What is automation?

When sending newsletters (or email marketing in general), it is common for the sender to determine the time of delivery. But this might not be the best time for the recipient. Using automation, you can tailor your newsletter to individual subscribers, by letting their own actions determine the time of delivery.

The easiest example is a welcome email, send after someone has subscribed to a mailing list. In that case, you do not want to send the email to everyone simultaneously. The moment of delivery should depend on when someone signs up.

Or suppose you want to send people a series of emails to bring attention to various aspects within your organisation. You can prepare the series and send it to your current file, but what if more people join? Then it will be difficult to offer them the same series. With automation, everyone starts the series on their own time, and they receive the emails in an automatically generated planning.

These are the most straightforward examples, which already clearly show the utility of automation. However, there are many more possibilities. For instance, you can add a junction to your automation, where people who have opened an email, or clicked a certain link, will follow a different route. You can also add and remove people to and from lists, and certain fields.