Automation Setup

Learn how to set up and customize your automation workflows, use audience filters and tags in automation

Ira avatar
Written by Ira
Updated over a week ago

Omnisend Automation allows you to create and send automated emails based on different subscribers, buyers, or customer-based triggers. You can find more information on different types of automations you can pick from the Automations library here.

In this article, we will walk you through all of the settings available in the Automation Workflows editor.

Before You Start

  • Automation workflows are available on all the Omnisend plans. Find more information on Omnisend pricing.

  • You can add different channels to each of the automation workflows. However, your contacts' subscription statuses are managed separately. You may also add an Exit condition to send the flow to subscribed or consented contacts only.

  • Omnisend automations do not automatically replace the Automation workflows in your store. After the workflow is enabled on Omnisend, it should be disabled in your store settings. Learn how to replace automatic responses sent by Shopify.

  • Omnisend is adding UTM tags sourced as omnisend to all messages automatically, but they can be changed for every Message in the flow.

About Automation Workflows

All Automation workflows can be found in the top menu → Automation. All Automation workflows are based on a particular trigger defining the type of workflow: Abandoned Cart, Signup, etc.

You can start setting up the Automation by selecting one of the pre-built presets (recommended) or by creating a workflow from scratch. In both cases, all of the workflow steps can be changed, but if you choose the pre-set, our recommended values will be set.

Setting Up Automation Workflow

1. Choosing the type of automation workflow

To create a new Automation, you need to proceed to the Automation tab → click on the Create workflow button → pick the workflow from the Automations Library, or choose to Create from scratch.

You can see the automation workflows with the different numbers of messages; some of them have only 1 Email, and some of them have 3 Emails and 1 SMS. After creating the workflow, you may change its structure and remove or add more messages.

2. Trigger settings

Each preset workflow has a default trigger that is adjusted according to your store platform.

In the Trigger block, the following settings can be changed:

  • Trigger & Trigger Filter

  • Audience Filter

  • Exit conditions

  • Frequency

Trigger & Trigger Filter

Each of the workflows has its own set of filters — it can be the order status for the Order-based automation or the Segment for the Segment-based one. For example, for the Abandoned Cart sequence, you may choose to send the Message when either one or both of the conditions are true (total price is at least 40 and/or a selected product is purchased):

Up to 5 Trigger filters can be added to each workflow trigger.

When setting up the order-based Automation, you should consider the order's initial status when added to the system. If your order is added to Omnisend with the Paid status and only then changes to Fulfilled, you should use the Fulfillment status is "pending" or "partial" trigger filter if it makes a difference based on your store settings.

💬 Find more information on Triggers and Trigger filters.

Audience Filter 

The Audience filter defines what category of customers should receive this Message. For example, by adding the Audience filter set to Country is Lithuania, you will trigger the sequence only for customers that provide this country at the checkout page or subscribe to the Signup form that automatically determines your customers' location.

The Audience filter can be replaced with the Split condition block when it is used after the trigger.

💬 Find more information on the Audience filters.

Exit Conditions

Unlike the options mentioned previously, the Exit conditions don't restrict your customers from entering the flow but will cancel it at any stage as soon as its condition is satisfied.

Most preset flows have the default trigger that cancels the sequence as soon as the customer places the Order. However, you may add up to 5 exit conditions and up to 5 filters to each.

Frequency

Enabling the Frequency setting may prevent the same Automation from being triggered multiple times. 

For example, if you set the Automation to be triggered when a particular page is browsed, the same customer may re-trigger the Automation multiple times within the same session. To avoid this, you may set the Frequency value for such flows to a few hours and even days. In that case, the same customer can trigger your workflow repeatedly, but only after the delay passes.

💬 Find more information on the Frequency setting.

3. Add a Split to the Automation

By adding Conditional Split to the Automation workflow, you may specify what messages will be sent to each contact group. Each condition can take a boolean value (true or false) but allows you to add up to 10 Splits to a single sequence. 

You may also split your Automation based on the following:

  • Trigger events or trigger filters;

  • Custom properties or Audience filters;

  • Message behavior or Previous Message clicks and opens.

💬 Find more information on the Conditional Split.

A/B test Split

Omnisend also has another type of split that lets you test your Automation performance, randomly splitting your contacts into different groups according to the probability ratio you've set. With this feature, you may look at how each of the parameters influences your automation performance, whether it is a subject line, the content of the Message, or the structure of the sequence (messages, delays, etc.).

💬 Find more information on the A/B test feature.

4. Set the Delay

You can choose to delay as short as minutes or as long as months. We suggest keeping somewhere around our suggested timings as they are based on our best practices but feel free to use whatever works best for you. 

The delay is always counted starting from the end of the previous block (Trigger, Email, SMS, Split, etc.) and not from the trigger only.

5. Add a Message to the sequence

You may add different message blocks in the automation settings, including Email, SMS, and Push Notifications.

Email Message

Once you drop the Email message into the sequence, you may see 'Missing Email information.' This error informs that you need to add a Subject line, Preheader, Sender's name, or Sender email address.

Once you fill in the information displayed in the inbox, you can start editing the Email message content. Unlike Email Campaigns, Automated workflows may have some content blocks that are unique for the trigger. 

For example, the workflow with the Abandoned Cart trigger will have two unique blocks, Abandoned Products and Checkout button. Each has preset functions that other workflows or blocks cannot perform.

SMS message

When you add the SMS block to the flow, you may see an equivalent notification but for the SMS message 'Missing SMS information.'

Unlike the Email message, SMS can be edited in the editor directly. 

💬 Learn more about the use of SMS in the Automation workflows.

Multi-Channel Sequence

If you add more than one channel to the sequence, you will see a check-box that is pre-selected by default and defines that not opted-in for a particular channel contact should pass to the following Message in the workflow. 

This checkbox is added to all message blocks (Email, SMS, etc.) once the additional channel is added to the flow.

6. Add a tag to the Automation 

By adding a tag to the sequence, you may label your customers on different workflow stages, create a segment based on that tag, and use it for your communication targeting.

💬 Find more information on contacts' tags.

Adding changes to the enabled workflow

After you apply changes and click on the Publish changes button, the Pop-up window asking how you want to proceed with the contacts that entered the sequence already will be shown to you. Here, you can choose to complete the workflow under the old rules or cancel it.

If you only change the content of the email message, all contacts will receive the sequence with the new content.

Contacts who have completed the initial flow will not receive the new email unless the flow is triggered.


💬Learn more about Editing enabled automation.

Automation Report

If you wish to check the general performance of the Automation workflow, click on the Show Stats button or the View Full Report button for a detailed report on the workflow performance.

Each workflow stage shows how many customers went through the block (received the Message, got a tag, etc.) or how many of them have skipped it. The customer skips the block in case he is not eligible to receive the Message. For example, the customer not subscribed to the SMS channel skips the block with the SMS message but passes to the next stage in the flow.

Note if you intend to make any changes to any of the individual blocks of your automation, you will need to wait 30 days without making any further changes to any of the blocks to ensure that all stats (for every individual block) are properly aligned.

Once you add a new block, you will see the stats at set 0 because no customers have gone through them yet.

💬 Find more information on the Automation performance reports.

Have any additional questions? Reach out to our Support Team via in-app chat or at [email protected].

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