Webhooks

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What you can do with it

• Notify your backend when a customer enters a win-back flow, so support sees it in your CRM.
• Post to a Slack webhook when a VIP segment member abandons a large cart.
• Trigger a fulfillment-side action — add a gift, flag an account — when a flow milestone is reached.
• Feed your data warehouse with flow progress, joined later against revenue.

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Configure a webhook step

1. In the automation canvas, add a Webhook step where you want the call to fire.
2. Enter the URL of your endpoint (HTTPS).
3. The step sends the contact and event context as a JSON POST body — the same data available to that point of the flow (contact profile fields, trigger event payload).

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Building a reliable receiver

app.post("/hooks/retainful", (req, res) => {
  // 1. Acknowledge fast — do the real work async
  res.status(200).end();

  // 2. Process from a queue, not inline
  queue.add("retainful-webhook", req.body);
});

• Respond quickly with a 2xx. Do slow work (database writes, third-party calls) after acknowledging, not before.
• Expect retries and duplicates. Network blips can cause re-delivery — make your handler idempotent (dedupe on contact + step + timestamp).
• Validate what you receive. Treat the payload as untrusted input; check the fields you depend on exist before using them.
• Keep the URL secret-ish. Use an unguessable path or a query token (/hooks/retainful?token=...) and reject calls without it.

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Inbound webhooks (into Retainful)