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The Advanced Autoresponder lets you create custom email flows: multi-step sequences with flexible triggers, audience targeting, and stop conditions. Use it when the pre-built Basic Autoresponder actions don’t cover your needs: for example, a tailored welcome sequence for a list of members signed up in person at an event, or a one-off win-back series for a specific tier.
Advanced Autoresponder showing a custom flow with start condition, end condition, audience filters, and action steps

The Advanced Autoresponder with custom email flow configuration

Go to Autoresponder → Advanced to manage custom flows.

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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.
Big On Off Button 1

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Turning flows off with active members

When you switch off The Big Off/On Button (or disable an individual flow) and there are members currently moving through that flow, Outpost asks how to handle them with a “Members are in active flows” prompt. You get three choices:
  • Keep Running: Cancel the change and leave the flow 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.
  • Stop All Immediately: Turn the flow off and stop every active member right away. They receive no further emails from that flow.
If no members are mid-flow, the toggle switches off without asking.
When you use The Big Off/On Button rather than a single flow’s toggle, 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.

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Creating a flow

Click “Add Flow” at the bottom of the page.
Autoresponder Advanced Add Flow Button
Each flow has:

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Flow name

A descriptive name for your reference (e.g., “30-Day Win-Back Sequence” or “VIP Member Welcome”).

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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.)

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End condition

What stops the flow early (before all steps are sent):

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Marketing email toggle

Marketing Email No
Toggle this on for marketing flows. Members who have opted out of marketing won’t receive emails from flows marked this way:
Marketing Email Yes

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Audience targeting

Checkbox To Apply To Membership Levels
At the top of the Audience card, an All membership types checkbox reaches every membership level and greys out the individual options below it. New flows start with this checked. Uncheck it to target specific types:
  • 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
When Paid or Complimentary is selected, you can further filter by specific Tiers.
Leaving every individual box unchecked has the same effect as checking All membership types: the flow is not limited by membership type and reaches members of any level who match the start condition and the label filters. Some start conditions restrict membership type on their own: Days Before Renewal and Days After Subscription only ever reach paid members, no matter what you check here. Free and complimentary members are never included in those flows.

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Autoresponder exclusions

Under Exclude members in these autoresponders, optionally exclude members who would also go into a Basic Autoresponder sequence:
  • Welcome Free
  • Welcome Paid (e.g. thank you emails)
  • Welcome Complimentary
New flows start with Welcome Free and Welcome Paid checked.

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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 reaches complimentary members, because most of them carry no Stripe price or product. Excluding a tier therefore also stops flow email to any gift recipients, group subscription seat holders, and members you comped by hand 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.

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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.
Because the include filter is checked after the start condition and membership type, adding one label is enough to keep members without it out of the flow. You do not also have to change the Audience targeting boxes.

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Flow actions (steps)

Each flow contains one or more action steps. Click “Add Action” to add a step. Steps execute in order, with each step’s timing counting from the previous step.

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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.
Reusing an existing offer, rather than creating a new one every time, keeps your Ghost offer list clean and makes performance reporting easier. If you already have a “20% off annual” Ghost Offer for retention, select it directly instead of creating a duplicate.
Advanced flows prevent duplicate emails: each email template is only sent once per member per flow. If a member re-enters a flow or the flow is re-processed, templates that were already sent to that member will be skipped.

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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.

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