Whether you’ve been in the digital marketing game for a while or are brand new, it’s very likely that you’ve already come to understand the power and possibilities that come with automations.
The Customer Engine team has worked tirelessly to develop the automations functionality within the software and while it is not complete, we are confident that after this overview, you will begin to understand its true value.
These automations were built with quite a bit of capability and flexibility in mind, but, for now, we will start with a broad-stroke overview to introduce you to the functions.
To demo this, we will work inside the provided “Creekside Pizza” demo account within your app. To access this, click the blue “Sign In” button from your dashboard.
Then, click the “Automations” tab on the left-hand menu.
Next, click the “New Automation” box on the top right-hand side of your dashboard.
For demo purposes, let’s add a name and call it “Data Collection VIP List” and click “Save.”
Your automation has now begun, so you will need to go back in and edit - click the green action button.
Currently, to kick-start an automation, we have one “trigger” which is a redemption offer. To start it, click “add a start trigger.”
Click “Redeem Offer.”
To trigger the automation, a keyword will need to be attached (we’ve added the “VIP” keyword).
Then, you can choose on which redemption your offer will run - so if you choose “on all redemptions,” every time a customer redeems within the “VIP” keyword, it will trigger your automation. For demo purposes, we chose to run “on first redemption.”
Next, you can choose when you’d like your automation to run. You can choose to “run immediately” when the keyword offer is redeemed or you can choose to run the automation specifically within the window of the business hours. (Example: Maybe your business clears redemptions each night and you don’t want to send out a text message when they’re clearing them at 10pm - this is your way to push that message to the next day within business hours.) We chose “immediately” here.
Finally, click “Save.”
Now, that you’ve set that up, you will need to determine the actions to take after the redemption takes place. To do that, click the “+” under “Redeem Offer.”
On this particular automation, the objective is to add the customer to a list and to collect data. So, in the “Sending Options” portion, we will select to send out a text message by clicking “Notification.”
You will see that, much like within your “Campaigns” section, there are merge fields built in along with the “Content” section for the content of your message.
* We are building this so that if someone replies back to this message in your sequence, they will then be added to that list or “keyword” you chose.
Click “Save.”
Now, that you’ve set up your notification, you want to set up the Conditions and Workflow of your automation. To do this, you will once again click the “+” under “Notification.”
When you get here, select “Conditions and workflow.”
You will see you have two options:
1) Wait - Wait for a certain period of time, or until conditions are met.
2) If/Else - Continue the automation in a different way depending on whether the
conditions are matched.
For demo purposes, we will choose #2 - Click “If/Else.”
So, we will just follow the workflow before us. We will choose the route: IF the SMS Content > Is > YES (meaning if the customer replies “YES”) and click “save,” which will then lead us to set the result of that action in the next step.
Now that the automation is built to the point where the customer replied “YES” you will need to determine what happens when they do. Click “+”.
This time, we will click on “Contacts.” Again, you will see you have two options:
Collect Contact Data - Send SMS to collect contact data.
Subscribe Contact to List
Since we want them to become part of our VIP List, we will click “Subscribe Contact to List.”
Click in the Keywords drop down menu to choose the list you want to add them to (we chose VIP) and click “Save.”
Now that you’ve subscribed them to your list, you might want to collect data on them. Click “+”.
Click on “Conditions and workflow” then “Wait.”
We want to start collecting the data instantly, so we will choose to wait for 1 minute, click “Save.”
Now, to collect the data, click “+”.
This time, we will select “Contacts” and “Collect Contact Data.”
From here, you can select which fields of data you would like to collect, based on your objectives. Currently, there are fields for first name, last name, email address, and birthday. The message field is auto-populated, but you may change that anything you choose. Click “Save.”
This particular automation is complete, so we will click “Save” at the top of the page.
You are returned to your automation page where you will now see your automation listed. To make any edits you may need, you would simply click back into it by using the green edit button.
As you can probably tell, there is a lot of possibility and flexibility within this feature. This overview is to simply provide you with examples as to those capabilities.
Also, be sure to note that “Automations Are Currently in Beta” at the top of the screen - this is because we are in the very beginning stages of automations at this point and will be adding more and more features and training as we progress.
As always, please let us know if we can help in any way!