Automated Campaigns

• Creating Emails

• Creating Workflows

Creating Your Emails

From your dashboard or from the Messages section, hover over New Email in the quick links on the left side and then click on Automated Message. NOTE: You can create your Workflow first, and create your automated emails within the Workflow process. The steps for doing so are the same as below, your c

Just like you do when creating a manual email, select your template and enter the following information in the Compose step:

• Title (for internal use only)
• From Name
• From Email
• Subject
• Body Copy

Click Save or Next to save your automated email.  Proceed through the Preview step, and be sure to send yourself a proof and run your message through Pre-Flight check!

On the Recipients step, you can either choose to not assign a group (this is selected as default, allowing you to assign a group to the email in a Workflow) or you can Assign a group  You can assign your email to an existing group the same way you would for a manual email send. Unlike manual emails, automated emails can only include one group as being added to that group will push someone through to receive your email. NOTE: The trigger to receive an automated email is being added to a group. If you connect a group to an email that already has contacts in it, those members will not receive the email when it is activated. Only contacts added to the group after the email will be triggered to receive it. If you need the contacts in the group to receive the email, the easiest way to do this is to remove the contacts and then re-add them after your email and workflow are published.

Rather than send on a specific date, automated emails are controlled by frequency, schedule, and delays. Contact Frequency controls how often someone can receive this email. The default is set to only once, but if this is a recurring email (such as a birthday email) you can change the Contact Frequency to a custom date range (ex: Once a Year) or to No Limit. Remember, being added to the group triggers an email. To be able to receive the emails more than once either no limit or a custom range must be selected and the contact must be re-added to the group (this can be controlled by either using a dynamic group or by using the Advanced feature to remove the recipients from the group after getting the email which would allow you to re-add them to the static group feeding it).

You can further control when someone receives your email through a Daily Schedule and/or a Delay. A Delay allows you to hold someone for a predetermined amount of time before sending them your email. Think of someone signing up for a rewards program at a restaurant and receiving a coupon for future use. Because you want the customer to come back and use the coupon at a later date, rather than use it on this meal, you could set a delay for them to receive the email after a few minutes, hours, or days. To add a Delay, toggle the radio button to Set a Delay and use either the dropdown or slider to choose the length of your delay.

If you want to control the time your automated email goes out you can use a Daily Schedule and pick the days and times you want the email to be received. To add a schedule, click the pencil icon next to a day and set your time. If you want to set all days for that time, use the option to Apply to All Days.

NOTE: While it is possible to use both a delay and a daily schedule on your email, remember the delay will be put in first and then the schedule. This means if the delay pushes the recipient after the time on the schedule for that day they would not be queued up again until the next day.

If you add a delay and/or daily schedule you will see these applied to top summary section of your email on the Send step.

Creating Your Workflow
 

Once you have all of your automated emails and groups created, from the top menu select Workflows from the Campaigns section. (You can also create you Workflow first and create your automated emails within the workflow itself).

Next, create a new Workflow.

Drag the groups and automated emails you wish to add to your Workflow onto your canvas. Remember, groups and emails can only be tied to a single Workflow. If you will get an error message if you attempt to save a Workflow that has either groups or emails already in use in another published Workflow.

Once you have multiple elements on the canvas, you can begin to connect them and control the flow of your Workflow. As you do so the canvas will show you the length set between each step of your automated series. You will be able to control the length of time between each step of your series by clicking back into the individual emails and editing the delay time.

Remember to save often when creating your Workflow. You can remove various elements from the canvas by clicking the "X" on each. You can disconnect the flow of your Workflow by clicking on the broken chain icon between two pieces of your automated series. If you need to clear your work and start over, you can you the "Clear Canvas" button. When you are finished, publish.

Important things to remember with Workflows

1. No loops are allowed (you can't connect the end of your series back to the beginning).

2. You cannot connect to a single piece of your Workflow more than once (which would cause a mini-loop).

3. You cannot have more than 5 incoming connections feeding a single piece of your Workflow.

4. While emails can connect to both groups and other emails, groups cannot connect to other groups directly.

5. Dynamic groups cannot have an incoming connection (by definition these groups are being fed by their own internal query logic).

6. While two emails can feed the same group, two groups cannot feed the same email.

7. Not everything on your workflow has to be connected. You can have separate segments on the same Workflow, which you would need to do if you were using dynamic groups in the example of a birthday series.