Conversion Goals

A conversion goal measures whether a flow drives a real outcome. You define a target event on a flow — for example purchase_completed or plan_upgraded — and Synapse records a conversion each time an enrolled contact performs that event inside the goal's attribution window. Per-goal conversion metrics then show you how effectively the flow moves contacts toward that outcome.

Note

This page explains what conversion goals mean and how to read them. To create and manage goals over the API, see the Flows API — Conversion Goals.

The two numbers you'll see

Every goal reports two distinct counts. They answer different questions, and it is important not to confuse them.

Metric	What it answers	Bounds
Goal conversion rate	"What share of the contacts who entered this flow converted?"	Always 0–100%
Total conversions (volume)	"How many conversions happened?"	Uncapped — can exceed the number of trips

Goal conversion rate

The rate is conversions ÷ entered, expressed as a percentage.

entered — the number of trips that entered this flow during the reporting period. This is the same denominator the flow's completion metric uses, so the two are directly comparable.
conversions — the number of distinct converting trips from that same entered-in-period group. A trip that converts on several qualifying events still counts once.

Because conversions is always a subset of entered (both count trips that entered during the period), the rate is guaranteed to be ≤ 100%. You will never see a goal conversion rate above 100%.

Total conversions (volume)

total_conversions counts distinct conversion events that happened in the period — the raw "how many times did this outcome occur" signal.

This number can be larger than both the conversion count and the entered count, and that is correct, not a bug:

One contact can perform the target event more than once — each qualifying event is a real, separately-recorded conversion.
A contact who entered the flow before the reporting period can still convert during it. That conversion counts in the volume, but the earlier-entered trip is not in this period's entered group, so it does not inflate the rate.

Tip

Use the rate to judge how well a flow performs against its goal, and use volume to size the raw business impact. They are related but not interchangeable — the volume is not the numerator of the rate.

Goal conversion is not flow completion

Synapse reports two separate effectiveness numbers for a flow, and they must never be added together or treated as the same thing:

Metric	Where it lives	What it means
Flow completion rate	Flow funnel / Analytics tab	A trip reached the last step (`completed`)
Goal conversion rate	Goal conversions (this page)	The contact performed the target business event

A contact can complete every step of a flow without ever converting, and a contact can convert without completing the flow. Finishing the emails is a workflow outcome; performing the target event is a business outcome. Synapse keeps them as distinct metrics on purpose — collapsing them would misrepresent how well the flow actually works.

The attribution window

A conversion only counts if the target event happens within the goal's attribution window. The window:

Starts when the contact enters the flow (their trip's enrollment time).
Lasts for the duration you configure — attribution_window_value + attribution_window_unit (hours, days, or weeks). The default is 7 days.
Includes both ends — an event exactly at the end of the window still counts; one moment past it does not.

Only trips that are still in progress accrue conversions — a contact whose trip is active, waiting (paused), or finishing its final send (awaiting send). Once a trip has ended (completed, terminated, or dropped), it no longer records new conversions.

Note

The window is anchored to when the contact entered the flow, not when the email was sent. A contact can convert even if they were never sent a message on that trip — conversion is a measure of the outcome, not of message delivery.

Optional event filters

A goal can narrow which occurrences of the event count as a conversion using event filters. Filters are matched against the event's attributes:

An empty filter ({}, the default) counts every occurrence of the event.
A filter like {"plan": "pro"} counts the event only when its attributes match every key/value you specify.

Event filters use the same matching Synapse applies to flow trigger conditions, so they behave consistently with the rest of the platform.

Exit on conversion

By default (exit_on_conversion = false) a conversion is recorded and the flow continues — the contact keeps receiving the remaining steps.

When you set exit_on_conversion = true, a fresh conversion also ends that contact's trip so they stop receiving the rest of the flow. On conversion, Synapse:

Records the conversion first — always, even for a suppressed or unsubscribed contact. Measurement is independent of sending.
Terminates the credited trip.
Cancels that trip's still-pending sends across every channel — email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push. Messages already sent are never recalled; only sends that had not yet gone out are cancelled.

Cancelled sends are recorded with a distinct reason (cancelled:exit_on_conversion) so you can tell "the contact converted and we stopped" apart from "the flow was paused or stopped." Only the converting contact's trip ends — the flow itself stays active for everyone else.

Tip

Turn on exit-on-conversion for goals where continuing to message a converted contact would be redundant or annoying — for example a "finish setup" nudge sequence once the contact has finished setup.

A contact in more than one flow

If a contact is enrolled in several flows that all track the same target event, every qualifying flow gets credit for the conversion — each flow independently records it against its own most-recent qualifying trip.

This is why conversion metrics are always reported per flow and are never summed into a single cross-flow total: because one contact's conversion can legitimately count for several flows at once, a naive sum could exceed the number of contacts who actually converted. Read each flow's goal metrics on their own terms.

Reading goal conversions in the dashboard

Open a flow's detail page and go to the Overview tab. At the bottom, the Goal conversions card shows, for each goal on the flow:

Goal conversion rate — the headline percentage, with its converted ÷ entered fraction underneath (for example 48 / 100 trips).
Total conversions (volume) — shown separately as a raw count, so a volume higher than the trip count reads correctly rather than looking like an error.
Per-goal badges — the attribution window (e.g. 7-day window) and an exit-on-conversion badge when that goal ends the trip on conversion.
A date-range selector — switch between the last 7, 30, or 90 days.

The rate shown is the exact rate the platform computes (already a 0–100 percentage) — the dashboard never re-scales or caps it.

Empty states

No goals defined — the card prompts you to configure a goal, with a link into the flow editor's Conversion Goals section.
Goals defined, no conversions yet — the card shows an honest zero: "No conversions in this date range yet." If no trips entered the flow in the range, it says so instead ("No trips entered this flow in this date range.").

Configuring goals

Add, edit, reorder, and delete goals in the flow editor's Conversion Goals section (Flows → your flow → Edit). Each flow can have at most one goal per target event.

Flows API — Conversion Goals — create, update, and read goals and goal conversions over the API.
Flow Performance — trip and email-engagement analytics (the separate completion metric).
Monitoring Flows — watch trips move through a flow in real time.