Automations and sequences

These two work as a pair. A sequence is a campaign made up of steps, each with its own delay and its own email. An automation watches for something to happen and enrols the contact in that sequence, optionally doing other things along the way.

You’ll find automations under Marketing → Automations.

Creating an automation

Click New automation. You can start from a recipe (a ready-made trigger and actions that you then fine-tune) or from scratch. The recipes are: Welcome series, Abandoned cart, Post-purchase upsell, Re-engagement, and Birthday or date. If you start from scratch, you enter a name, a trigger in the "When this happens" field and the sequence to send in the "…send this sequence" field, either an existing one or a new one. Either way, the automation starts paused.

Available triggers

There are twenty-six: Subscribes to emails, Unsubscribes from emails, Contact status changes, Submits a form, Tag is added, Product access is granted, Course is completed, Offer is purchased or granted, Order is paid, Subscription payment fails, Subscription is cancelled, Order is refunded, Opens a campaign, Clicks in a campaign, Finishes an email sequence, Completes a lesson, Passes a quiz, Fails a quiz, Completes a survey or quiz whatever the result, Opens an email, Clicks a link in an email, Receives a certificate, Registers for an event, Requests to cancel a subscription, Subscription ends after cancellation, and Contact becomes inactive.

Several of them can be narrowed down with an extra question, such as Which tag, Which product or Which offer. In the "Also run when (any of)" field you can add more triggers, and the automation starts when any one of them fires.

Available actions

Add tag, Remove tag, Grant offer, Wait, Send email sequence, Send offer email, Remove from sequence and Update marketing status, plus two flow nodes: "Only if…" and "Branch (Yes / No)". Both flow nodes take a condition: Has tag, Owns offer, Opened email, Made a purchase, Total spent, Is on list, Is in saved segment, Subscribed to marketing, or Is a member.

Going live

An automation can’t be activated until it has at least one trigger and at least one action, and activating it also turns on the linked sequence. If you’d rather see its shape, the visual builder opens the same automation as a graph of nodes.

Sequence steps

Open a sequence and use Add step. Each step takes a Send day, an optional Time, a Subject, an internal title and a Condition: Always send, Only if they opened the previous email, Only if they clicked in the previous email, or Only if they have a tag. Day 0 is the moment the contact enters the sequence, so Day 3 at 09:00 means three days after they enter. Drag the steps to change their order.

Safety

Anyone who unsubscribes or bounces after being enrolled in a sequence stops receiving the next steps. Every contact profile shows the runs that contact has been through and how many steps actually ran.