This article explains how to use the automation workflow builder.

Emma's automation feature lets you automatically send targeted emails to your audience based on actions that they're taking, like signing up or clicking links in your emails, and important milestones in their customer journey, such as birthdays, anniversaries, or account updates. You can create workflows to send emails to your subscribers based on those actions and events. Taking it a step further, branching your workflow allows you to create a sophisticated, multi-email series that sends your subscribers different messages based on how they interact with previous emails in that series.

Emma Lite customers can activate one workflow, while all other plans include unlimited workflows. Lite accounts also only have access to certain triggers. For access to more workflows and all trigger types, you can go to the Billing section of your account to upgrade, or click on Get Support in the bottom right corner to access our virtual assistant.

	In This Article
	Video Tutorial: Welcome Series Building an Automation Automation Triggers Branching a Workflow Video Tutorial: Branching Branching Your Workflow Workflow Audience Activating or Deactivating a Workflow Additional Resources

Watch a Quick Video Tutorial on Creating a Welcome Series

Building an Automation

1. Navigate to your Automation tab.
2. Click on the Create new workflow button.
3. Enter a name for your workflow in the first field.
4. In the second field, choose an audience for the workflow from your groups and segments. You can choose more than one, if necessary.
5. Choose your trigger event. A trigger event is the action that will cause the workflow to fire, such as clicking a link in a mailing or updating a contact field.
6. Use the Add action button to either choose a mailing to send through the workflow or add a waiting period. Once you add at least one mailing followed by one wait step, you'll have the opportunity to branch the workflow, if desired.
7. Once you're satisfied with your automation, click on the Save workflow button and switch the toggle from "Inactive" to "Active".

⚠	Warning
	You must save your workflow before activating it. If you activate first, it may malfunction and fail to fire.

Automation Triggers

There are several different options for triggering your workflow. We've made a quick list of these options below, including a brief description of each one and links to more information about how to use them.

• Contact import: Triggers a workflow when a new contact is imported into your Emma account. This trigger is not available to Lite accounts.
• Custom API event: Triggers a workflow based on activity that's being logged and shared from another platform, like a payment gateway, shopping cart, or CRM service. This trigger is not available to Lite accounts.
• Date-based: Triggers a workflow based on a date stored in a contact's record, like birthday, anniversary, appointment, etc.
• Field change: Triggers a workflow when the data in a specific field in a contact's record is updated, like if their City field changes from Knoxville to Nashville and you want to target them differently.
• Link click on a specific mailing: Triggers a workflow when someone clicks on a link in a specific mailing that you've sent or scheduled.
• Link click on any mailing: Triggers a workflow when someone clicks a specific link in any mailings you've sent or scheduled.
• Signup: Triggers a workflow when someone signs up through a form. This trigger is also compatible with certain API calls and integrations.

Ⓘ	Info
	The contact import trigger and the Custom API event trigger are not available to Emma Lite accounts.

Is there a trigger that will just start an automation when I tell it to?

Currently, there is no trigger that will start a workflow at the push of a button. However, you can use a field change trigger to achieve a similar effect.

1. Create a new short answer contact field. For example, a short answer field named "Trigger".
2. Create a new field change automation.
3. In the panel on the right, select the "Trigger" field and click Next.
4. On the next screen, click on the first box labeled "Please choose an option" and select Equals. In the box below, enter "No".

5. Click on the second box labeled "Please choose an option" and select Equals. In the box below, enter "Yes". Click Next.

   

6. Click Confirm.
7. Add the desired mailings to the workflow.
8. Save the workflow, then activate it.
9. Create a spreadsheet of the contacts who you want to trigger the workflow. This spreadsheet should have 2 columns: One for email address and one for the "Trigger" field.
10. In the "Trigger" field column, enter "No" for all contacts.
11. Import the spreadsheet into Emma.
12. Return to your spreadsheet and enter "Yes" into the "Trigger" field column for all contacts.
13. Save the spreadsheet and import it into Emma. Be sure to check the "Trigger field change workflows" box when importing.

Once you've completed these steps, the workflow will fire.

Branching a Workflow

Once a contact in your audience successfully triggers a workflow, they'll follow the steps of that workflow in the order that you lay them out. If you want to send contacts down different paths based on how they're interacting with earlier messages in that workflow, branching will let you automatically check for specific interactions before deciding which message they should receive next. Each workflow can have up to 20 branches.

Branching is activated by using either a Wait step or a Send Mailing step:

• Send mailing: This option allows you to choose one of your campaign drafts to send to the contacts in the workflow. You can customize the subject line, from name, and from address of the mailing.
• Wait: This option will wait a specified amount of time (hours, days, weeks) before moving to the next step. Use this to add delays between emails and other actions.

Watch a Quick Video Tutorial on Adding Branching to a Workflow

Branching Your Workflow

To add branching to your workflow, you must first add at least one mailing, followed by one wait step. Once you've added both, hover your cursor over the plus sign and choose Branch workflow from the dropdown menu. In the pop-up window that appears, click on the Action menu and select either, Has opened or Has clicked. This will allow you to create separate paths in the workflow for contacts who opened / clicked and for contacts who did not open / click.

If you choose "Has clicked", it's important to keep in mind that Emma will follow the same rules as a link click trigger, specifically these 3 rules:

• Link click triggers do not work with mailings that have Google Analytics applied.
• Link click triggers operate on unique clicks. Clicking a link multiple times will not trigger the automated workflow repeatedly.
• Links to signup forms are not eligible for link click triggers.

Workflow Audience

As mentioned above, you can filter the audience for an automation workflow if you only want certain contacts to be eligible to receive it. You do this by filtering your audience to only contacts in specific groups or segments. If you select multiple groups or segments for a workflow, contacts will enter the workflow if they belong to any group or segment that you've chosen.

Furthermore, if contacts move out of the groups or segments that you've specified for your workflow, they will no longer receive the emails in that workflow. This is a great way to make sure that people don't receive messages in your workflow if they take an action that makes that workflow no longer relevant to them.

Activating or Deactivating a Workflow

After you create an automation and have activated a workflow, you will not be able to edit the trigger type, wait times, or selected emails. However, you can still make changes to the workflow's audience, edit the subject line, sender name, reply-to address, and the content of the emails directly from the workflow builder.

✎	Note
	Deactivating your workflow will immediately remove all contacts from it. No additional emails will be sent, and those recipients will not pick up where they left off if you reactivate the workflow.

Additional Resources

• Editing an Automated Mailing
• Trigger Events: Email Signup
• Trigger Events: Date-Based
• Trigger Events: Contact import
• Trigger Events: Field Change
• Trigger Events: Link Click
• Trigger Events: Custom API Event