Process Components
Workflow Process Components Overview
What are the different types of processes available in Workflow?
The Process section has two types:
- Flow Control: Random Split, Merge.
- Conditions: Simple Condition, Multi-Way Condition, Email Activity.
Random Split Component
What is Random Split in Automation?
Random Split is a component that splits contacts randomly into multiple paths based on defined percentages.
How does Random Split work?
When contacts reach the Random Split component, they’re randomly distributed into the configured paths. You can adjust the percentage for each path as needed.
What is the main purpose of using Random Split?
To divide a large number of contacts into smaller groups for testing, targeting, or sending different content.
Can you customize the percentage of the split?
Yes. You can customize the percentage allocation for each path in the Random Split component based on your campaign requirements. For example, you can route 70% of your contacts down one path and the remaining 30% down another, allowing you to test different messaging strategies, offers, or nurturing approaches at scale while maintaining full control over audience distribution.
Is Random Split the same as Simple Condition?
No. Simple Condition and Random Split serve different purposes in a workflow. Simple Condition routes contacts based on specific rules or criteria, such as contact field values or campaign activity, ensuring that each contact follows a path determined by their behavior or attributes.
Random Split, on the other hand, distributes contacts across multiple paths purely at random, without evaluating any conditions. This makes Random Split ideal for testing variations, while Simple Condition is best suited for logic-driven decision-making.
Can you use Random Split to send different content to different users?
Yes. You can use the Random Split component to send different versions of emails to separate groups of contacts within the same workflow. Each group can receive a unique subject line, message content, or call to action. This allows you to compare key performance metrics such as opens, clicks, and conversions, helping you understand which version resonates better with your audience and refine future campaigns based on real engagement data.
Merge Component
What is the Merge component in Automation?
The Merge component combines two or more separate paths in a workflow into a single unified path. It allows contacts that were previously split using components such as Random Split or conditions to rejoin and continue through the workflow together. This helps ensure that, regardless of the path a contact took earlier, they can receive a common follow-up action, such as a shared email, notification, task assignment, or workflow exit.
When should you use the Merge component?
Use the Merge component after splitting contacts into different paths when you want all of them to come back together and proceed with the same next step in the workflow. This is especially useful when contacts have received different messages, offers, or nurturing actions but need to be treated uniformly afterward; for example, to receive a common follow-up email, trigger a sales notification, assign a task, or exit the workflow together. Merge helps streamline workflows by avoiding duplicate actions across multiple paths while ensuring a consistent experience for all contacts moving forward.
Does the Merge component affect how contacts are processed?
No. The Merge component doesn’t change how contacts are evaluated or processed within the workflow. It simply reconnects multiple paths into a single flow. All actions configured in an individual path—such as sending emails, applying tags, updating fields, or waiting for a defined period—are completed before contacts reach the Merge component. Once merged, contacts continue together to the next step without re-triggering or skipping any prior actions.
Do you need to use Merge after every split?
No, you don’t need to use the Merge component after every split in a workflow. Merge should be used only when your workflow requires all branches to come back together and continue with the same subsequent action or path. If each branch is intended to end differently—such as exiting the workflow, triggering separate actions, or following distinct, long-term nurturing paths—there’s no need to merge them. Using Merge selectively helps keep workflows simpler, more efficient, and easier to manage.
Can Merge be used before exiting a workflow?
Yes. The Merge component can be used before exiting a workflow to bring contacts from multiple paths back into a single flow. This ensures that all contacts, regardless of the path they followed earlier, reach the same endpoint in the workflow.
Using Merge at this stage is helpful when you want contacts to perform a final common action, such as receiving a closing email, triggering a notification, updating a field, assigning a task, or exiting the workflow uniformly. It helps maintain consistency, avoids duplicate exit actions across different paths, and ensures the workflow ends in a clean and controlled manner.
Can you notify your sales team only once after multiple nurturing paths?
Yes. After proceeding through the different nurturing paths, merge the contacts and add a step to notify your sales team or assign a task so it happens only once.
What if you sent different emails to different groups? How do you bring them back to one flow?
Add a Merge component after the email actions so all contacts rejoin and receive a common follow-up.
Simple Condition Component
What is a Simple Condition component?
This component splits the workflow based on whether contacts meet a specific condition and sends them down the Yes or No path.
What happens if the condition isn’t met?
If a contact doesn’t meet the defined condition in a Simple Condition component, they’re automatically routed through the No or Else path. This ensures that every contact continues to move forward in the workflow, even when the specified criteria aren’t satisfied.
The No or Else path is commonly used to handle fallback scenarios, such as sending a different follow-up message, placing contacts into a separate nurturing sequence, or taking no immediate action while still keeping them within the workflow. This helps marketers design complete, logic-driven journeys without leaving any contacts unaccounted for.
Can you branch the workflow using conditions?
Yes. Using the Simple Condition component, you can split a workflow into True and False paths based on whether contacts meet a defined rule or criteria. This allows you to guide contacts down different paths depending on their data or behavior while ensuring the workflow remains structured and easy to manage.
Multi-Way Condition Component
What is a Multi-Way Condition component?
The Multi-Way Condition component lets you define multiple conditions in a single step and split contacts into several paths based on different criteria.
How is Multi-Way Condition different from Simple Condition?
Simple Condition checks one condition with two outcomes: Yes or No. Multi-Way Condition allows multiple conditions and multiple paths.
What type of conditions can you use in a Multi-Way Condition?
You can use:
- Field values (e.g., Country, Gender).
- Campaign behavior (e.g., Email Opened, Link Clicked).
- Date fields (e.g., Signup Date, Birthday).
When should you use Multi-Way Condition in automation?
Use it when you want to categorize contacts into three or more groups based on different criteria and send each group a unique follow-up.
Email Activity Process
What is an email activity process?
This process lets contacts enter the workflow based on their past email activity.
Let’s say you want to list contacts based on their various email activities—like opened, not opened, and opened—but haven’t clicked on any link. You can use this component by first selecting the email message where various activities have been performed. Then select the desired actions you want contacts to take, without having clicked on any link. Contacts who’ve performed the selected actions will move into their respective paths in the workflow. Next, you can set further actions for contacts to perform based on which path they’ve taken.
How do you add an email activity process into your workflow?
To configure email activity, follow the steps below:
- From the Navigation toolbar, select Automation and click Workflows.
- Click Create Workflow and select a workflow template.
- From the left panel, drag and drop a trigger onto the canvas.
- Drag and drop the Email Activity action from the left panel under the trigger.
- Click Configure and select an email.
- Select the email actions contacts should perform to enter the workflow.
- Click Done.
How does the email activity process work?
Contacts will enter into further processes of the workflow only once, after they initially satisfy the selected conditions.
For example, if the email activities selected are sent, opened, and clicked, a contact who has performed all three actions will enter all three corresponding paths. A contact who initially performed only one action will enter only that path. Even if the contact performs the remaining actions later, they won’t be allowed to enter those paths again. Contacts can enter further paths of the workflow only if they meet the conditions at the beginning.
Can the email activity process be used for plain text campaigns?
This workflow cannot be created for plain text campaigns because opens and clicks for those emails cannot be tracked.
What activities can the Email Activity component track?
It can track Delivered, Not Sent, Opened, Not Opened, Replied, Opened but Didn’t Reply, Skipped, Clicked on any link, Opened but didn’t click on any link, and Clicked on a specific link.
Set a wait time before this component so that the last action of the contact will be tracked.
Note: Contacts will enter additional processes of the workflow only once when they initially satisfy the selected conditions. For plain text campaigns, opens will be tracked only if links in the email are clicked.
How does the Email Activity component work?
After sending an email, the component waits for a defined period and then checks the selected activity. Based on the result, it directs contacts into the appropriate path.
Is this component useful for engagement-based follow-ups?
Yes. It’s useful for triggering follow-up actions based on how contacts interacted with your emails.
How can you follow up only with people who didn’t open your first email?
Use the Email Activity component:
- If Not Opened, resend the email with a new subject line
- If Opened, move them to the next step or send a new offer.
Can you check email opens or clicks in a condition?
Yes. Use the Email Activity condition to evaluate whether contacts have opened an email or clicked a link. This allows you to branch contacts based on their engagement and trigger follow-up actions that are aligned with their interaction level.
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