How to Build a Newsletter Automation

A Newsletter Automation is a one-time run contact-based automation designed to run a single communication or campaign that is sent to a group of contacts beginning on a specific date and time. Like a Real Estate Agent Newsletter.

Creating a newsletter type of automation is incredibly straightforward when following a few basic steps. By using the 'Delay by date' action to begin an automation, it will add the automation to every eligible contact, but wait until the moment you want to start sending subsequent actions, usually an email, to all contacts that were added or enrolled in the automation.

• Create New Automation
• Entry Conditions
• Automation Behavior
• Actions
• Video Demonstration

Create New Automation

1. To create the new automation, we'll start by clicking on 'Automations' in the main menu group on the left.
   
   
2. Next, click the '+ Create Automation' button at the top-right.
   
   
3. The new automation will be created and offer us the option of purpose - we will choose 'Contact-based automation' then click the 'Continue' button.
   
   
4. Before editing the automation, we'll want to give the automation a name and add a description. As seen in the animated GIF below, we'll click on the automation name, edit it and save. Then we'll click the ellipsis [...] next to the new name to add a description. This will be helpful in the  future to provide automation specific details, just for reference.
   
   

Entry Conditions

The entry conditions section will allow us to choose how an automation will be add to a Contact. Usually, a newsletter type automation will look to 'Contact Tags', 'Contact Type', and/or 'Contact Status', but can also use many other data-points.

In our case, we're going to use the Contact Tag contains: Realtor Newsletter.

1. To begin, look for the Entry Conditions section and click on the '+ Set Condition' button.
   
   
2. Next, the 'Set Condition' slide-out will appear on the right. Click on the drop-down and choose the target data source. In our case, we'll choose 'Tags'.
   Then we'll pick the 'Condition Operator', which is usually going to be 'Contains'. In this case, we want to target contacts that have the tag, so this option is perfect.
   Finally, we'll click the drop-down and look for the Tag we want to target: Realtor Newsletter
   
   Once we're satisfied with the options. We'll click apply at the bottom. All of this is demonstrated in the following animated GIF.
   
   
   
   
3. Once the entry condition(s) are added, we'll see a preview # of how many contacts currently match those conditions. This is a great way to know the impact and estimate the accuracy of the entry conditions.
   
   
4. Finally, we'll check the 'Enroll existing records' to turn it on. This will automatically add this automation to every contact that meets the entry conditions we set (once activated). In this case, it will be 7 contacts.
   
   
   
   

Actions

There are going to be at least 2 actions necessary for a newsletter type automation. Actions cause something to happen. In this case, we're going to have just 2 actions: Delay by date action and then an Email action.

Go to the 'Actions' section and click the '+ Add Action' button.


A slide-out will appear at right, offering the choice of action to add.

1. Delay by date: This will always be the best option to choose for a scheduled newsletter type automation. In the animated GIF below, we'll demonstrate adding the Delay by date action and setting a continuation date and time.
   
   
2. Email: The email action will allow us to choose from whom the email will be sent - as well as create the email itself.
   In this case, it will be a very basic email for demonstration purpose. Using merge fields in an email provide an easy way to customize an email or SMS/text for each contact.
   
   
3. Additional Actions: We can continue to add actions to any automation. However, in our case, we like to keep out newsletter type automations simple: just a delay until a specific date and time, then our newsletter email.
   Once the automation has run fully, it will change to a status of 'Complete' and is no longer active.
4. Once we are fully satisfied with our newsletter type automation, we will save and then activate (or turn-on) the automation.
   
   This automation will immediately be added to the currently eligible contacts, because we checked 'Enroll existing records'.
   The automation will also continue to be added to contacts that meet the entry conditions in the future. However, since we also set a 'Delay until date' action, the email action will not be run after the date set in the first action.

Video Demonstration

In the following how-to video, we'll show step-by-step the creation and activation of a basic Realtor Newsletter type of contact automation.