Email Automation

Creating an automated e-mail campaign is a great way to get started with automation. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be creating an automated e-mail campaign which is triggered when a contact is added to a group. 

Step One: Create the E-mail Campaign

There are two types of e-mail campaigns - Automations and Broadcasts. Think of Broadcasts as your newsletters or general e-mail campaigns, and automations as templates to be used by the automation engine. 

The first step of this tutorial is to create the e-mail marketing campaign which will be sent by automation.

Navigate to Dashboard > Marketing > E-mail Marketing.
Click the "New Message" button towards the top of the screen.
Select "Automation" in the Message Type section, and create a new e-mail marketing message. 

Step Two: Create the Automation

Navigate to Dashboard > Marketing > Automation, and click the "New Automation" button to get started. 

Define a sensible title for the automation title field for your own reference. A best practice is to label the automation by the activity it is performing (eg. "On Newsletter Group Add > Send E-mail Campaign"). 

In the drop-down menu for the "Upon Event" field, select the option "Groups - When someone is added to a group". The groups you have configured through Dashboard > Customers > Groups will display, allowing you to specify which group(s) will trigger the automation.

For the first workflow step, select the option "Send E-mail to Customer". You will then change the drop-down message from "None-selected" to the automation e-mail campaign you would like to send. 

To test the automation, you select the option "Test Mode", and specify an e-mail address to use instead of sending the message to the customer. Otherwise, select the "live mode" option to send the e-mail campaign to the contact. 

When you are ready for the automation to go live, tick the option "Enable this Automation" and click the "Save Automation" button. 

Congratulations

You have created your first automation! To test, move your own administrator contact record into the group you specified in the automation trigger and you should receive the campaign.