Create an automation

An automation sends email on its own in response to something a contact does, rather than on a date you pick. A welcome series, an abandoned checkout nudge, a birthday email.

Start one

Open Automations and click New automation. You are shown Choose a starting point:

• Start from scratch — "Build a custom flow node by node."
• A template — pre-built flows grouped by category: Commerce, Lifecycle and Retention.

Templates are the faster route and are real working flows, not stubs. Available ones include Welcome Series, Abandoned Checkout Recovery, Browse Abandonment, Post-Purchase Thank You, Order Shipped Follow-up, Cross-Sell After Purchase, Refund Follow-up, Repeat Customer Thank You, VIP Customer, Win-Back Lapsed Customers and Birthday.

Picking a template gives you a complete flow you can edit, which is usually easier than assembling one from an empty canvas.

Build the flow

The builder is a canvas. Every automation begins with a Trigger — what puts a contact into the flow — and then a chain of steps beneath it. See Automation triggers and The steps you can add.

It starts as a draft

A new automation has status Draft and enrols nobody. Nothing happens until you activate it — see Activate and test an automation.

That is deliberate: a half-built flow that started emailing people the moment you saved it would be worse than useless.

Statuses

• Draft — being built. Not running.
• Active — running and enrolling contacts.
• Paused — stopped enrolling. Existing contacts stop progressing.
• Archived — retired and out of the way.

Next: open Automations → New automation and pick a template close to what you want.