Create automations

The automation feature allows you to create automatic flows so that email campaigns are sent only to subscribers who meet one or more conditions or who perform a certain action or who do not perform a certain action. In this way, each campaign will be sent at the right time to each person, which will significantly improve the open rate and the level of interaction with the content of your email.

You can take a look at effective use cases of automatic flows in our complete guide to email marketing automation.

Create an automation

Within the Newsletters section, you can access the Automations section and start creating your automatic sending flow.

To do this, you will only have to click on the New Automation button, choose the name and description (which will only be visible to you) and click on Create.

Once the automation is created, you have to choose the list to which you want it to be sent, and the type of event that will trigger the start of the automation. The types of event you can choose from are:

• New subscriber on the list: When a subscriber signs up for the selected list, they will enter the automatic flow and receive the scheduled emails as they meet the conditions you determine.
• Specific date: You can choose a specific date in which the subscribers who meet the conditions at that moment will begin to cycle through the automatic flow, and will no longer enter after that date.
• New subscriber in a list segment: You can choose to have only subscribers from a specific segment of the list, such as those who have downloaded a specific resource from your website, go through the automatic flow.

Automation initial event

In the case of selecting a new subscriber in the list or segment as the initial event, you can also decide whether you want the rest of the subscribers previously registered in the list to be included or not. If you select the Apply to current subscriberscheck box, all users included in the list or segment at this point will go through the automation. 

By default, this check box is unchecked and, in this case, only the automatic flow will be sent to subscribers who register in the list from the time of running automation onwards.

Automatic flow nodes

The automatic flow is composed of different nodes or modules in which you can choose the conditions that must occur for subscribers to go through the flow. Below you can see in detail the different conditions that each node allows, and their use cases:

Wait

This module allows you to set a time interval between a first condition (for example, that the subscriber enlists in a list) and the next action (that the subscriber advances through the flow and is sent a campaign, etc.)

An example might be the following: A Subscriber is enlisted in a list, the waiting node is configured in one minute, and moves on to the next one in which a welcome email is sent to it.

Template

The Send Template module is the equivalent of sending an email within automation. The parameters that you will have to choose are the same as when creating a normal campaign, only in this case you will do it directly within the automation. The steps are:

• Name of the campaign: It will only be visible to you, as in a normal campaign. We recommend that you number the emails in the flow in consecutive order, to make it easier to track later.
• Email and sender's name: The sender that your subscribers will see when they receive the email
• Email subject: Just like in regular campaigns, remember that you can add custom tags or emojis
• Select template: Keep in mind that *you have to have the emails created in advance* (from Templates) and then select it
• Enable Google Analytics tracking by means of UTM values and the tracking of clicks on links in the email
• Subdomain for links: As in a normal campaign, you can customize the domain and subdomain of the links within the email. In this case, we want all links to start with: ayuda.acumbamail.com. To configure the subdomain, you must have previously followed these steps.

If you subsequently make changes to the template you chose to send, you'll need to edit the Submit Template node again and reselect the template with modifications by clicking the Select Template button to have the changes recorded. To do this, you'll need to stop automation first.

SMS

Our platform allows the sending of text messages separately, but you can also include them in automated flows to easily combine sending email and SMS.

The SMS module will allow you to choose the subscriber's Phone field and send a message to their mobile in case it meets the conditions you have preset. In the event that the subscriber's Phone field is empty, corresponds to an incorrect number or you do not have credits to send SMS, this node will be ignored and the subscriber will move to the next one set in the flow.

You can customize the sender as you want (remember not to add spaces and do not exceed 11 characters) and the text of the message, adding custom tags, emojis or links.

Condition

The Condition module allows you to branch the flow in two to send different campaigns to those subscribers who meet different conditions. If the conditions are met, the subscriber will advance through the YESbranch, and if they do not, through the Nobranch. To make this division, you can follow two different criteria:

Rules

The condition type of Rules is governed by the fields in your subscriber list: you can set various conditions and have the subscriber advance through the YES branch if all of them are met (if you select All)or any of them (if you select Any).

For each rule you must select a field from the list, an operator (Greater than, Less than, Equal, Not equal, Contains,Does not contain),and a value for that field.

Behavior

The Behavior condition type will allow you to branch the flow according to the behavior the subscriber had with a previous campaign. 

You must select one of the following values: Open Campaign, do not open campaign, click (on a link within the email), do not click, and whether this value has been met or not. In this way, you will establish the criterion of by which of the two ramifications (YES or NO) the subscriber should continue through the flow.

until

The To option works similarly to the Condition option. You will be able to configure Rules or Behaviorsconditions, and the subscriber will not advance through this module until the condition or conditions you have configured are met, regardless of the time that passes until this state change occurs.

For example, you can choose not to send another email to your subscriber until they open the previous one (you would use the Behaviors option > Open campaign X).

Webhook

With the option to integrate a webhook with GET or POST parameters you can create a request to your own URL to be notified when a subscriber has gone through a specific module of the automation or has fulfilled a certain condition. You can find more information about webhooks in this article.

You just have to indicate the URL to call and what data Acumbamail will send. In the "body" you must enter the information in JSON format, putting key-value pairs, where the key can be any identifying text of your choice. To indicate the value, you have available the content tag commands associated with each of the fields in your list. For a list with the fields "email", "name" and "phone", this would be a possible body:

{"phone": "*| PHONE|*", "email": "*| EMAIL|*","name": "*| NAME|*"}

When

The operation of the When node, like that of the Standby node: allows the flow of automation to stop until a future moment. In a node When the future instant we will indicate it by entering a specific date and time , unlike the Wait node that jumps to the next node some time after the automation flow reaches the Wait node.

Run and stop automation

Automatic flows allow you to select as many different actions or modules as you want. Once you've designed the full automatic flow, you'll need to click the Run button to activate automation,which will be listed as active from that moment on. In case you want to edit it, you will have to stop it, make the appropriate changes and reactivate it.

To stop the automation, click the Stop button .

When you stop an automation, you can make the changes you want. When you make the necessary changes and resume automation, your subscribers will re-activate to the state they were in when you clicked Run again .

Automation Node Statistics

While the automation is active, you will be able to consult the statistics of each of the modules:

• Total: All subscribers who have passed through the node since the automation was created
• Current: Subscribers who have passed through the node since the last update (the last time you turned on automation)
• On node: Subscribers who are waiting to enter the selected node

Reports of campaigns sent through automations

You will be able to track all your shipments individually in our Reports section  with all the data in real time. You can also access it directly from the automation by clicking on the Complete Statistics button of each Submit Template module.

You can learn more about how to view and interpret reports in this article.