What is Shopify Plus Flow and How to Use It

Picture this: You want to keep an eye on all negative reviews left by unsatisfied customers so you can reach out to them with a win-back email sequence. You want to send welcome and thank you messages to all your new customers for their first orders. You also want to track a high-risk order, so you don’t lose money.

But you’ve got to do this over and above the normal business operations of checking for inventory changes, adding new products, notifying vendors when you have low inventory, and marketing your business. 

All this can be a lot to deal with, especially with a large eCommerce store. What's worse, it takes away focus from your vision, which is growing your business.

Now, to help you focus on the bigger picture, you need to automate most of these repetitive tasks to not miss any. 

And Shopify Flow does just that.  

So...

What Exactly Is Shopify Flow?

Shopify Flow is an app exclusive to Shopify Plus store owners and helps automate mundane tasks. 

Here’s a video with a brief overview of what this app is all about.

The automated workflows can either be chosen from a list of pre-designed templates or custom-built within your browser by a Shopify Expert like Pivofy. 

The best part of using Shopify Flow is that it doesn’t require any coding knowledge. What’s more, it’s displayed by an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easier for you to create your automated processes easily.

How, Then, Do You Leverage Shopify Flow for Your Store?

Creating a workflow on Flow is pretty simple. It only takes three steps:

• Creating a trigger
• Setting the conditions and
• Specifying the actions that should be taken once the conditional statements have been fulfilled
  

Let’s look into this process further.

Step #1: Creating a Trigger

A trigger is an event that sets off the workflow. 

Nine default events trigger the automation. They include when:

• A draft or live order is created
• An order is fulfilled and paid
• A new customer is created
• An order is analyzed for risk
• A refund has been issued
• A product has been created and
• Inventory has changed (decreased or increased)
  

Here’s an example

The automation is set to start whenever an order is flagged with a new risk level for this workflow, whether low or high. 

Step #2: Setting Conditions

Here, you set rules that the event must fulfill for an action to be taken. 

You don’t need to invent these conditional statements because there are predesigned templates with over 100 rules to choose from. The conditions come in multiple variations, so you can customize them the way you see fit.

Here’s an example.

In this example, the conditional statements that need to be fulfilled are:

1. The order risk level should be high and
2. The order address shouldn’t match the shipping address
   

The best part is that you can get ultra-specific with the circumstances that result in a certain action with multiple conditional statements (more on this later).

Step #3: Designing the Desired Action

The action signifies the result of the workflow. 

There are various pre-built actions you can use on Shopify Flow. These are divided into 10 Shopify-focused actions and 6 on third-party apps, like Slack, Asana, or Google Sheets.

Some of the most common actions you can set after creating specific triggers include:

Trigger

Action

Customer trigger

• Update a customer note
• Add or remove a customer tag

Product trigger

• Add or remove a product tag
• Publish a product
• Hide a product

Order trigger

• Add or remove an order tag
• Capture an order payment
• Archive and unarchive an order
• Cancel an order
  

Here’s a practical example:

In this example, these two actions should be taken if an event fulfills the pre-set conditions:

1. Cancel the order
2. Add the customer tag “Fraud risk”

Setting up Multiple Conditions and Actions

As we mentioned earlier, you can set more than one conditional statement to be very specific about what you want automated. And with multiple rules comes multiple desired results.

So, how does this all come together?

When a trigger initiates the workflow:

• The system checks to see if it fulfills the rules set in Condition #1. If it does, then Action #1 will be taken. If not…
• It checks if the statements in Condition #2 are met. If they are, then Action #2 will be taken. If not, Condition #3 is considered
  

Here’s a flow chart showing the process taken.

If both conditional statements aren’t met, and you don’t have Condition #3, then no action will be taken.

Here’s what this process looks like on Shopify Flow.

In this example:

• Condition #1 is "if the order level is high and the order’s billing address doesn’t match shipping address", then take Action #1, which is "cancel the order" 
• Condition #2 is "if the order level is high and the order’s billing address matches the shipping address", then move to Action #2, which is to tag the order as “to be  reviewed”

Creating Custom Workflows

At times the pre-designed templates don’t fit the type of workflow you want to create. So, you need to build a custom template. This is extremely powerful especially for B2B Ecommerce merchants.

The best part about creating custom automation is Shopify does all the handy work for you (the coding). So, all you need to do is choose from the library of pre-designed triggers, conditions, and actions to set up a personalized process. 

Or better yet, find a Shopify Expert like Pivofy to come in and help you create your own.

Some customized business processes could include:

• Quickly identifying customers making larger purchases with tags to offer personalized experiences and discounts or
• Creating a sense of urgency on your products using a tag, like “A few pieces remaining”  and setting the product variant inventory quantity that will cause the tag to be published
  

Here’s an example.

Just like the previous example, this one has two sets of conditional statements and two actions.

• When Condition #1, “if a customer spent more than $800 on an order” is met, then Action #1, which is “Add a customer tag” and "send a slack message" is taken
• If Condition #1 isn’t met, then Condition #2, “if a customer spends more than $400 on an order” comes into play. If it’s fulfilled then Action #2 “Add customer tag” is taken
  

Here’s a short video practically showing the whole process.

Most Popular Workflows

Shopify Flow’s mission is to make it easier on you, the store owner, to focus on delivering quality to your customers and not spend more time than you should on everyday tasks.

You can automate essentially any business process.

Here are some of the most common workflows for eCommerce businesses.

Category

Workflow

Inventory

• Remove out-of-stock items from your store until you can restock
• Tag products that are low in stock
• Create reminders to send a Shopify flow note to suppliers or concerned departments when inventory quantity goes below a certain level

Loyalty and promotions

• Set up reminder emails to send when customers make large purchases
• Monitor how a discount code is used

Customers

• Add customer tags based on email addresses, postal code, shopping habits, order, or IP address
• Categorize customers by their lifetime spend
• Monitor customers that make big refunds

Orders

• Create gift card tags for paid orders
• Have notifications for irregularly large orders
• Notify relevant departments in your business when orders are placed or refunded

Products

• Add new products to specified collections based on keywords in the product title

Adding Shopify Flow Connectors

Shopify Flow connectors are third-party apps that you can use to add extra functionality to your workflows. 

To add these to your Shopify store, you’ll need the help of a team of developers like Pivofy to do it right.

Some of the ways third-party apps can boost Shopify Flow's functionality include:

• Getting an email whenever a negative review appears on Stamp.io Reviews or Yotpo Review, then have the customer support team create a support ticket on Georgias to help resolve it
• Creating a “high-risk customer” workflow in Klaviyo, that’s set off when a customer account gets an “at-risk” tag in LoyaltyLion
• Sending push notifications using PushOwl to notify your customers when you launch a new product or when an order is fulfilled

Use Shopify Flow Workflows for Easier Business Management

Shopify Flow automation helps you to focus on doing more for your eCommerce store in less time. 

Although setting up these workflows may be pretty simple, there are so many tasks and processes that need automation for a large business.

That’s why you need a specialist like Pivofy. 

As a certified Shopify Expert, our team will work with you to create workflows that work for your business. We’ll also recommend excellent apps you can use to make automation more efficient. 

Reach out to us today for exceptional services. 

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