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Channels and features

Four channels on one engine. Each channel keeps its own consent, its own limits and its own opt-out, and every message passes the same checks.

Retain Flow is opening to its first stores. Each channel switches on for a store once its provider approvals are complete, and the app shows every channel as ready, action needed, waiting for approval or unavailable. You can explore and build while a channel is pending, but nothing sends through it until it’s ready.

Email

  • Sent through Amazon SES in the Mumbai region (ap-south-1).
  • A separate sending reputation for every store. Each store is its own SES tenant, with its own suppression list and its own automatic pause. One store’s bad list can’t drag down another store’s inbox placement.
  • Sending from day one. Before you set up your domain, your store sends from our authenticated shared domain, mail.retainflow.io, at low limits. The app then shows the DNS records for your own domain (DKIM, a custom MAIL FROM and DMARC). Once they check out, your store sends from its own domain. New domains are warmed up gradually, most engaged shoppers first.
  • Unsubscribe in one click. Every marketing email carries a one-click unsubscribe header (RFC 8058) and a visible unsubscribe link. Unsubscribes take effect immediately and are written back to the customer’s consent in Shopify.
  • Bounces and complaints suppressed automatically. Hard bounces and spam complaints are never sent to again.
  • Editor: text, image, button, divider and product blocks, a required footer, subject and preview text, personalization with fallbacks, a preview, and test sends to recipients you choose.

SMS in Pakistan

  • Your store’s name as the sender. A branded sender ID (“mask”), such as NOORLAWN, is sent through a local route that follows PTA rules, at local prices. The network approves each mask, and needs the store’s business documents for it. The SMS provider is being chosen from written quotes and tests on all four networks. PLACEHOLDER: name the SMS provider once it is contracted.
  • Opt-out in every promotional message: “send UNSUB to <number>” to stop that store’s promotions, and “send REG to 3627” for the national Do Not Call Register.
  • Segment and cost preview before sending. A message containing Urdu text or emoji uses more segments (70 characters each, not 160), and the preview shows it.
  • Quiet hours and limits by default: 09:00–21:00 shopper’s time, at most one SMS a day and four a week per shopper.
  • Numbers outside Pakistan are blocked by default.

WhatsApp

  • Meta’s own WhatsApp Business Platform (Cloud API). You connect your WhatsApp Business account through Meta’s signup flow, on your own number.
  • Approved templates only for messages that start a conversation, with each template’s status and category (Marketing, Utility, Authentication) shown. Free-form replies only inside WhatsApp’s 24-hour customer service window.
  • Meta bills you directly for its messages, at Meta’s own rates. Retain Flow adds a small, separately shown platform fee per message (see pricing). It never charges Meta’s cost a second time.
  • Consent per category, and opt-outs, blocks and Meta’s own marketing opt-out are honored.
  • Limits by default: 09:00–21:00 shopper’s time, at most one marketing message a day and three a week per shopper.
  • No unofficial “WhatsApp Web” or QR-code tools, ever.

Web push

  • Standard browser push run by Retain Flow, with a separate key for every store. No push vendor sits in between, so there’s no per-subscriber fee.
  • Turn on the Retain Flow app embed in your theme. Shoppers see your own short prompt first and the browser’s permission prompt only if they say yes. Where privacy law requires consent for marketing, the prompt waits until the shopper has accepted it.
  • Works in current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on Mac. On iPhone and iPad, Apple allows web push only when the store is opened from a Home Screen icon; that support is planned for later.
  • Limits by default: 09:00–21:00 shopper’s time, at most two pushes a day per shopper. Browsers that haven’t shown or clicked a push in 90 days are treated as dormant.

Every promotional link goes through a Retain Flow link domain, on a subdomain for your store. That is how clicks are counted for every channel. Discount links apply the code automatically on your store. Links only lead to your own store, and a store’s links can be paused if they’re misused. PLACEHOLDER: the link domain is not bought yet.

On-site signup

A popup on your storefront asks shoppers to sign up, with a separate yes for each channel. It uses Shopify’s own visitor API, and the consent it collects is saved to the customer in Shopify.

Automations and campaigns

  • Templates: welcome, cart and checkout recovery, after purchase, win-back and new arrivals.
  • Journey editor: triggers, conditions, waits, sends with a fallback channel, and exits. A purchase stops a journey; so does an opt-out.
  • Campaigns: one-time, recurring or event-triggered, built in a wizard: audience, channel and fallback order, schedule and send rules, goal and control group, then a review of who’s eligible, who’s excluded and why, the sender, and the estimated cost and spending cap.
  • Fallback, in three cases only: the shopper can’t be reached on that channel, the message failed, or (if you choose) there was no click after a set wait. Never on email opens, and each fallback channel checks its own consent.

Audiences

Start from your Shopify customer segments, or send any segment to Retain Flow straight from the Shopify admin. Retain Flow narrows it to shoppers who can be reached and have agreed to the channel. Membership is checked when the campaign starts, not cached.

Reports

  • What was added: sales from shoppers who got a message, compared with a control group who got nothing.
  • What followed: sales within each channel’s attribution window. Orders that came in after the window are shown separately and never added to attributed revenue.
  • Cash on delivery: COD orders are shown apart from paid orders until they’re paid.
  • Costs per channel beside the results, and exports.

Loyalty (later)

Per-store points on paid orders, rewarded as Shopify discount codes, with refunds reversing points. Loyalty joining is always separate from marketing consent. This arrives after the messaging channels.