What are “automations”?

“Automations” is what we call our Marketing & Sales Automation feature. With the automation builder, you can easily create fully automated workflows tailored to the goals of your unique business. Automations can save you time, help you stay organized, and make more money, by improving your marketing and sales processes. After an automation is set up, it can run with no input from you, so creating automations is an extremely high-leverage activity.

An “automation” is a chain of events that runs when triggered by starting conditions you define. An automation is created by combining triggers, actions, and logic. Using our automation builder, you can mix and match these elements in unique ways to create automation workflows that accomplish a wide variety of tasks.

Use cases and example automations

You can use automations to:

Improve your marketing process:

• Create intelligence-driven automated email follow-up
  Rather than creating a basic drip sequence (a timed sequence of emails) that treats all your contacts exactly the same, you can create sophisticated follow-up that treats contacts differently depending on who they are what they have done. For instance, your automation could check to see which link a contact clicked in your welcome email. Depending on which link they clicked, it could send entirely different messages.
  
  
• React to contact behavior in real-time
  Automations can begin when your contact performs an action such as visiting a page of your website, opening an email, or submitting a form. You can create automations that perform actions in “reaction” to this behavior. For instance, if someone visits your pricing page repeatedly (but have not yet made a purchase) you could send them an invitation to schedule a time to speak by phone to get their questions answered.
• Gather data to create profiles of your contacts
  
  You can use automations to track your contacts as they interact with your app, website, and marketing assets. Their behavior gives you insight into their needs, interests, and concerns. For instance, if a contact clicks a particular link in an email you send, you can assume that is what interests them most. You can tag them as having that interest and then begin follow-up with content, products, and offers that target that interest.

Improve your sales process:

• Qualify and automatically distribute leads
  Evaluate your leads using multi-dimensional lead scoring. Qualify them using characteristics of your target market and engagement by increasing their score as they interact with your website and emails. When a lead or contact reaches a score you define, a deal can be created and the lead can be assigned to a sales person.
  
  
• Deals can be managed and updated automatically
  To cut down the amount of time salespeople spend updating deals with notes, tagging contacts, and creating tasks, you can create automations that add these updates for you and move deals through your pipeline stages so deal records are kept up-to-date without requiring time and attention.
  
  
• Use contact data to improve sales insight
  Automations can apply tags and notes to contacts so that by the time they reach your sales team, you’ve generated insight into their interests and what they are hoping to get out of your product.

Resources to help you start creating automations

Automations are created with our automation workflow builder. You can access the automation workflow builder by clicking “Automations” located in the leftside menu.

In this article, we’ll discuss:

How to manage Automation permissions from the Settings > Users page

With this level of permission, a user group will be able to:

• Create automations for their user group
• View and edit automations created by users in their own user group 

Users in one group will not be able to view or edit automations created by users in another group. 

For example, let’s say you have two user groups: a Marketing group and a Sales group. Users in a Marketing group will not be able to see or edit automations created by users in the Sales group.

To learn how to use this method, follow these steps:

1. Click the “Settings” option located on the left side navigation menu:

2. Click the “Users” option located on the left side sub navigation menu:

3. Click the “Groups” tab.

4. Click “Edit” for the group that should have access to the Automations overview page.

5. An “Edit Group” modal will open. Click the “Permissions” tab.

6. Locate the Automations permission section and click the down caret to expand the permission options.

7. Click the “Check all” checkbox.

8. Click the “Save” button.

How to grant Automation permissions from the Automations overview page

You can grant a user group access to the Automations overview page directly from the Automations overview page. In order to use this method, the user group must already exist in your account. 

To learn how to grant Automation permissions from the Automations overview page, follow these steps:

1. From the Automations overview page, click the down caret for any automation.

2. Click the “Permissions” option in the dropdown.

3. A Permissions dropdown will expand. Scroll down until you see the heading “Automations Access Denied.”

4. Click the “Allow” link for the group that should have access to the Automations overview page.

The user group will now be able to access the Automations overview page.

How to grant access to individual automations created by other user groups

With this level of permission, an Account Admin can grant a user group access to an individual automation created by any other user group, directly from the Automations overview page. 

For example, an Account Admin can give the Sales group access to an automation created by the Marketing group. Users in the Sales group will then be able to view and edit that automation.

There is no limit to the number of automations that an Admin can grant access to.

To learn how, follow these steps:

1. From the Automations overview page, locate the automation you wish to grant access to.

2. Click the down caret for that automation.

3. Click the “Permissions” option in the dropdown.

4. The Permissions dropdown will expand. Click the user group that should have access to this automation. This selection will automatically save.

5. To exit, simply click your mouse outside of the dropdown.

This article explains each automation trigger including how they work and when you might want to use them. Understanding each trigger will give you an idea of the kinds of things that are possible to automate.

“Subscribes to a list”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact is added to a list. You are able to specify the list or have it run when they are added to any list. If you want it to run when they are added to two or more specific lists, you would add multiple “Subscribes” triggers (one for each list) to your automations.

If opt-in confirmation is turned on for your form, the automation won’t begin until the contact confirms their subscription.

You may want to use this trigger to:

• Send Welcome emails
• Create an onboarding sequence

“Unsubscribes from a list”

This trigger starts your automation when someone unsubscribes from a list. Unsubscribes can be initiated by the contact (for instance, by clicking the unsubscribe link in an automated email) or by you (there is an “Unsubscribe” automation action and you can manually remove them from lists).

You may want to use this trigger to:

• Reduce a contact or deal score
• Notify someone on your team that an unsubscribe occurred
• End other automation workflows

“Submits a form”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact submits a Nurturelabs CXP form. You are able to define whether the automation begins when any form is submitted or when specific forms are submitted. If you want an automation to run when two or more specific forms are submitted, you would add multiple triggers (one for each form).

You may want to use this trigger to:

• Deliver opt-in incentives
• Apply interest tags to send targeted follow-up communications
• Increase a contact score

“Opens/reads an email”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact opens an email campaign, automation email, or one-to-one email. You can select the email campaign or automation email in the trigger.

You might want to use this trigger to:

• Adjust contact or deal scores
• Apply a tag to engaged contacts

Contacts who use the Apple Mail app with iOS 15 with Mail Privacy Protection enabled will be excluded from this trigger option unless they click a link in the email, where an open will be registered.

“Clicks a link in email”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact clicks a link within one of your campaigns or automation emails.

With this trigger, you can specify:

• The exact email, exact list the email was sent to, and exact link included in the email
• Any email, any list, any link
• A combination of any of the items above

You might want to use this trigger to:

• Apply interest tags
• Trigger follow-up messages (“You didn’t sign up for the webinar…”)
• Adjust contact or deal score

“Web page is visited”

This trigger begins an automation when a web page is visited. You are able to select a specific web page, “any” web page, or a group of web pages.  

You could use this trigger to:

• Send follow-up emails
• Adjust contact or deal score
• Apply interest tags

Note: To trigger an automation to run when a contact visits a group of pages, you can use a wildcard URL. A wildcard URL uses the * symbol to indicate “any page in this path” should begin the automation. For instance, yourdomain.com/* would begin an automation when any page of your site is visited.

Wildcards can be used at the end of your URL (yourdomain.com/*) or in the middle of your URL (yourdomain.com/*/test.php).

“Event is recorded”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact performs a custom event you define. You can use Event Tracking to monitor and respond to behavior on your website on in your app.

You could use this trigger to:

• Send a message in response to a behavior
• Adjust contact or deal score

“Shares an email”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact clicks on a social share link in a campaign or automation email that has link tracking enabled. You can specify which campaign, list, and social network should begin the automation.

You could use this trigger to:

• Send a notification to someone on your team that the email was shared
• Adjust a contact or deal score
• Thank a contact for sharing your campaign

“Forwards an email”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact submits the forward-to-a-friend form from a campaign or automation email.

You could use this trigger to:

• Thank a contact for forwarding the campaign
• Adjust a contact or deal score

“Replies to an email”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact replies to a campaign, automation email, or personal email. Personal emails are the one-to-one emails you send through the email account you’ve connected to Nurturelabs CXP.

You could use this trigger to:

• Create a task to respond to a contact 
• Move a deal to a different stage of your pipeline
• Adjust a contact or deal score

“Tag is added”

This trigger begins an automation when a tag you specify is applied to a contact. Tags can be applied to a contact(s) from their profile page, upon import, an automation action, a bulk edit, form action, or third party integration. 

Note if electing to have trigger run “Multiple Times”: If you wish for contacts to re-enter an automation each time the same tag is applied to them, then the tag must be removed, then re-applied to them. Otherwise, the automation will only trigger the first time the tag is added to your contact(s).

You could use this trigger to:

• Begin a sequence of messages
• End a different automation

“Tag is removed”

This trigger begins an automation when a tag you specify is removed from a contact. 

You could use this trigger to:

• End another automation
• Begin a series of follow-up messages
• Adjust a contact or deal score

“Field Changes”

This trigger begins an automation when a field you specify is updated. This applies to contact and deal fields (except email address). 

For example, you can start your automation if a field changes to “any” value or a specific value. You can also start your automation if a field changes from “any” value or a specific value.

You can use this trigger to:

• Send follow-up sequences
• Notify people in your organization that the field has been updated
• Create a deal based on that field change

“Goal is achieved”

This trigger begins an automation when a goal you specify is either achieved or skipped.

You can use this trigger to:

• Notify people in your organization if a contact skips a goal
• Adjust a contact score if the goal is achieved or skipped
• Begin follow-up sequences after someone becomes a customer

“Date Based”

This trigger will begin an automation relative to a date-based field you specify. You can trigger your automation to start before, on, or after that date. Because this trigger is dependent on the date, any contacts who meet that date requirement will automatically get added to this automation.

Note that you can use date-based contact or deal fields with this trigger.

You can use this trigger to:

• Send reminder and follow up emails regarding an event
• Remind contacts of recurring transactions
• Deliver appointment reminders

“RSS based”

This trigger will begin an automation when an RSS feed is updated. You can set up the frequency for when this trigger will check for updates and how many new items must be in your feed before this automation will run. You can also choose to have all contacts enter into this automation or create a segment of your choice.

You can use this trigger to:

• Send blog/news updates to your subscribers
• Notify people in your organization a new post was published

“Dismisses a Site Message”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact closes the initial view of a Site Message you specify.  

Note: This trigger requires use of the Site Messages feature and is only available on Professional and Enterprise plans.

You could use this trigger to:

• Apply a tag to contacts when they dismiss your Site Message
• Start an automation that displays a short progression of Site Messages on your site, with each new message being triggered by a contact’s dismissal of the previous message

“Conversion occurs”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact triggers a conversion you specify.

Note: This trigger requires use of the Attribution feature and is only available on Professional and Enterprise plans. In addition, you will need to have previously defined a conversion event.

You could use this trigger to:

• Send highly targeted follow-up emails to your contacts
• Send a notification to a member on your team

“Makes a purchase”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact places an order in your e-commerce store. You can choose whether the automation begins on any purchase or when a specific product is purchased. 

In addition, orders can have any status and includes those that you have successfully received payment for, as well as orders that have a status of pending or failed.

Note: This trigger requires that you set up a Deep Data integration and is only available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans. 

You could use this trigger to:

• Send a “Thank you for your purchase” message
• Collect feedback after purchase
• Begin a new customer onboarding sequence

“Abandons Cart”

This trigger begins an automation when a contact abandons their cart in your connected e-commerce store. You can specify any connected e-commerce store, or a specific e-commerce store, any product or a specific product, items from any product category or a specific product category, any cart value or a specific cart value.

Note: This trigger requires that you set up a Deep Data integration and is only available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans. 

You could use this trigger to:

• Send a message to contacts who abandon their cart
• Add a tag to contacts

“Score changes”

This trigger begins an automation when a score is above or below a level you specify. 

Note: This trigger works with the Contact and Deal scoring feature and is available on the Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans. 

You could use this trigger to:

• Automatically create deals as contacts become sales-ready
• Add tags to contacts

“Enters a pipeline”

This trigger begins an automation when a deal enters a pipeline you specify. 

Note: This trigger uses the Deals CRM feature and is available on the Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

You could use this trigger to:

• Send out an email inviting the contact to a phone consultation
• End automated marketing sequences to transition the lead into sales follow-up
• Create a series of tasks and notifications to distribute a new lead to salesperson

“Deal stage changes”

This trigger begins the automation when the stage of a deal changes. You are able to specify which pipeline it applies to and the exact movement between stages you want to target. For instance, you could say, “If the deal moves from Stage X to Stage Z,” run the automation.” Or you could simply say, “If it moves from Stage X to any other stage in the pipeline, run this automation.”

Note: This trigger uses the Deals CRM feature and is available on the Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

You could use this trigger to:

• Automatically create tasks associated with each stage
• Send specific messages to move the deal to the next pipeline stage

“Deal status changes”

This trigger starts the automation when the status of a deal changes. A deal’s status can be “Open,” “Won,” or “Lost.”

Note: This trigger uses the Deals CRM feature and is available on the Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

You could use this trigger to:

• Go through a series of steps to close out a deal (for instance, add a note or tag to a contact)
• If the deal is won, you could create tasks to set up their account or notify a manager
• You could use a web-hook to create a new support account for the contact

“Sentiment changes”

This trigger starts the automation when a sentiment changes for a deal email. A sentiment for a deal email can be positive, negative, neutral, or mixed.

Note: This trigger uses the Sentiment Analysis feature and is available on Professional and Enterprise plans.

You could use this trigger to:

• Create tasks for the deal
• Create a note for the deal
• Send a follow up email to the primary contact on the deal

Branded app triggers

Branded app triggers include:

• “Calendly meeting received”
• “Typeform form received”
• “Unbounce page received”

You can use any of these triggers once you enable the Calendly integration, Typeform integration, or Unbounce integration and connect at least one meeting type or form during the integration set up.

When you configure any of these triggers, you can set them to run when any meeting or form is submitted or when a specific meeting or form is submitted. These triggers will only run once per contact for your automation. This cannot be changed. 

You can use these triggers to:

• Send a series of reminder or follow-up emails
• Create a deal for the contact and move them through your sales pipeline
• Adjust a contact score

Combining triggers and actions to create automations

By using triggers to begin automations for tightly focused groups of contacts, you can treat your contacts differently depending on how they behave.

In this article, we will discuss the following:

What are connected automations?

Connected automations are automations that work together to achieve a process through actions and triggers. An example of two connected automations would be the engagement tagging automations, which are available in the New Automation Recipe Modal. These two automations work hand-in-hand to tag contacts based on their level of engagement with communications.  

Specifically, automations can be connected in one or more of the following ways:

“Starts an automation” action
This action is located under “Conditions and Workflow” in the automation workflow builder. When a contact encounters this action in an automation, they will enter any automation you specify.

“End other automation” action
This action is located under “Conditions and Workflow” in the automation workflow builder. When a contact encounters this action in an automation, they will stop running through either all other automations or a single automation you specify.  If they are not in any other automation(s), they will proceed through this step.

Connections from actions and triggers
This happens when an outcome from an action in one automation triggers another automation to run.

This includes:

• Tag Added
  • Automation A has an “Add tag” action 
  • Automation B uses the “Tag is added” trigger 
• Tag Removed
  • Automation A has a “Remove tag” action 
  • Automation B uses the “Tag is removed” trigger 
• Goal Achieved
  • Automation A uses a “Goal” action
  • Automation B uses a “Goal is achieved” trigger
• Contact Field Updated
  • Automation A uses an “Update contact” action 
  • Automation B uses a “Field changes” trigger  
• Score Updates
  • Automation A uses an “Adjust score” action
  • Automation B uses a “Score changes” trigger 
• Deal Creation
  • Automation A uses an “Add deal” action 
  • Automation B uses a “Enters pipeline” trigger 
• Deal Stage Update
  • Automation A uses the “Update Stage” action 
  • Automation B uses the “Deal Stage Changes” trigger 
• Deal Status Update
  • Automation A uses the “Update Status” action 
  • Automation B uses the “Deal status changes” trigger 
• Conversion Occurs
  • Automation A uses a “Goal” action with “Trigger this conversion” selected 
  • Automation B uses a “Conversion Occurs” trigger 
• Subscribes
  • Automation A uses a “Subscribe” action
  • Automation B uses the “Subscribes to list” trigger
• Unsubscribes
  • Automation A uses an “Unsubscribe” action
  • Automation B uses the “Unsubscribes from list” trigger 
• Site Messaging
  • Automation A uses the “Send a site message” action 
  • Automation B uses the “Dismisses a site message” trigger
• Sending Email & Reading Email
  • Automation A uses a “Send email” action 
  • Automation B uses the “Opens/Reads an email” trigger
• Sending Email & Clicking Email
  • Automation A uses a “Send email” action
  • Automation B uses the “Clicks a link in an email” trigger 
• Sending Email & Replying Email
  • Automation A uses a “Send email” action
  • Automation B uses the “Replies to an email” trigger
• Sending Email & Forwarding Email
  • Automation A uses a “Send email” action
  • Automation B uses the “Forwards an email” trigger
• Sending Email & Sharing Email
  • Automation A uses a “Send email” action
  • Automation B uses the “Shares an email” trigger

Features of the Automations Map

The Automations Map includes:

• Map page that provides a visual overview of all automations in your account (see note below)
• Filtering options that let you filter automations by actions, triggers, status, label, last edited, highest activity, oldest created, newest created, alpha A-Z, and alpha Z-A
• Map links that visually indicate all automations that a particular automation is connected to
• Automation Details shelf that provides high-level statistics of the selected automation, including connections, contacts, campaigns, and goals

Note: If you have less than 100 automations, all of them will be listed on the Automations Map page.

If you have more than 100 automations, only connected automations will be displayed.  

Viewing connected automations with the Automations Map

To access the Automations Map, click “Automations” on the left side menu to navigate to the Automations Overview page. Then click “Automations Map” located on the left side of the page.

The Automations Map page will load and provide a visual overview of all automations in your account; this includes both Active and Inactive automations:

Automations that are Active means that they are currently running and contacts can be added to them. They are indicated on the Map page by a green dot.

Automations that are inactive means that the automations are not running and contacts cannot enter them. They appear greyed out on the Map page and will have a red dot.

Reminder: If you have more than 100 automations, then we will only display connected automations.

To see how one automation is connected to another automation(s), click an automation from the Automations Map page.

The Map will then display the selected automation as well as other automations it’s connected to:

The selected automation will be in the middle of the Map. Automations to the right are those that the selected automation starts or ends. Automations to the left start or end the selected automation. 

In addition, the Automation Details shelf will appear on the righthand side. This shelf will display a high-level overview of the statistics for the selected automation, including:

• Connections
  Will list all automations that the selected automation starts an/or ends as well as all automations that start and/or end the selected automation. Clicking any of the automations listed here will open that automation’s workflow builder.  
• Contacts
  Will show how many contacts are currently in the selected automation. Clicking the “Contacts currently in automation” link will direct to you a list of those contacts.
• Campaigns
  Will list all campaigns included in the selected automation along with their open rates. Clicking any one of the campaigns will redirect you to its performance report.
• Goals
  Will list all goals in the selected automation along with their completion rates. Clicking the name of the goal will redirect you to its report.

Note: If you click an automation with no connections, it will only show the selected automation and its “Automation Details” shelf.

When viewing the Automations Map, you may see different types of connections, these include:

• Ends
  This connection is in red and uses a “No” symbol. This means that the automation on the left uses an action that ends an automation on the right.

• Starts
  This connection is in green and uses an arrow symbol. This means that the automation on the left uses an action that starts an automation on the right.

• Starts and stops
  This connection is in yellow and uses an arrow symbol. This means that the automation on the left uses actions that both start and stop the automation on the right.

• Circular starts
  This connection is in green and uses a two-directional arrow. This means that the two connected automations use actions that trigger each other to run.

• Circular stops
  This connection is in red and uses a two-directional arrow. This means that the two connected automations use actions that stop each other from running.

• Circular starts and stops
  This connection is in yellow and uses a two-directional arrow. This means that the two connected automations both use actions that both start and stop the other automation.

Actions can be external. For example, you can use actions to communicate with your contacts via email, SMS, or site message. They can also be internal. For example, you can use actions to update a deal or contact score, add the contact to another automation, or create goals.

Note that actions available to you in the automation builder depend on your plan level.

In this article, we’ll explain each automation action and share examples of how you can use them.

Sending options

You can use actions in this category to send messages. 

“Send an email”

This action will send an email to the contact who goes through this step of the automation. You are able to design the email. You are able to time the email by placing a wait condition before it. Note that the contact will need an email address to receive the message.

“Send a 1:1 email”

Available on Professional and Enterprise plans.

You can send a one-to-one email with any connected email through an automation action. It will also allow sales-focused Nurturelabs CXP users to send automated emails to contacts who have not yet opted in.

 Please note: This ability is based on contact limits.

After connecting an email address to the CRM (Settings > Deals), customers will see a new option to choose a Preferred Email Address as well. When %deal_owner_email% is selected as the ‘From Email’ in the 1:1 Email action block in the automation builder, the email address set as the Preferred Email Address will be the one that appears in all automated one-to-one emails. However, you may choose to send from any connected email account in the dropdown box.

Within this automation action, you will be able to:

• Set a CC and/or BCC (use a comma to separate multiple email addresses)
• Use contact, deal, and account personalization tags for the Subject Line and body of the email 
• Use Bold, Italics, Underline, Hyperlinks, Bullets, and Numbered Lists in the body of the email

The new automation action can be found under CRM. Note that only Deal triggers will be compatible with this action. If there’s a contact-based trigger in your automation, the 1:1 email block will be skipped.

“Send a site message”

Available on Professional and Enterprise plans.

This action lets you display messages to an opted-in contact when they visit a specific page on your site or any page of your site. You may want to use this to display information about a new offering or a coupon code for a product to get your contact to complete a purchase.

In order to use this feature, you must have site tracking installed and enabled on your site.

“Send an SMS”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

When a contact reaches this action in your automation, a text message will be sent to them. 

“Send a notification email”

This action sends a notification email. It could notify someone within your company.

Conditions and Workflow

You can use actions in this category to add logic to your automations and/or manage other automations.

If using Conditional Wait, If/Else, Split, or Goal actions with the “Has opened” or “Has not opened” condition: Contacts who use the Apple Mail app with iOS 15 with Mail Privacy Protection will not correctly meet this condition.

“Wait”

The wait action pauses the automation for the contact at this step. You are able to specify how long they wait before proceeding to the next action in their automation path. 

There are two types of wait actions that you can create:

• Timed wait
  Contacts will wait in this action for a period of time you specify, then proceed to the next action in the automation. 
• Conditional wait
  Contacts will wait in this action until certain conditions are met, for example, until they perform a certain behavior or until you collect certain information about them. Wait conditions are created with the segment builder. In addition, you have the option to set a time limit for how long a contact will wait in this action if they don’t meet the conditions to proceed.

“If/Else”

An “If/Else” action creates a fork in your automation. There are two paths in this fork: A “Yes” path and a “No” path. The “Yes” path is for contacts who match the conditions you define and then “No” path is for contacts who do not match the conditions. “If/Else” conditions are created with the segment builder. This action is useful for treating contacts differently depending on a variety of factors. You are able to create conditions based on any condition that you can create a segment with: actions, tags, custom fields, Site & Event Tracking data, and other contact data.

“Split”

Available on Professional and Enterprise plans. 

The “Split” action allows you to create split test automations.

There are two types of split actions:

• Even split
  A traditional A/B split test that determines a winning path.
• Conditional split
  This split will send all contacts down one path until specific conditions are met and then a different path after. This is not a traditional split test and no winning path is determined. Conditions for this split are created with the segment builder. 

“Go to”

The “Go to” action allows you to move contacts to another step of the automation. You can use it to bring contacts back to a branch or create loops.

“Goal”

The “Goal” action allows contacts to jump from their current location in your automation directly to that goal step if they meet the conditions to do so. Conditions for this action are created with the segment builder. You can use this to begin other automations, send targeted messages to contacts, adjust contact and deal scores, and even add a contact to a specific step in your automation upon entry. 

“Start an automation”

The “Start an automation” action will start an automation you specify when the contact reaches that step.

“End this automation”

The “End this automation” action is an indication that the automation ends at this point. Even without the “End this automation” action, your automation would still end when your contact reaches the last step of the automation. This action is more a “note” that there are no more steps for the contact to take in your automation.

“End other automation”

The “End other automation” action will stop the contact running through a specific automation that you choose or all other automations. 

“Webhook”

The “Webhook” action can send a webhook to another app allowing you to automate actions with apps outside of Nurturelabs CXP. For instance, you could send a webhook to have a support account created with your helpdesk software when a new order comes in.

“Perform Math”

The “Perform Math” action lets you execute calculations on existing custom contact fields or custom deal fields. With this action, you will be able to adjust the numerical value of an existing field using either the add, subtract, multiply, or divide math function. 

This automation action is available on all plan levels. Note that customers with a Plus, Professional, or Enterprise plan can also use the “Perform Math” action with custom deal fields.

Contacts

This category of actions gives you a variety of actions related to managing contacts.

“Subscribe”

The “Subscribe” action adds a contact to a list. This will give the contact an “Active” status. 

“Unsubscribe”

The “Unsubscribe” action removes the contact from a list. For instance, when a new customer makes an order, you could remove them from your “prospect” list and, using the “Subscribe” action, add them to your “customer” list.

“Convert”

This is available on Professional and Enterprise plans.

The “Convert” automation action enables a contact to trigger a conversion while in an automation. In this action, you can select an existing conversion to trigger or create a new conversion. 

“Update a contact”

The “Update contact” action allows you to add data to the contact record. You could use this action to add data to a custom field. For instance, you could update a “Status” field with “Promoter” if they share a campaign on social media.

“Add a tag”

The “Add tag” action will apply a tag to a contact when they reach this step.

“Remove a tag”

The “Remove tag” action will remove a tag from a contact when they reach this step.

“Add a note”

The “Add note” action will attach a note to the contact record. This is useful for adding information through the marketing process so that when a lead is passed onto sales, they read notes to know what the contact has done, what they’ve viewed, and what they are interested in so they can go into a call aware of what the contact already knows and with insight that will help them close the sale.

“Add to Facebook Custom Audience”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

This action is available with the Facebook Custom Audience integration.

This action will add contacts to a Facebook Custom Audience you specify. In addition, this action will let you create a new custom audience. If you’re creating a new Facebook Custom Audience, it will be of the “Customer List” subtype. 

“Remove from Facebook Custom Audience”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

This action is available with the Facebook Custom Audience integration.

This action will remove contacts from the Facebook Custom Audience you specify.

“Adjust a contact score”

This is available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans. 

The “Adjust score” action allows you to move a contact score up or down when they reach that step of an automation. If the proceeding actions indicated sales-ready behavior, you could add points to their score. You could give out negative points if the contact unsubscribes or fails to engage (open or click) your campaigns.

Note that you can also set the contact score to a specific value or reset the score to 0 with this action.

CRM

CRM automation actions are available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans. 

This category of action gives you a variety of actions related to managing deals.

“Add a deal”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Add deal” action will create a deal record for an opportunity. This action allows you to automatically create deals for contacts as they reach sales-readiness. You may want to use this action with a “Score changes” trigger so that when a contact score reaches a threshold score, a deal record is automatically created and placed in your pipeline.

“Update a title”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Update title” action will edit a deal’s title.

“Update a status”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Update status” action can be used to change a deal’s status to “Open,” “Won,” or “Lost.” You could use this action to mark a deal as “Won” when the associated contact makes a purchase.

“Update an owner”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Update owner” action will change who a deal is assigned to. You could use this action to change ownership as the deal reaches a point where there is a hand-off. For instance, as deals are qualified and near closing, the deal could be handed off to a more experienced sales rep.

“Update a value”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Update value” action changes a deals estimated value.

“Update a stage”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Update stage” action moves a deal to another stage of your pipeline. This action is a crucial part of automating your sales process so you may use it often. When a contact performs a certain behavior, such as replies to an email or visits a link you sent them to, you could move them further down the pipeline.

“Update a custom field”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

This action updates the value of a custom deal field. You can use this action to automatically enter a new value, copy data from an existing contact field, or clear the value for the custom deal field.

“Update an account field”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Update an account field” action allows you to add or modify an account level field value. You could use this action to add data to a custom field.

“Add a task”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Add task” action creates new to do items. This action is very useful for staying organized and making sure no lead falls through the cracks. You can automatically add tasks as the pipeline stage changes so that all associated work has task reminders created.

“Add a note”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Add note” action adds a note to the deal record. (The “Add note” action under the “Contacts” category adds notes to the contact record.)

“Complete a task”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Complete task” action closes a task by marking it as completed. You can use this action to automate your workday and stay organized by having tasks closed as you or the contact perform certain behaviors.

“Adjust a deal score”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Adjust score” action moves a deal score up or down.

Note that you can also set the contact score to a specific value or reset the score to 0 with this action.

“Add Contact to Account”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans. 

The “Add Contact to Account” action lets you create and add contacts to a new or existing account. With this action, you can automatically assign new contacts to existing accounts, create new accounts from data collected from a contact record, or clean up and maintain appropriate data hygiene related to accounts and contacts. 

“Add Account Note”

Available on Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

The “Add Account Note” action adds a note to the account record. When configuring this action, you can use personalization tags from contacts, deals, and accounts to insert dynamic values into the note text. Once a contact reaches this action in your automation, a note is added to the contact’s account record.

Salesforce

This category of action gives you a variety of actions related to creating contacts and leads in Salesforce.

“Create a contact in Salesforce”

When a contact reaches this step in your automation, they will be added to your Salesforce account as a contact. 

“Create a lead in Salesforce”

When a contact reaches this step in your automation, they will be added to your Salesforce account as a lead.

More resources to help you create Automations

Now that you are familiar with automation actions, you may want to learn about how the automation workflow builder works or go through a walkthrough of creating an automation so that you can see how combining triggers and actions allows you to create fully automated sequences of events.

In this article we’ll cover the specifics of how the automation builder works. By the end, you should be feel comfortable using the builder to create automations by combining triggers and actions.

To enter the automation workflow builder, first click “Automations” on the leftside menu to navigate to the Automations Overview screen. Then click the “New automation” button in the upper right-hand corner.

The automation modal

We’ve created a variety of automation workflow recipes you can use as a starting point. You can build on top of these workflows and customize them to what makes sense for your business. 

Click an automation’s name or description to select a workflow and then click “Continue”:

You’ll be redirected to the Automation Builder where you can see a preview of the automation recipe. If the automation fits your needs, click the “Get Started” button to set up the automation in your account. If it does not, click “Never mind” to go back to the “Create an automation” modal.

If you just want to create a new automation that does not use a prebuilt recipe, click the “Start from Scratch” option in the “Create an automation” modal then click the “Continue” button.

Adding triggers

Automation triggers are the conditions that, when met, begin automations. You are able to define those conditions by adding triggers to your automation. You are able to have multiple triggers so your automation can begin more than one way.

You can add triggers two ways:

1. When you create a new automation, you’ll be asked to pick a trigger immediately after giving it a name. You add a trigger by clicking it. If you aren’t sure yet what you want the trigger to be, you can click the “x” in the upper right-hand corner or select “Or don’t have a trigger for your automation.” Either way, you’ll have the option to remove or add triggers at any point in time later on.
   
   
2. From the automation workflow builder, you can add a trigger at any time by clicking “Add start trigger” or “Add new start” at the top of the workflow you are building.

After selecting a trigger, you’ll be presented with options related to that particular trigger. Most triggers have the “Runs” setting in common.

The “Runs” setting has two options:

1. Runs “Once”
   This will make it so a contact can only enter the automation once, no matter how many times they meet the triggering conditions.
   
   
2. Runs “Multiple times”
   This will make it so that a contact can enter the contact repeatedly each time the triggering conditions are met. For instance, if the trigger is “Opens email,” the automation would run each time an email is opened by a contact. You should be careful using the “Runs multiple times” setting when the automation sends a message because a contact could receive the same message over and over each time they do something.

Segment contacts entering the automation

This is a useful option that allows you to target specific contacts by filtering them. You create a segment so that only the contacts who match your segment will enter the automation.

For example, if you only wanted an automation to run for contacts who haven’t yet made a purchase, you could create a segment that looks for the “prospect” tag or looks for the absence of the “customer” tag.

Adding actions

You can add actions to your automation two ways. They both offer the same options so which one you use is a matter of preference:

1. The modal window
   The modal window is accessed by clicking the “+” symbol anywhere it appears in your automation. The action you choose will appear at the node you clicked. After selecting an action by clicking it you will be presented with the action options modal window.
   
   
2. The sidebar
   The sidebar is the dark grey column to the far right of the workflow builder. You can minimize or expand it by clicking the double arrows in the top left of the sidebar. To place an action at a specific spot of your automation, you click and drag it to the node you want it to appear on. When you release the click, you will be presented with the action options modal window.

Removing triggers and actions

To delete triggers and actions you hover over it and click the delete icon that appears in the upper right-hand corner.

If you remove an “If/else” condition that has actions below it under the “yes” and “no” paths, you will be prompted to choose what to do with those actions:

Saving your automation

As you work, the automation builder will automatically save your work. You can rollback to a previous version of your automation by clicking the “turn back time” icon:

Viewing your workflow

If you are creating a large automation, it might not be possible to view the entire workflow within your browser window. In that case, you have two options:

• You can scroll the window vertically and horizontally. To focus on the area of interest, you can center it in the screen by scrolling up & down and left & right.
• You can zoom in and out. To view more of the workflow in your browser, you can click the “-” symbol on the zoom controls in the lower left-hand corner of the window. This will zoom out making the workflow smaller. Each time you click it, you’ll zoom out further. This is a good way to go through and check your automation but it becomes more and more difficult to read the labels on automation actions the further you zoom out. To zoom in closer, click the “+” button.

However, we recommend creating multiple, smaller automations instead of one, large automation as a best practice. 

Making an automation “Active” or “Inactive”

It is a good idea to keep your automation “Inactive” until it is complete. Once it is “Active,” contacts can start entering into it by triggering the start conditions.

Naming your automation

Usually it’s a good idea to be descriptive of what the automation does rather than being terse or vague because managing your automations can become confusing when you have quite a few.

You can edit your automation’s name by opening it and typing a name in the upper lefthand corner and clicking “Save.”

Labeling your automations

To keep your automations organized and make it easier to find automations, you may want to group them together. How you choose to organize them is up to you. For instance, you could have labels for: pre-sales marketing, post-sale marketing, and pipeline automation.

Editing your automation

When making changes to an automation after you have made it live, such as adding and/or removing actions, make sure to switch the automation from “Active” to “Inactive” on the top right of your screen. This pauses the automation while you make your desired changes so contacts won’t skip steps and/or end the automation prematurely. Once changes are complete, you can switch back to Active status and contacts will resume at their respective steps within the automation.

More resources for creating automations

Feel free to play around with the automation builder. You can’t mess anything up and there isn’t anything you can’t delete or undo. Just be sure you keep your automation inactive so contacts don’t enter it until you are ready!

As with so many other things in life, practice makes perfect. The more experience you get with creating automations, the more aspects of your business you’ll be able to automate and the more sophisticated you can make your marketing and sales processes. Becoming “good” at making automations is largely just becoming familiar with what each trigger and each action does, and its options, so that you can combine them in novel and creative ways.

What is an automation recipe?

An automation recipe is a template of an automation. You can import any template into your account and customize it to suit your needs.  

Automation recipes include:

• Automation framework
  All the steps will be laid out in the same way as the source recipe.
• Campaigns (automation emails)
  Any designed campaigns will transfer over the design and copy to your account. You can  change any element of the campaign including the removal of all design choices.
• Automation logic
  Each automation has its own logic and workflow. When you import an automation, this logic will be copied over to your account. Examples of this can include timed wait steps and conditional wait steps. The Automation Import Wizard will also walk you through a series of steps to update the imported automation so that it references lists, segments, email names, tags, forms, and events that apply specifically to your account.

How do automation recipes work?

You can customize any automation recipe once it’s imported into your account. For example, you may want to build out more actions or conditions that work for your business. Automation recipes are stepping stones that you can use to get started.

All automation recipes created by Nurturelabs CXP are located in your Nurturelabs CXP account. To view them, navigate to the Automations Overview page and click the “Create new automation” button. A modal with all Nurturelabs CXP recipes will appear. From here, you can scroll through recipes and find the one you want to use. You can also type keywords to narrow your search or browse recipes by category.

Once imported, it will be available in the “Create an Automation” modal under the “Purchased” section. This modal appears when you click the “Create an automation” button on the Automations overview page.

Clicking on the automation from the “Create an automation” modal will open the Automation Import Wizard. This wizard will walk you through each step needed to customize the automation for your account. This can include adding your sending information into an email, specifying a custom deal field used in a goal or IF/Else action, and more. Each step provided by the wizard has a section for author notes. These notes can include helpful directions on the step itself, what content is needed, or will outline ways to adjust the step to meet your needs.