order

• Recommends complementary items based on past purchase

• Use the customer’s name, and if you’ve created a product-specific workflow, the purchased product in the email

• Include a clear CTA: “Leave a review,” “Shop related items”

• Keep design consistent with your brand

• Test timing, subject lines, and discount incentives

Yes. The post-purchase trigger can be used multiple times for the same store. This means that, for example, you could have 5 post-purchase workflows for your Shopify store that are unique to 5 different products.

Yes. You can start building a post-purchase workflow from scratch. When starting a workflow from scratch, select the “Makes a purchase” trigger from the trigger dropdown menu under the Trigger step, then choose or connect a store.

Build the rest of the workflow according to your needs, by adding Emails, Time Delays,  Conditions, Actions.

Yes. All emails within a post-purchase workflow are standard marketing emails. Only confirmed/active subscribers will receive the emails in these workflows.