How to use Automations
The Automations feature allows you to set up automated workflows triggered when a new contact joins your list or when they click on links in your emails.
The actions you can perform within the workflow include:
- sending emails to the contacts collected by your forms
- setting waiting times between actions
- assigning tags to your contacts
- running sequences of actions you have previously set up.
In this guide, we’ll cover the elements that make up an automation. Feel free to use the shortcut menu to skip to the section that interests you.
Automation triggers
For starters, switch to the Automations tab in the Getsitecontrol dashboard and click +Create automation.
The first step to creating an automation is choosing a trigger. A trigger is an action that launches your automation.
In Getsitecontrol, you can set two different triggers: New contact created and Email link clicked.
We’ll discuss the third option — Sequence — in an upcoming paragraph.
New contact created
The New contact created trigger sets an automation in motion when a new contact joins your list via one of your forms.
Email link clicked
The Email link clicked trigger launches an automation when your contacts click on a link or a button in one of your emails. The trigger can be set to work with a click on any link or a click on one (or more) specific link(s).
Click Edit settings to add specific links as your trigger.
You can add one or more links to your trigger settings. Click +Add link to enter more:
Actions
After you’ve selected a trigger, it’s time to add the actions that will compose your workflow.
There are five different actions in Getsitecontrol:
In the following sections, we’ll review each action in detail.
Send email
This action allows you to send an email to your contacts. Once you select this option, you’ll need to choose one of three methods to create your email: Start from scratch, Use premade emails, or Reuse my emails:
Start from scratch
When starting from scratch, you’ll be working on a clean sheet: you’ll type your own copy and add visual elements to the email: images, GIFs, buttons, countdown timers, etc.
Once you’ve finished working on it, your email could look something like this:
To learn more about the email editor and its features, check out our video tutorial on how to use the email editor.
Use premade emails
Premade emails are email templates you can use to save time when crafting your own emails.
You can use them as they are, or customize them to match your brand style and your business needs.
Reuse my emails
The third option allows you to use an email you have previously created in Getsitecontrol.
You can reuse your emails as they are or adjust them for your new automation.
Add tag
This action allows you to assign tags to the contacts included in your automation.
You can tag all contacts in the automation — for example, if you want to tag the contacts who have joined your list via a specific subscription form.
Or, you can tag some contacts based on a condition of your choosing: contacts who have clicked on a link, contacts from a certain location, contacts who have already received a specific email, etc.
We’ll discuss conditions more in detail in a dedicated paragraph.
Remove tag
This action allows you to remove a previously assigned tag from your contacts.
For example, if you have previously assigned a tag to a contact and sent them emails based on that tag, you can remove the tag to stop sending the same content to that contact.
Run sequence
Run sequence allows you to trigger a previously created sequence of actions.
We’ll discuss how to create sequences in a dedicated paragraph later in this article.
Wait
The Wait action allows you to set a time delay between actions.
You can set the delay in minutes, hours, or days.
That’s all there is to know about actions in automations. Let’s move on to setting conditions.
Conditions
You can set conditions your contacts need to meet to be included in the automation or a certain action.
To add a condition to the automation or to an action within it, click +Add condition:
Follows a description of the available conditions grouped by subset: Contact, Link, and Email.
Contact
Sequences and automations with a New contact created trigger have a single set of conditions labeled Contact. The contact subset includes the following conditions:
Let’s go over them one by one.
Tag
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact has (or doesn’t have) a specific tag assigned.Segment
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact belongs (or doesn’t belong) to a certain segment. To learn more about audience segmentation, check out this dedicated article on our blog.Marketing status
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact has a specific marketing status: subscribed or unsubscribed.Email address
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact’s email matches/partially matches/does not match a certain value. For example, this condition can be used to exclude your company email domain from the automation or other email domains, like gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.Phone number
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact’s phone number matches/partially matches/does not match a certain value. This condition can be used to target/exclude specific prefixes, for example.First name
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact’s first name matches/partially matches/does not match a certain value.Last name
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact’s last name matches/partially matches/does not match a certain value.Country
The automation is triggered/the action is performed if the contact is (or is not) from a certain country.
❗The system detects the location of the contact from their browser settings. The system has no way of detecting whether the contact is using a VPN.
It’s possible to assign more than one value to the same condition, for example to target contacts from a list of countries:
You can also combine different conditions to create a set:
When the conditions are connected by an AND operator, all conditions must be fulfilled for the action to be performed.
When the conditions are connected by an OR operator, at least one condition must be true for the action to be performed.
In addition to the Contact set, automations with an Email link clicked trigger feature 2 additional subsets of conditions: Link and Email.
Link
The Link subset includes the following conditions:
Link URL Filters contacts by the link URL they have clicked (or have not clicked).
Link text Filters contacts by the word(s) in the URL of the link they have clicked (or have not clicked).
It’s possible to add more than one value to each condition and to combine them with AND and OR operators.
The Email subset features only one condition: Email subject.
This condition allows you to target contacts who have (or have not) interacted with emails with a specific subject or specific words in it.
Sequences
A sequence is a chain of actions you can create, save, and reuse within other automations. This feature allows you to send more personalized content to your contacts.
For example, you can create separate sequences for contacts with different preference tags and use them within your welcome automation. This way, each contact will receive a sequence according to their interests or preferences.
The process of creating a sequence is identical to the process of creating any other automation, except for the fact that a sequence has no trigger, as it is launched via an action within another automation.
That concludes our overview of Automations. For a step-by-step tutorial on how to build an automation from scratch, check out our dedicated video.
If you face any issues while setting up an automation, do not hesitate to reach out to us, our Tech Support team will be happy to help you.