Edit a Marketing Automation Flow

After you activate a marketing automation flow, you may need to make changes. Pause all or part of your flow to edit your rules and actions, change your triggers, remove steps, and more.

In this article, you'll learn how to pause and edit a marketing automation flow.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• To manually add contacts to your automation, the flow must be active.
• To learn more about automation flows, how they work, and what you can do with your plan, check out About Marketing Automation Flows.

Edit flow settings

Access your flow settings to change the flow name or marketing objective, manually add or remove contacts from the flow, or choose whether contacts can repeat the flow after they complete it.

Here are the editable flow settings and what they mean.

• Flow Name
  The name of your automation flow. This is for internal use only, so contacts won’t see it.
• Marketing objective
  What you want to accomplish with your flow. Set your marketing objective to help Mailchimp provide more personalized recommendations and reporting. You can edit this setting in draft or paused flows only.
• Contacts can re-enter flow
  Allows contacts to repeat a flow multiple times. Set the minimum amount of time a contact must wait before re-entering the flow.
• Exit condition
  Removes contacts from the flow when they meet the selected condition, even if they haven’t completed the flow.
• Manually add contacts
  Manually add contacts to the flow who haven’t been added through a trigger, or who were previously removed. You can edit this setting in active flows only.
• Manually removes contacts
  Manually remove contacts from the flow, or prevent them from starting the flow in the first place.
• Track clicks
  If you have Google Analytics connected to your Mailchimp account, you can enable or disable link tracking for all email actions within the flow.

Pause or unpause an Automation Flow

To make changes to a flow’s trigger, rules, and actions, pause the entire flow. Pause an individual step to make changes to that step without disrupting the rest of the flow.

Pause or unpause an Automation Flow map

Pause the entire flow to make changes to any triggers, rules, and actions. While a flow is paused, contacts won’t move through the flow.

To pause an automation flow, follow these steps.

1. Click Automations, then click All flows.
2. Click the drop-down arrow for the flow you want to work with and choose View flow.
3. Click Pause & Edit.
4. In the pop-up modal, click Pause.

When you’re ready to restart your flow, click Turn back on.

Contacts at a Time delay step will move to the next rule or action if the flow was paused longer than the time set for the delay.

Pause or unpause a step

Pause an individual step to make changes to that step without disrupting the rest of the flow. Contacts will continue to queue for the paused step while you edit. Keep in mind that you may need to pause the full flow to make changes that will affect the rest of the flow.

To pause an individual flow step, follow these steps.

1. Click Automations, then click All flows.
2. Click the drop-down arrow for the flow you want to work with and choose View flow.
3. Click the three vertical dots for the step you want to pause. Then click Pause.

When you’re ready to restart your individual step, click the three vertical dots for the step. Then click Unpause.

Edit a trigger

When your flow is paused, you can make changes to an existing trigger, or add additional triggers.

To edit a trigger, follow these steps.

1. Click the trigger you want to change.
2. Click Change trigger.
3. Choose the trigger you want to work with. To learn more about the different types of triggers, read All the Marketing Automation Flow Triggers.
4. Choose the specific settings for your trigger type. For example, if you choose Tag added, you’ll then choose which tag to work with.
5. Optional: Click Filter who can enter this flow to use segmenting conditions to filter your trigger.
6. Click Save trigger.

Copy and paste a step

Copy and paste a step to replicate a rule or action with its settings. After you paste, click the copied step to customize it.

To copy and paste a step, follow these steps.

1. Click the three vertical dots for the rule or action you want to work with, then click Copy.
2. Click Paste here in the location you want to place the copied step.
3. Click the copied step to customize.

Move a contact to another path

The Move a contact feature merges the flow after a conditional or percentage split. You can move a contact from the end of any path to a different path in the flow as long as it won’t create an infinite loop. A flow must have at least one step under a branch before the drop-down appears.

Move a contact to another path

To add a contact to another path, follow these steps.

1. Click the Contact exits drop-down at the end of a path. The drop-down is displayed only for contacts that can be moved.
2. Click Move to another path.
3. Click on a Move here option on the map where the contact should go.

The map displays a dashed line to the new entry point, Contact Enters.

Exit flow

To delete a joined path, follow these steps.

1. Click the Contact moves drop-down at the converged path you want to delete.
2. Click Exit flow to remove the converged path.

Edit a rule or action

When your flow is paused, you can make changes to any rule or action. Each available action and rule has unique settings that you can edit.

• Conditional split
• Wait for trigger
• Time delay
• Percentage split
• Send email
• Webhook
• Group/ungroup
• Tag/untag
• Unsubscribe
• Update contact
• Archive contact
• Send email with a survey
• Meta Custom Audience
• Send SMS

To edit a rule or action, follow these steps.

1. Click the rule or action you want to work with.
2. Edit the rule or action settings.
3. Click Save.
   If you’re working in a Send email or Send email with a survey, you’ll click Close.

To remove a rule or action on the map, click it and then click Remove. Follow the prompt to remove the rule or action.