Goals, and when someone leaves early
Stop emailing someone the moment they do the thing you wanted.
A Goal is the outcome the flow exists to produce. Once someone reaches it they leave, wherever they happen to be standing — so nobody gets chased for something they’ve already done.
Why you want one
Picture a three-email win-back. Someone comes back and buys after the first one. Without a goal they still get emails two and three, both asking them to come back — which reads as though you aren’t paying attention, and is the kind of thing that produces an unsubscribe from a customer you just won.
With a goal, they leave at the moment they qualify and the rest of the flow never reaches them.
How to set one
Drop a Goal block on the canvas and describe the outcome with the same rules you’d use for a segment — joined a list, a field was set, engaged recently.
You don't connect it to anything
A goal isn’t a step people walk onto, so it has no incoming arrow. It sits beside the flow and is checked against everyone currently in it, wherever they are. That is exactly what lets someone leave from the middle of a wait.
When it's checked
Every few minutes, as part of the same cycle that steps flows forward — and after that stepping, deliberately. So somebody who qualifies as a result of the step just taken leaves immediately rather than a cycle later.
Practically: if the goal is “joined the Customers list” and a step adds them to it, they exit on the same pass.
The other ways someone leaves
- They reach the end — the flow finished normally. This counts as completing it.
- They hit the goal — the outcome you wanted.
- An End here block — a deliberate stop on one branch.
- They unsubscribe, report spam, or their address hard-bounces — every run for that person is cancelled at once. A temporary bounce doesn’t: a full mailbox is “not right now”, and cancelling a sequence over it would end a customer relationship because somebody went on holiday.
Only that last group counts as dropping out when you read the numbers — finishing the flow is a success, not a loss. See Reading the numbers on each step.
Common issues
Nobody is leaving via the goal
Build the same rules as a segment and check the count. A goal matching nobody behaves exactly like no goal at all.
Everyone leaves immediately
The goal probably describes something that was already true when they entered. A goal should describe a change — “is on the Customers list” is a poor goal for a flow whose trigger is joining the Customers list.
Can I have more than one goal?
Yes. Any of them qualifying takes the person out.
FAQs
Does leaving via a goal count as completing the flow?+
It’s recorded separately, which is more useful: “reached the goal” and “ran to the end” are different outcomes, and a flow where most people leave early via the goal is working better than one where most people run to the end.
Can someone come back in after hitting the goal?+
Only if the flow allows repeat entry and they trigger it again. See Letting people come round again.
Can a goal be used to decide an in-flow A/B test?+
Yes, and it’s the strongest option — it measures the outcome rather than a click that stands in for one. Choose goal as the test’s metric.