Introduction

First impressions last forever!

Creating meaningful experiences for the users as soon as they install our app or sign up on our website, provides us an opportunity to create a lasting impact and make them reach the "Aha moment" sooner. This in turn will have them hooked to the offering and take them in the path towards becoming a loyal user. Thus, a well crafted welcome journey helps in onboarding, engaging, and retaining our users in the long run.

In this article, we will use MoEngage Flows to create a welcome experience for new users on your e-commerce store. We will send communications to the users based on their actions on the first visit. Example actions:

• User has not created an account with us.
• User has created an account but has not made a purchase.
• User created an account and made their first purchase in the same session.

The third branch is especially helpful when users create an account during the checkout process. This is an important branch because it is a common behavior in e-commerce.

Expected Result

Users receive a Push Notification on their phone as a welcome message:

Create a Flow

In this section, let us create a Flow to engage with your customers and welcome them to the app.

Add Flow Details

1. Navigate to the sidebar on the left and click Engage > Flows and click + Create flow, or click + Create new, and then click Flow. The Create new flow page is displayed.
2. Use the “Onboard Customers - Single Channel” or ”Onboard Customers - Multi-channel” template and customize it or click + Start with a blank canvas to start building your flow for the use case from scratch.
   
   You are taken to the first step “Details and goals”.
3. Enter the following flow details:
   
   • Flow Name: Enter a flow name. For example, "Welcome Journey".
   • Flow tags: Select the required flow tags.
4. Under the Conversion goal section, turn the Exit on conversion toggle on to exit users who convert by doing the event “Product Purchased”. This is your primary conversion goal, which triggers when a user purchases a product.
   
5. Click Next to move the second step “When will users enter the flow”. This step helps you define when to allow the user by mentioning the trigger conditions. For our example, the event can be “User Installs the App”.
6. In the IF user section, select the event “User Installs the App” that gets triggered when a user installs your app.
7. In the THEN enter the user section, select the Immediately option.
   
8. In the Flow Schedule section, define a start time and an end time to the flow if required. By default, the flow will start “As soon as possible” and will never end.
9. Turn the Limit user entry into this flow toggle on to define the maximum time a user can enter the flow. Defining such limits helps you control users from re-entering the flow repeatedly and thus avoid spamming them too much, which in turn provides a better user experience.
   
10. Click Next to move to the third step “Who will enter the flow”. This is where you select the target audience and control groups for your Flow.
11. In the Audience section, select All users. For a user to be eligible to enter an event-triggered flow, they must be part of the target audience before they do the required event.
    
12. Click Next to move to the canvas section where you can define the Flow structure that you want the user to move through.

Define Flow Structure

1. Click the + icon. A drawer is displayed.
2. Under Conditions, add the entry condition as “Conditional Split”.
3. Use this stage to define checks that split users: 
   
   • Who have signed up and purchased a product by themselves in one branch
   • Who have signed up alone in a different branch 
   • Who have not even signed up, in the default branch.
     
4. For the first branch, from the drop-down list under the Users enter this branch if section, search for the event “Sign Up” and click  + Filter to search and add the “Product Purchased” event.
5. For the second branch, search and add the “Sign Up” event alone. You can also name each of the branches for better discoverability about what each branch is for.
6. Turn the Keep evaluating for the next toggle on and enter a suitable value because this is the maximum time a user is evaluated for in Branch 1. However, users who have done both the events in this case or who match the condition of Branch 1 move immediately. For more information, refer to Branching of Users via Condition Stages.
   
7. In each branch, we send campaigns based on the context.
   • In the first branch, we send a Push Notification welcoming and thanking the users who have signed up and purchased a product.
   • In the second branch, we nudge users to purchase a product of their interest after signing up.
   • In the last branch, we have users who just installed the app and not created an account. We nudge them to sign-up to get the most of the app.
8. Use additional information about the user such as the user's name, gender, or any other information to personalize the message while editing your action campaign. Personalized messages can perform better than generic messages because the users feel valued and connected to the brand. For more information, refer to Personalization in Flows.
9. After defining an Action campaign, add a Has done event stage to check if the user has performed the action you are trying to nudge them to. For branch 2, the event is “Product Purchased”, while the default branch is “Sign up”.
10. Turn the Keep evaluating for the next toggle on to define the maximum time to wait for the user to execute the event. You can enter any time limit that you deem fit.
11. In the Yes path, you can add “Goto” stages to move the user from one path to the other by connecting to a stage from a different path. For example, you can add a "Goto" stage in the "Has done event" stage’s Yes path of Branch 2 to the Action stage of Branch 1.
    
    
    
    
12. Add as many action campaigns you want to nudge the user in the No path. Make sure to have some gap between any two communications to avoid spamming the user by using a Wait stage, especially in the Yes path of your “Has done events”. For more information, refer to Add Controls to Flow.
    
13. Click Publish.

Conclusion

In this use case, we created a Flow to create an impressive welcome experience for new users.

• Now that we have published the Flow, we can analyze how well our Flow is performing.
• We can understand how many users entered the flow because of our campaign. Create a segmentation on the “User Entered Flow” event by mentioning the “Flow ID”. For more information, refer to Users who have entered/exited the Flow.
• We can also understand how many users actually converted because of our campaign. Create a segmentation on the “Flow Trip Conversion” event by mentioning the “Flow ID”. For more information, refer to Conversion Tracking and Attribution in Flows.