The Advanced Autoresponder with custom email flow configuration
The Big Off/On Button
The Advanced Autoresponder has its own independent master toggle called “The Big Off/On Button.” This is separate from the Basic Autoresponder toggle. Turning off one does not affect the other.
Turning flows off with active members
Outpost checks for members who are partway through a flow in three places: when you switch off a flow in the flow list, when you save a flow in the editor with Enabled switched off, and when you switch off The Big Off/On Button. If members are partway through the flow, Outpost asks what to do with them before anything is saved. You get three choices:- Keep Running: Leave the flow on. If you were editing the flow, your other edits are saved with the flow still on.
- Finish Active Members, No New Ones: Turn the flow off so no new members enter it, but let everyone already in it finish the remaining steps. If you were editing the flow, your edits are saved with the flow off.
- Stop All Immediately: Turn the flow off and stop every active member right away. They receive no further emails from that flow. If you were editing the flow, your edits are saved with the flow off.
When you use The Big Off/On Button rather than a single flow, this prompt covers every advanced flow at once: Outpost tells you how many members are active across all your flows, and Stop All Immediately ends them in every flow in one step.
Creating a flow
Click “Add Flow” at the bottom of the page.
Flow name
A descriptive name for your reference (e.g., “30-Day Win-Back Sequence” or “VIP Member Welcome”).Public name
Optional. Members see this name in the email footer and on the unsubscribe page, where they can stop getting emails from this flow. Write it as a plural phrase, such as “Spring sale emails”. Under the field, Outpost shows what readers will see, for example “Stop getting Spring sale emails from Your Site”. If you leave it empty, readers see “Stop getting these emails from Your Site” instead. See Email preferences. Once members have stopped a flow this way, its card on the Advanced page shows how many, for example “3 members stopped this flow from the unsubscribe page”.Start condition
What triggers the flow. Choose from:
Timing options for day-based conditions: Immediately, 1–6 days, 1–10 weeks, or 1 month. (There’s no 7-, 8-, or 9-day option: the dropdown jumps from 6 days to 1 week, then 10 days, then 2 weeks and up.)
End condition
What stops the flow early (before all steps are sent):Marketing email toggle
Audience targeting
- Free: Free subscribers
- Paid: Paid subscribers (with optional tier filtering)
- Complimentary: Members with complimentary subscriptions
- Group Subscriber: Members with group subscriptions
- Institutional Subscriber: Members with institutional subscriptions
Some start conditions limit the membership type on their own. Days Before Renewal and Days After Subscription only ever send to paid members, whatever you check here, so free and complimentary members are never included in those flows.
Flows that send to existing subscribers
When the audience includes Paid, Complimentary, Group Subscriber, Institutional Subscriber, or All membership types, a warning appears under the audience options. It is a standing reminder rather than an error. To send an offer to readers who already have a subscription, set it up inside the step’s email. Open the email. If it has no offer button yet, click Click here to add a special offer to this email, which adds a Special Offer button and an Offer field. Then choose your offer in the Offer field, and save the email and the flow. The offer can be a Ghost offer or an Outpost promotion: either way, Outpost gives each reader their own link, and a paying subscriber gets a checkout that upgrades the subscription they already have. Readers with a seat in someone else’s group subscription, or covered by an institutional subscription, are told at checkout that they already have access and don’t need to buy a separate subscription. Don’t paste a Ghost offer link into the email yourself. If a subscriber clicks a pasted link while signed in, they’re told they already have a subscription. If they aren’t signed in, they can end up paying for a second one. Don’t give these readers a promo code either: they never see a checkout page where they could use it. See Upgrading existing subscribers for the full explanation. New flows start with All membership types checked, so the warning is on screen until you narrow the audience.Autoresponder exclusions
Under Exclude members in these autoresponders, choose which standard welcome emails stop for members who are in this flow:- Welcome Free
- Welcome Paid (e.g. thank you emails)
- Welcome Complimentary
Site-wide exclusions
Autoresponder Settings lets you globally exclude paid and complimentary members on specific Stripe prices, Stripe products, or Ghost tiers, and that includes Advanced Autoresponder flows. Free members are never checked there. In practice the Ghost tier rule is the one that applies to complimentary members, because most of them have no Stripe price or product. Excluding a tier therefore also stops flow email to any gift recipients, group subscription seat holders, and members you gave a complimentary subscription on it. An excluded member isn’t removed from an Advanced Autoresponder flow, they receive nothing from it while the exclusion applies. If they later move off the excluded price, product, or tier, the flow resumes and sends whichever steps they haven’t already received.Label filters
Label filters narrow the audience in addition to the membership types and start condition above, never instead of them. A member only gets the flow if they meet the start condition, fall into a checked membership type (when any are checked), and clear both label filters:- Include members labeled: members must have at least one of these labels to be eligible. A member without one is excluded even if they meet the start condition and membership type.
- Exclude members labeled: members with any of these labels are skipped, even if they meet everything else.
Flow actions (steps)
Each flow contains one or more action steps. Click “Add Action” to add a step.
Every step’s timing counts from when the member entered the flow, not from the step before it. For example, a flow whose steps show Immediately, 2 days later and 1 week later sends the first email when the member enters, the second two days after they entered, and the third one week after they entered. Outpost checks flows about every ten minutes and sends a member at most one email from a flow on each check, so if two steps come due together, they go out about ten minutes apart.
Each step must be timed later than the step above it. If two steps share a time, or a step is timed earlier than the one above it, the flow won’t save, and Outpost shows this message under the step: “Email sequences can’t have multiple emails go out at the same time. Please review and adjust the timing.”
Changing a flow that members are already in
Outpost keeps each member’s place in a flow by the timing of the last step they passed, so you can edit a flow while members are in it.- Adding a step: members who haven’t yet got to that point in the flow get the new step. If its time has already gone by for them, it goes out on the next check, within about ten minutes. Members already past that point don’t get it.
- Removing a step: members who haven’t got to it yet won’t get it. Nothing else changes for them.
- Changing a step’s email: members who haven’t got to the step yet get the new email. Members already past it don’t.
- Changing a step’s timing: if you move a step earlier than the last step a member has passed, that member skips it. Otherwise they get it when its new time comes, or on the next check if that time has already gone by, unless they have already received that email.
Attaching offers to flow steps
A step’s offer control is a single dropdown, not the two-tab drawer on the Basic Autoresponder. It lists No Offer, Create New Offer, and your site’s active Ghost Offers. Outpost Promotions aren’t selectable from an Advanced flow step. Choosing Create New Offer opens the Ghost offer creation dialog in place and assigns the new offer to the step. If you are sending an offer to existing subscribers in an Advanced flow, add the offer from the new template screen, or pick one from the dropdown if you are using an existing template.Outpost never sends a member the same email template twice. If a step’s email has already gone to the member, from this flow or from anywhere else in Outpost, or if the step’s template has been deleted, the member skips that step and moves on to the next one. Each member enters a flow only once, so a member who has finished or left a flow doesn’t start it again.
Example flows
Here are some common Advanced Autoresponder flows:- 30-Day Win-Back: Start 30 days after cancellation, send 3 escalating offers to encourage resubscription. End condition: Member Upgrades to Paid.
- VIP Welcome: Start when the “VIP” label is added, send a personalized welcome with exclusive content links.
- Pre-Renewal Upsell: Start 14 days before renewal, offer an annual upgrade at a discount. End condition: Member Renews.
- Institutional Onboarding: Start when email matches your institutional pattern, send a multi-step guide to getting the most from the subscription.
Related features
Basic Autoresponder
68 pre-built email actions for common member lifecycle events.
Email Templates
Create and customize the templates used by autoresponder flows
Offers & Discounts
Create the discount offers used in retention and upsell emails
Email Campaigns
One-time email sends to targeted member segments