When creating an Automation workflow, you will build a series of steps that include entry points, actions and conditions. In the article, we will explain how to use Exit and Restart conditions to create the best workflows!

What are Exit and Restart conditions?

Exit and Restart conditions cause a contact to immediately exit or restart your workflow once specific criteria (conditions) are met. These results occur regardless of which step the contact is in when the condition is met.

The following Exit and Restart conditions are available in a workflow:

• Email Activity (marketing and transactional): Open/Click/Unsubscribe
• Contact details: Anniversary/Contact attributes condition/A contact is added to a list/Contact filter conditions
• A contact submits a form
• Website Activity: A contact visits a page/A contact click an external link/An event happens

If you want to learn more about what each Exit and Restart condition means, take a look at our article about entry points as similar options are available.

Workflow example

The following workflow is used to send an email to contacts who abandon their cart on your website.

You'll find:

1. The entry point: Contact adds a product to their cart
2. A condition: Add a delay "Wait for 2 hours"
3. An action: Send an email reminding the contact of the products they left behind
4. 2 Exit conditions: Contact purchases their cart or contact deletes products from their cart
5. A Restart condition: Contact adds additional products to their cart or creates a new cart

Other use cases

These conditions can also be used to make any marketing or communications workflow more efficient, such as: 

• Billing workflow to collect overdue balances - apply an Exit condition when contacts pay their bill 
• Promote a sale coupon code - apply an Exit condition when contacts use the sale code 
• Re-engage inactive customers - apply an Exit condition when contacts make a purchase

Adding an Exit or Restart condition to a workflow

While creating or editing any workflow, you can add an Exit or Restart condition to it:

1. On the workflow overview page, scroll down to the end of the workflow and click Add new conditions.
   
2. According to your needs, add an exit or restart condition.
   
3. Select a condition between Email Activity, Contact Details, A Contact Submits a Form or Website Activity. Similar options are available for both Exit and Restart conditions.
   
4. Set up your condition.

You may repeat these steps to add multiple Exit or Restart conditions to your workflow. You can then edit or delete your Exit and Restart conditions at any time.

What happens when no Exit or Restart conditions are applied to a workflow?

If no Exit conditions are applied to a workflow, a contact will exit after completing the last possible step.

If no Restart conditions are applied to a workflow, a contact will only restart the workflow if:

• the workflow entry conditions allow contacts to enter the workflow more than once, AND
  
• the contact matches the criteria of the entry point of the workflow an additional time.

⏩ What's next?

• What are the entry points in Marketing Automation?
• What are the conditions in Marketing Automation?
• What are the actions in Marketing Automation?
• Creating a custom Automation workflow
• Automation use cases (abandoned cart, welcome messages, birthday emails, etc.)

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