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How it works

From install to the first report, and what happens to every single message on the way.

1. Install from Shopify

Retain Flow is a Shopify app. You install it from the Shopify App Store, and you sign in through Shopify every time. PLACEHOLDER: App Store link, once the listing is approved.

When you install, Retain Flow reads what it needs from your store: orders (amounts, dates, refunds, payment status), products for email blocks, your customer segments, and each customer’s marketing consent per channel. The privacy policy lists exactly what is kept and for how long. Order history covers the last 60 days until Shopify approves access to older orders, and the app tells you which period your reports cover.

2. Set up your channels

A checklist shows each channel’s status: ready, action needed, waiting for approval or unavailable.

Channel What you do What happens next
Email Nothing to start. Later, add the DNS records the app shows for your domain You send from our shared domain at low limits, then from your own domain once its records check out
SMS Choose a sender name and provide your business documents The network approves the branded sender
WhatsApp Connect your WhatsApp Business account through Meta’s signup, and add a payment method with Meta Meta reviews your message templates, usually within a day
Web push Turn on the Retain Flow app embed in your theme editor Your prompt appears on your storefront

Turn on the signup popup, or rely on the consent shoppers already give at Shopify checkout. Consent for email, SMS and WhatsApp is synced both ways with Shopify: a change in either place shows up in the other. Web push consent is the browser permission itself. Joining loyalty never counts as agreeing to marketing.

4. Build a campaign or an automation

Start from a template or a blank journey. The campaign wizard asks, in order:

  1. Audience: a Shopify segment, narrowed to shoppers you can reach.
  2. Channel and content: a main channel, and optionally an ordered list of fallback channels.
  3. Schedule and send rules.
  4. Goal and control group: what counts as a conversion, the attribution window per channel, and the share of shoppers held back.
  5. Review: how many shoppers are eligible, everyone excluded and why, the sender, the estimated cost and your spending cap.
  6. Publish.

Test sends go only to the test recipients you pick. Goal, windows and control group lock when the campaign starts, so results can’t be reshaped afterwards.

5. Every message is checked before it is sent

Campaigns and automations share one engine, so every message passes the same six checks, in this order:

  1. Control group. Shoppers in the control group get nothing.
  2. Consent and suppression for that channel.
  3. Exit and purchase stop. A shopper who has ordered, cash on delivery included, leaves the journey.
  4. Frequency cap per channel and shopper.
  5. Quiet hours. SMS, WhatsApp and push wait until 09:00 shopper’s time, for up to 12 hours, and are skipped after that. Email has no quiet hours.
  6. Spending cap. Paid messages reserve their cost first. With no cap set, nothing paid is sent.

A message that fails a check is skipped or held, never quietly dropped, and the reason is recorded where you can see it. Transactional messages, such as loyalty notices and consent confirmations, skip only the frequency cap, quiet hours and control group. Cart recovery counts as marketing.

All of these limits have defaults, and you can change them per store.

6. Fallback

If you’ve set fallback channels, Retain Flow moves to the next one in three cases only: the shopper can’t be reached on the first channel (no consent or no contact), the message failed or wasn’t delivered in time, or, if you choose, there was no click after a wait you set. It never falls back because an email wasn’t opened, and when it doesn’t know whether a message arrived, it finds out before sending anything else.

7. Read the results

Reports show the sales a campaign added compared with its control group, sales within each channel’s window, late orders kept apart, cash-on-delivery orders until they’re paid, and the cost of each channel. You decide what to change next.

If you uninstall

All sending stops. Shopify tells us 48 hours after you uninstall, and we then delete your store’s data, keeping only records that hold no customer data (privacy request records and our access log). See the privacy policy.