Building multi-channel campaigns with In-Product and Out-of-Product Messages

Updated at March 14th, 2025

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In- and out-of-product messaging are most effective when they work together. Here are a few ways to do it, depending on your needs.

Triggering In-App messages from Workflows

The following sections apply to all Appcues in-app experiences, including web and mobile Flows, Banners, NPS, Checklists, and Pins.

Qualifying In-App Experiences based on Email or Push message activity

In-app experiences can be targeted based on email or push events. For example, if you want to qualify users for an in-app Flow after they receive an email, you can select the email and use the condition “has been delivered” as the targeting criteria.

Note: for better reuse, you can put the same criteria in an Appcues Segment and refer to that Segment in multiple in-app experiences. You can also place these segments in Workflows if you want the workflow to only start based on email or push message activity.

Qualifying In-App Experiences based on Track events from Workflows

A straightforward way to qualify a user for a Flow (or other experience) from a Workflow is to track an event and target a Flow to users for whom that Workflow track event has occurred. Note that this event must have previously been tracked to be targetable from the in-app experience’s settings page.

Note: If you want to use a brand new event, you’ll need to trigger this event at least once, either by:

running the workflow on a test audience
using that track event on an in-app button
using Appcues.track() to send the event to Appcues

After the event has been triggered once, it will become targetable.

Add a Track Event node at the point in your Workflow where you want the experience to be made available. Then, type the event you want to use to trigger the Flow.

2. Create a Flow, and target the audience to include specific users for whom that event has occurred. If desired, you can refine the criteria to ensure that the event has occurred within a certain time range.

Note: There can be a delay of up to 10 minutes for a user to move from one node to another, so Flow qualification may not happen instantaneously when using an event.

Qualifying In-App Experiences based on workflows updating a user property

You can use Workflows to update user properties, which can influence a user's eligibility for specific segments or audiences.

If you have in-app experiences targeted to users based on certain properties or audience criteria, you can add an Update User Property node in your Workflow. This allows you to modify a user’s properties in real time, ensuring they qualify for the right in-app experiences.

Sending Email & Push messages from In-App Experiences

Use activity and engagement with your in-product experiences to trigger Workflows that send emails and push notifications.

Segmenting users based on In-App engagement

You can construct Segments of users based on how they’ve interacted with your in-app experiences and use these segments to send emails or push messages by triggering Workflows.

For example, if you want to send an email to users who finish an onboarding Flow, you can create a Segment that looks for the last step of that Flow to have been seen. You can even refine it to only include users who saw that step within a recent time range so that you don’t email longtime users

You can then use this Segment as the audience for a Workflow.

Using an In-app experience’s button track event as a Workflow trigger

You can also trigger a Workflow using a button track event. For example, if a user tracks an event when clicking on a call-to-action button in a Flow, you may want to trigger a follow-up email.

Add a Track event on your Call-to-action button

2. Enter the name of the event you created as the trigger for your Workflow as shown below.

Note: This event must have previously been tracked to for you to select in the drop down list shown above. If doesn’t appear there, first be sure the button on the experience you published in step 1 is clicked (maybe using a test audience) to cause the event to be tracked. Once that is done, retry step 2.

Triggering a Workflow based on NPS responses

Workflows can be targeted based on NPS submissions. To refine your audience to include users who recently engaged with NPS, there are 3 auto-properties you can leverage.

NPS Last Collected At: This is the timestamp when a user last left an NPS score. This is useful for triggering a Workflow when users submit an NPS score, or to users who have not left a score in a long time.
NPS Feedback Last Collected At: This is the timestamp when a user last left written feedback with their NPS submission. It is useful for soliciting written feedback from users who have not provided it recently.
Ask Me Later Selected At: This is the timestamp when a user last selected “Ask me later” on an NPS survey.

Pick whichever property is appropriate for your use case, and refine your audience to include users who met that condition within the desired range of time. For example, if you want to enroll users in a Workflow as soon as they submit NPS feedback, you can make sure that the timestamp for NPS Last Collected At is between 0 and 1 days ago.

You can also use NPS scores to branch your Workflow and follow up differently for promoters, passives, and detractors. To do this, use the Most recent NPS score auto-property on a true/false branch, as shown below: