How to create Automations

Automations allow you to build key journeys for your organisation, increasing member engagement whilst reducing the workload of your team. You can build custom Automations to:

link-up different campaign types under one process
set-up welcome and retention journeys for new and existing members
tailor content and target members based on their interactions with your organisation
take members through every step of your campaign and brach in different ways
reduce the need for your team to manually intervene

To create an automation, follow the step-by-step guide below:

Step 1: Create a new automation
Visit the Automations tab > select Create an automation. You’ll then be prompted to name your automation and set the contact times - the hours that communications can be sent via the automation.

Step 2: Automation Builder

Once you’ve done this, you will be taken to the Automation Builder where you can:

Set entry and edit rules
Add steps and branches to the automation
Launch

Entry and exit rules:

Entry rules determine who will start your automation. Exit rules will remove people who meet the exit criteria from the journey, even if they have not completed the automation.

For example, you may want to set up an exit rule for anyone who completes the goal of your campaign. They will be removed from the automation as soon as they complete the goal and will not be contacted as part of that automation again.

You can set these rules using any of the filters available when creating an audience. When you click to edit entry or exit rules, a pop-up will appear for you to add your entry or exit criteria. This works in the same way as the audience builder with include, exclude and nested groups.

Step 3: Add steps to your Automation

Select the plus button to add a step and apply branching logic. You can: add people to a campaign, add a time delay, add a decision or exit the automation. Find out more about each of these options below:

Add people to a campaign:

You can either add an already existing campaign or create a new campaign. People who reach this step in the automation will be added to the campaign and sent the relevant text, email, WhatsApp or be added to the phone bank audience.

Tip: If you want to add a campaign to your automation that has not been sent out to your members, send the campaign to yourself before adding to your automation.

Delay:

This option allows you add a time delay before people move to the next step. You can set a delay of minutes, hours or days.

Decision:

This option allows you to add a condition for the next step - something that needs to happen to move someone through the automation such as answering 'yes' to a particular question or completing a page. You can add multiple branches to a decision node and for each branch created, you can edit rules using the same filters as entry and exit rules. These rules are the conditions that people must meet before before they can move along to the next part of the automation.

Exit:

Once all your campaigns, delays and decisions are added and in order, add an exit node at the end of each branch of your automation to complete.

Step 4: Launch
Once your automation is ready, select launch in the top right. You will then be able to check and review how your automation is running, as well as preview, pause or edit.

Tip: Find out more about managing your automations once they have launched.