Build your first automation
A trigger, a wait and an email — the shape every flow is made of.
An automation is a small map: someone enters at the top, walks down through steps — emails, waits, branches — and leaves at the end. Build it on the canvas at Automations. If all you want is one email when someone joins a list, you don’t need this at all — use a welcome email instead.
Start from a template
Six starter flows cover the usual shapes — a welcome series, a win-back, a birthday note, an alert when someone looks interested. Picking one gives you a draft you own: nothing is live, nothing sends, and you can rearrange it freely.
Templates deliberately leave things blank. A step with no list chosen, or an email with no subject, shows as needing attention rather than quietly doing something you didn’t pick. That “unfinished” look is the guided path working.
The pieces
Every flow is built from four kinds of block:
- A trigger — what puts someone in. Every flow needs exactly one to start. What can start a flow.
- Emails and waits — the body of the flow. Wait holds for a duration, Wait until holds for a time of day, and Wait for an action holds until they open or click. More on waiting.
- Branches — If / else sends people two ways on a condition, and Split the traffic divides them by percentage.
- Actions — add to a list, remove from one, set a field, notify your team, unsubscribe them, or end the flow.
Check what you built
The right-hand panel writes out your flow in plain English — what starts it, what happens, where each branch goes. It follows what’s on the canvas as you edit, so it’s the fastest way to catch a step wired to the wrong place.
Under it, Second opinion asks Penny to read the flow and point out things that would run perfectly well and still be a mistake — two emails with no pause between them, a branch wired on one side only, a test that will never reach its threshold.
It reads the saved flow
Save before asking, or you’ll get an opinion on the previous version.
Turn it on
A draft does nothing at all
This is the most common surprise. A finished-looking flow that is still a draft enrols nobody and sends nothing. Nothing happens until you make it Active.
We refuse to activate a flow that can’t work:
- No trigger, so nobody could ever enter.
- A step missing something it needs — a list, a date field, an email with no subject.
- An email step that’s empty.
- Steps wired in a loop.
You’ll also need the things any sending requires: a verified sending address, a postal address for the footer, and credit.
How fast it runs
Flows are stepped forward on a cycle of a few minutes rather than the instant a wait elapses. So a one-hour wait means at least an hour, not exactly sixty minutes. Nothing goes early; some things go a little late.
That’s worth knowing when you test. Set a one-minute wait, walk away, come back in five — watching the canvas for sixty seconds and concluding it’s broken is the usual false alarm.
Changing a flow that's already running
You can edit an active flow. People already partway through keep going, and they walk the flow as it exists when they reach each step — not the version that existed when they entered.
Pausing holds everyone where they are and stops queued email going out; resuming releases them. That’s the right tool for “stop, I need to fix something”.
Deleting refuses once a flow’s steps have sent anything, because the records of who was sent what hang off it. Pause instead.
Common issues
Nobody is entering the flow
Is it Active? Then check the trigger — bulk actions like a CSV import or a bulk “Add to list” deliberately don’t start flows. See Triggers.
It won't let me activate it
The canvas marks the step that needs attention. The usual causes are a trigger with nothing chosen, an email with no subject, or an action pointing at a list that was deleted.
A step runs but seems to do nothing
An action with nothing configured — “Add to a list” with no list picked — passes people straight through. Activation blocks that, but a list deleted afterwards can produce it on a live flow.
It paused on its own
Something changed that needs re-checking. See Why an automation paused itself.
FAQs
Can someone be in two automations at once?+
Yes, and in several. Each flow tracks that person independently. Worth keeping in mind if two flows both email the same audience in the same week — nothing coordinates them.
What happens if someone unsubscribes mid-flow?+
They leave every flow they’re in, immediately, and nothing further is sent to them. The same applies if they report a message as spam or their address hard-bounces. A temporary bounce — a full mailbox — doesn’t remove them, because “not right now” isn’t “never again”.
Do automation emails count towards my sending limits?+
Yes. They’re ordinary mail for limits, bounce rates and complaints. The engine hands each email to the same sender your campaigns use rather than a side channel, which is exactly what keeps them inside those protections.
Where do I see how a flow is performing?+
Numbers appear on each step on the canvas, and there’s a flow-level roll-up on the Automations tab in Analytics. Reading those numbers covers what each one counts.