A new bridge only forwards people who join the source after you create it. That protects you from sweeping a whole list into a destination by surprise. Backfill is the one click way to catch up the people who were already there.
Where to find it:
A Backfill button sits on the row of every bridge whose source is one of the built in autoresponders. It also appears on Referly bridges whose trigger describes people who already exist: affiliates who are approved, signed up, pending or whose details change, referred customers, and customers who bought. It is not shown for a bridge with No source, or for a one-off moment such as a refund.
What it does:
It sends every contact already on the source list through the bridge to all of its destinations, right now. A panel asks you to confirm first, and it tells you what is worth knowing before you run it.
Good to know before you run it:
- Autoresponders ignore people they already have, so running it against another autoresponder is harmless.
- Append style destinations, such as Google Sheets, can gain duplicate rows, which is why you are warned first.
- People who unsubscribed from the source list are never imported, and the results tell you how many were held back so the totals still add up.
- Anyone already waiting in a drip queue is skipped, so running Backfill twice never stacks the schedule.
- On a ResultsAiX Mailer destination, backfilled contacts arrive silent unless you ticked the option that lets backfilled contacts start automations.
- On a beehiiv destination, a Backfill never sends beehiiv's Welcome Email.
- Both of those hold even when a drip spaces the backfilled contacts out and they are delivered later.
The results window:
When it finishes, a summary panel lays out the figures. For a destination with a drip it says how many contacts were queued to drip out, how many went right away and roughly when the last one lands. If a run was capped because the list was large, the window says so plainly rather than looking complete.
Backfill or Migrate:
Backfill runs from your browser and is ideal for an ordinary sized list. For tens or hundreds of thousands of contacts, use Migrate, which works in the background.