What are automations

Automations send the right email at the right moment without you pressing send. Pick a trigger ("when"), a timing ("how soon after"), an audience ("who"), and an email-action ("what to send"), and the system fires for every contact that matches — over and over, on its own.

Where a campaign is a one-off send to a list at a moment you choose, an automation is a rule that keeps running. New contacts that meet the trigger get the email automatically; you build it once, then it works in the background. Use it for welcome flows, anniversaries, re-engagement after inactivity, post-purchase follow-ups, and anything else that should react to data instead of a calendar.

The four parts of an automation

1. When (trigger) — the event that decides whether a contact qualifies, e.g. "joined a list", "matched a segment", "anniversary date reached".
2. How soon (timing) — instantly when the trigger fires, or delayed by a fixed amount ("3 days after sign-up", "on the day"). Pick the timing that gives the message the best chance of feeling timely without feeling pushy.
3. Who (audience) — the mailing list, optionally narrowed by a segment. The trigger is checked against this audience: only contacts inside it can ever fire.
4. What (email-action) — the actual email that gets sent. Email-actions live in their own list (see "Email actions" in the Automations menu) and are reusable across automations, so you can edit the design without touching the rule that fires it.

📘

Lifecycle statuses

Draft — still being built; nothing fires. Ready — fully configured but not yet armed. Active — armed and firing for every matching contact. Disabled — paused; the configuration stays intact, but nothing fires until you re-activate. Use the actions menu on a row to switch between these.

📘

Test before you activate

Once active, an automation fires for real recipients. Walk through the email-action with a test send first, double-check the trigger and timing, and only then move it from Ready to Active. There is no "undo a send" — the same care that goes into a campaign should go into the first activation of a new automation.

👍

Statistics and execution history

After firing for a while, the row's actions menu opens two views: Info & Statistics (totals — how many contacts the automation has reached, opens, clicks) and Execution History (per-contact log of when the rule actually fired). Use them to confirm the automation is doing what you expected, and to spot rules that fire too often or not at all.

🚧

Disabling vs. deleting

Disabling pauses the automation but keeps the configuration and history. Deleting removes everything, including the audit trail of who got what — only delete when you are sure the rule will never run again.

How is an automation different from a campaign?

A campaign is a one-off send to a list at a moment you choose. An automation is a rule that keeps running — every contact that meets the trigger gets the email automatically, often days or weeks apart. Use campaigns for newsletters and announcements; use automations for welcome flows, follow-ups, and lifecycle messages.

Can the same email-action be used by multiple automations?

Yes — email-actions are reusable. Build the design once, then reference it from any automation that should send it. Editing the email-action updates every automation that uses it, so be deliberate when changing copy in a shared one.

A contact matches the trigger twice — do they get the email twice?

Depends on the trigger. One-time triggers (like "joined a list") fire once per contact; recurring ones (like "anniversary") fire each time the condition is true. Open the Execution History on the row to see exactly when the automation fired for a given contact.

I disabled an automation by accident — is the configuration lost?

No. Disabled keeps everything intact — trigger, timing, audience, email-action — and just stops firing. Use the actions menu and choose Activate to resume; pending matches that occurred while disabled are not retroactively fired.

Why is the activate option missing on a row?

Activate only appears on Draft, Ready, and Disabled rows. Active automations show Disable instead. If you see neither, the configuration is incomplete — open the automation and finish it before it can be activated.

See also

• Email actions
• What is a campaign
• What are segments