With automated campaigns, you can send emails to your subscribers when they are most interested in them. For example, you can set up welcome email series for the newly subscribed users, or automatically congratulate your subscribers on their birthdays, or collect feedback on their purchase.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a classic automated email series.
In the menu, choose Automation and click on the Create Chain button.
Choose one of the ready templates and click on the Chain From Scratch option in case you would like to create your own variant.
For beginners, it’s advised to use ready templates. In this case, it’s much easier to edit the ready email chains than to create an automated one from scratch.
If you’ve chosen a blank template, begin with configuring trigger settings for the inclusion of a subscriber in the email series list. To do this, choose the type of the initial event:
- Adding to the list. The contact gets included in the email series list if you add them to any of the chosen lists (manually, through API, during import).
- Subscription to the list. The contact gets included in the list if they confirm their subscription to the chosen list by following the link in the email through Double Opt-In.
Then, select one or more contact lists to set up your automation.
The action in the automation chain will only affect the contacts added after the automation has been started. Ideally, you should create a new empty list to use in your automation. And after the automation has been started, you can add contacts you want to be affected by it to this new list.
Now, it’s time to create a chain. As an example, let’s create a chain consisting of two steps: sending an email and analyzing reads. In practice, the chain may be represented by a welcome email series containing one email only.
To add your email to the list, click on the plus sign (+) and choose a new block: Action — Send Email.
In the new window, state the subject of your campaign, the name, and the email of the sender, and choose the email you would like to send. You can use saved templates, Selzy templates, or emails created earlier.
For an automated campaign, it’s advised to create an email beforehand using the builder and save it for later, because it’s not very convenient to edit your email in automation.
Now, it’s time to analyze if your subscriber has read the email, which will influence the result of the email series.
Click on the plus sign (+) and choose Email Activity — Read Analysis. Enter the name of the previous email and the waiting time (not all subscribers open the emails at once, that’s why it’s advised to wait for a couple of hours or even days).
Then, your chain is divided into two branches depending on the check-up result.
Finally, add the Result block for each branch. For the Yes branch, choose Success, for the No branch, choose Fail. The statistics for the series will be based upon the results in this block.
The Result block must finish each branch, otherwise, the chain won’t run.
Finally, enter the chain title, save and activate it.
If you fail to activate the chain, there must be some mistakes in it. Point the cursor at the mistake sign to learn what the issue is and how to correct it.
There are two mistakes in this chain fragment: the chain isn’t closed by a result, and the Send Email block lacks the sender address.
You can pause the chain, edit, copy, or delete it at any time in the Automation section.
You can also analyze the statistics of the active chain here.
Q&A
Is it possible to set up an email series based on the actions of the subscriber on the website (registration, payment made, etc.)?
Yes. To do this, you should ask your IT specialist to set up integration between your website and the service using API. To learn more about setting up integration using API, consult our API guidelines.
I made changes to the chain, but my subscribers still haven’t received the previous letter. What should I do?
After you have edited the chain, you must activate it by clicking on the respective button. Only then, the chain will be refreshed.
How to delete contacts from the email series?
If you don’t want any of the subscribers to follow the chain and receive further emails in the series, disable these contacts. If you simply delete them from the list, they will still remain in the email series. To disable the contacts, go to the contact list, choose the ones you need, and click on the Disable option. These contacts will receive no emails from you unless you enable them.
Is it possible to send an automated email at a particular time?
No. The countdown starts at the time of completion of the last block in the chain: inclusion into the list, reading of the previous email, etc.