How to set up your automations

In this article we will show you how you can easily create automated email workflows for your subscribers.

First you will give your email automation a clear name. This will not be seen by any of your subscribers, but be sure to pick a name that is easy to remember if you know you’ll be setting up multiple email workflows.

Now you’ll start building your workflow.

SETTING YOUR TRIGGER:

All automations start by choosing a trigger. Triggers tell the system where to start with the automation and differ depending on your goals for the workflow.

You can choose your own custom triggers from the list below:

• Subscriber joins a list
• Subscriber added to list manually
• Subscriber enters a segment
• Subscriber exits a segment
• Subscriber completes a form

Subscriber joins a list

This workflow is triggered when a subscriber joins a chosen list by subscribing to a list through a subscription form.

Subscriber is added to a list manually

This workflow is triggered when a subscriber is manually added to a chosen list. Essentially this is triggered when subscribers are manually added via the Single Addition function within the list settings.

Subscriber enters a segment

This workflow is triggered when a subscriber enters a chosen segment.

PLEASE NOTE: If an associated list does not have any segments, the platform will let you know that there are no segments to select.

Subscriber exits a segment

This workflow is triggered when a subscriber exits a chosen segment.

PLEASE NOTE: If an associated list does not have any segments, the platform will let you know that there are no segments to select.

Subscriber completes a form

This workflow is triggered when a person completes a chosen form. This can be set to any form that is part of the subscription workflow forms that you are able to customise.

Campaign Sent

This workflow triggers when a campaign is sent to a subscriber.

Campaign Opened

This workflow triggers when a subscriber opens a chosen campaign.

Campaign Not Opened

This workflow triggers when a campaign has not been opened by a subscriber.

Any campaign link clicked

This workflow triggers when any link in a chosen campaign is clicked.

Specific campaign link clicked

This workflow triggers when a specific link in a chosen campaign is clicked.

PLEASE NOTE: You will be prompted to select links that are available within the chosen campaign.

No campaign links clicked

This workflow triggers when no links in a chosen campaign are clicked.

Day and month match

This workflow triggers on a specific date.

You could alternatively select PREDEFINED instead of CUSTOM and choose from our prebuilt workflows to set up your automated workflows quickly.

PLEASE NOTE: You cannot create a workflow without selecting a trigger first.

You’re now well on your way to building your workflow to meet your marketing needs.

ADDING YOUR NEXT STEP:

To add a step you’ll select the + button. There are 4 types of steps you can add (and combine) depending what you want to happen:

• Email
• Delay
• Condition
• Action

DELAY STEP:

By default the delay step is set to minutes. You can set the delay to minutes, hours, days, weeks and months.

Multiple DELAY steps are added together, so if you use more than one delay steps they are combined. For example: Wait +2 day and +2 days would mean a delay of 4 total days.

If you need to set specific times/dates you can choose from the below:

• specific time of day
• specific day of the week
• specific day of the month
• specific date of the year

Specific time of day

When you use this step, the workflow will wait to perform the next step at a specific time of the day you set. If you set a delay to wait until 14:00 (as per the image below) the next step you set will not be processed immediately depending on the time you set.

PLEASE NOTE: Subscribers added to this workflow before 14:00 (say for example 13:00) will be processed on the same day. If the subscribers are added to the workflow after 14:00 they will only be processed the following day.

Specific day of the week

If you choose this set up option the workflow will wait until the chosen day of the week. You can choose any day of the week. If you choose more than one day of the week, the step will be triggered to fire on the selected day closest to your selection.

For example if you selected Monday and Wednesday and the subscriber reached the step on a Tuesday, the step will fire on the Wednesday. If the subscriber reached the step on Thursday the step will only trigger on the following Monday.

This indicator instructs the workflow to wait until the current day of the week. You can choose any day of the week. If subscribers are added the same day that you selected, the system will send out the email on the day as long as the subscriber reached the specific step before the time you selected.

Specific day of the month

If you choose this set up option you can set the workflows to wait until an exact day of the month you pick, the first day of the month or last day of the month etc. If your subscriber reaches this step before 11 AM on the day selected the step will process. If the subscriber does not reach this step by 11 AM on the day selected the step will only be processed on the following day of the month after 11 AM.

Specific date of the year

If you choose this set up option you can set the workflows to wait until the exact day of a year you choose. Please note that subscribers added on the same date and before that day of the year will be processed on the same day. All subscribers added after that date and time, will not be processed or triggered at all.

CONDITION STEP:

If you want to split the automation workflow into two different paths, you will use the condition step. Condition step(s) help you to segment and personalise better. Conditions work according to rules that a subscriber must match to keep following a path. Subscribers who therefore match a rule will follow a certain path and subscribers who don’t match a rule will follow a different path.

You can have up to 5 conditions in 1 step. Your condition can be connected using SOME or ALL of the rules set. When you choose Condition Matches ALL OF THE RULES, all the rules you added have to match the criteria for your workflow to have a positive result. When you select Condition Matches ANY OF THE RULES, only 1 of the conditions need to match the criteria for the workflow to have a positive result.

Rules for conditions:

Let’s take a look at the rules that you can set to match your condition:

• Campaign activity
• Workflow activity
• Custom fields
• List membership
• Segment membership

Campaign activity

Choosing campaign activity allows you to create a condition based on a subscriber’s activity in a previous campaign you’ve sent.

The rule will check for the following around your selected campaign:

• Had any link clicked
• Had a specific link clicked
• Was opened and did not have a specific link clicked
• Was not opened
• Was opened
• Was opened with no links clicked

Email step added within a condition:

Workflow activity

If you choose the workflow activity rule, you can create a condition based on the subscriber’s activity in emails that are within the same workflow you are creating. This means this specific rule will only check the emails that form part of the above condition in the workflow.

This workflow activity rule can check if your selected campaign:

• Had any link clicked
• Had a specific link clicked
• Was opened and did not have a specific link clicked
• Was not opened
• Was opened
• Was opened with no links clicked

IMPORTANT NOTE: Conditions are checked immediately which means you need to add a delay before the workflow activity step if you want to give subscribers time to receive and open the email in the workflow first.

Custom fields

Custom field rules are used when you’d like to check if the custom field value of the subscriber matches your rule.

The condition can be created using these operators:

• Contains
• Does not contain
• Is equal
• Is one of
• Is not equal
• Is not one of
• Is not provided
• Is provided

IMPORTANT NOTE: The entered value is not case sensitive. If you create a trigger rule that GENDER is equal to Female, it will behave the same for subscribers who have FEMALE or female in their custom Gender field. Using Is one of or Is not one of operators, the values need to be separated with a comma and a space (, ). For example, you’d write Gender is one of Female, Male, unspecified.

List membership

A condition based on list membership checks if a subscriber is currently a member of a specific list.

Segment membership

A condition based on segment membership checks if a subscriber is currently a member of a specific segment.

PLEASE NOTE: Conditions can be set to only proceed on positive results or only on negative results if you’d like. It would just mean that you can have a dead-end to your workflow when there aren’t two split forks.

ACTION STEP:

The ACTION step within our automation feature gives you a chance to add extra actions and apply them to your subscribers as they move through your workflow sequence.

The ACTION step initiates immediately when a subscriber reaches that step. You can use the following actions related to your subscriber:

• Update field
• Move to a list
• Copy to a list
• Remove from a list
• Unsubscribe from a list

Update field

The update field action allows you to update or change the value of a custom field on your list.

Move to a list

If you’d like to create more segmented lists or you simply want to clean up certain main lists, the move to a list action could be very helpful to you. This action allows you to move subscribers to other lists in your account.

Copy to a list

When you’re busy crafting your automations based on subscriber behaviour, you might want to copy a subscriber from one list to another. A perfect example would be if you run an email course and the subscriber has opened all the emails in the email course workflow and you now want to move them to a “course completed” list.

The copy to a list, does exactly that, it copies your subscriber information to a list you choose and keeps them in the original list they were in.

Move to a list

This action moves a subscriber from one list to another list. This means they don’t stay in the original list they were in. This action works separately from the trigger and means you can move subscribers from one list to any other list in your account.

Copy to a list

Using this action allows you to copy a subscriber to another list and still keep them in the original list that they are in. This action doesn’t rely on a trigger. If a subscriber reaches this step in the automated workflow they can be copied to another list that exists in your Mail Blaze account.

Remove from a list

Using this action means that a subscriber will be removed from a list you choose.

Unsubscribe from a list

Using this action means that a subscriber will be unsubscribed from a list you choose.

REVIEWING YOUR AUTOMATION’S PERFORMANCE:

Once you’ve enabled your automation, you can pause it at any time.

PLEASE NOTE: To prevent any confusion, automations cannot be edited once they have been enabled. You can however copy an automation and make changes to the copy and then enable it again. Just remember to pause your original workflow to prevent errors.

AUTOMATION WORKFLOW REPORT:

The automation workflow report gives you an overview of the performance of your complete workflow, this means the stats shown in the left blocks relate to all the emails that have been set up within the selected automated workflow.

Total sent: Total emails sent within the automated workflows.

Clicks to Opens: The clicks to opens percentage is calculated by the number of subscribers that opened your email and also clicked on a link in your template.

Total Opens: The total number of opens for all emails within the automated workflow.

Total Clicks: The total number of clicks for all emails within the automated workflow.

Unsubscribes: The total number of unsubscribes for all emails within the automated workflow.

Bounces: The total number of bounces for all emails within the automated workflow.

For a more detailed view you can select VIEW FULL REPORT.

VIEW FULL REPORT FOR AUTOMATED WORKFLOW:

The Report for your automated workflow will show you overall stats such as:

Total Sent: The total number of emails sent across the whole automated workflow.

Total Clicks: The total number of clicks achieved for all emails sent within the whole automated workflow.

Completed Responses: Completed Responses is a measure of how many subscribers reached the end of a specific workflow.

Total Sending Time: Total sending time represents the cumulative time emails within an automation have spent in the sending queue.

Last Sent: Last sent will show the time and date of when an email was last sent within the specific workflow.

Workflow Enabled: Workflow enabled represents the date and time that the workflow was enabled.

You are able to view your workflow or export the stats within this report into a CSV file.

MONTHLY COMPARISON SECTION:

The monthly comparison section of the workflow report allows you to track across different months how your automation is doing in terms of Total Sent, Total Opens, Total Clicks as well as unsubscribes. This is especially useful if you are using the comparison feature on the right hand side to compare your automation to another one.

For example, if you’ve made changes to your automation and want to compare how the new automation is performing against the old one, you can now do so quickly and easily.

Workflow emails in the automated report will show you all the emails that are within a workflow and allow you to take a deep dive into the email campaign. You can view specific email campaign reports, without having to go to the campaign view.

LATEST OPENS, READING ENVIRONMENT BREAKDOWN AND TOP CLICKED LINKS

The bottom of the automated reporting screen shows you the latest subscribers that opened email campaigns within a specific automated workflow.

You will also see a breakdown of what environment a subscriber is using to open the campaigns namely mobile, webmail or desktop. This will enable you to create more optimised campaigns.

Top clicked links show you which links have been clicked the most within the email campaigns contained in the automation.

View campaign level info within the automation report easily