⚡ Automations: Your First Flow

An automation is a flow that runs without you. Something starts it (someone joins a list, buys, clicks a link), then each person moves through your steps one by one: emails, waits, if/else branches, tags, until they reach the end. Welcome series, lead magnet delivery, buyer onboarding and win-backs are all automations.

Where to find it:

Emails, then Automations. From there, 📦 25 Prebuilt automations opens finished flows with every email written, and ➕ New automation (blank) opens an empty editor.

The Automations list:

Each automation is one row with these columns.

• Automation: the name (click it to edit) and how many steps it has.
• Trigger: what starts it. Several triggers are joined with OR.
• Status: active, paused or draft.
• In it now: people inside the flow right now. The list is sorted by this column to start with, so the busiest flows are at the top.
• Entered: everyone who ever started it.
• Finished: everyone who reached the end.
• Emails sent: every email the flow has sent.
• Revenue (all time): appears once the Mailer has sales on record. It shows sales from people who clicked, then bought, with buyers who only opened on their own line.

Every heading sorts, and the search box filters the rows as you type: a name, a trigger, a status such as active, or an amount.

The buttons on each row:

• 📊 Report: the automation report. See The Automation Report: Every Email, Every Result.
• ⏸ Pause or ▶ Activate: switches the flow off or on.
• ⧉ Duplicate: copies the automation as a new draft.
• 🗑: removes the automation. You are asked to confirm first, and people inside it stop.

Building your first one:

1. Click ➕ New automation (blank).
2. Type a Name (internal), for example "New subscriber welcome". Subscribers never see it.
3. Leave Status on 📝 Draft (nobody enters) while you build.
4. Under 🎯 Start this automation when…, click the trigger and pick what starts it, for example Joins a list, then choose the list. See Automation Triggers Explained.
5. Under 🧩 …do this, step by step, click the ＋ under the trigger and choose ✉️ Send an email. Click the step to open it, write the subject and the email, then click Done.
6. Click the ＋ under the email and add a ⏳ Wait, for example 1 days.
7. Add the next email, and so on. See Automation Steps: Emails, Waits, If And Else.
8. Send yourself a test of each email. See Send A Test From Inside An Automation.
9. Set Status to 🟢 Active (live) and press 💾 Save automation.

From that moment, every new person who matches the trigger enters at step one. People already on your list do not enter by themselves: to run them through, go to Audience, then Subscribers, tick them (or use Select All Matching with a filter) and choose ⚡ Enroll in automation….

Every setting:

• Name (internal): for you only.
• Status: 📝 Draft (nobody enters), 🟢 Active (live), or ⏸ Paused (holds everyone in place). While paused nobody new enters, nobody moves and nothing sends; set it Active again and everyone carries on from the same spot.
• Send every email at: leave empty and each wait finishes exactly when its delay is up. Set a time, for example 09:00, and every wait runs its full length first and then lands at that hour, in your WordPress timezone. A wait step can still set its own time.
• Send every email from: pick one of your sender profiles. Leave it on "The list's profile, then the default" and the sender comes from the list the person joined, then your default sender profile. A test sent from the canvas uses the same choice. See Sender Profiles.
• Allow re-entry after finishing: lets someone who finished go through again when the trigger fires again. Leave it off for a welcome series.

Canvas and Simple:

The flow can be built two ways, and both edit the same automation.

• 🗺️ Canvas: the flow as a map. Each step is a card; click it to open it. The − and + buttons in the corner zoom out and in, and ⤢ resets the zoom.
• ⚡ Simple: the same flow as a fast form, one row per step with plain dropdowns, and if/else branches indented under YES and NO.

Switching views never changes the automation.

The live view:

On an active automation, every step shows who is waiting there right now, for example "🧍 13 waiting here", and every email step shows its sent count, open rate and click rate. The header shows how many people are in it now, how many finished and how many emails it has sent.

Every email carries your branding and the unsubscribe footer automatically, merge codes and tag codes all work, and the suppression list is checked before every send.

A real example:

The "Newsletter welcome series" on Leafwise Gardening starts when someone Joins a list: Newsletter OR Submits a form: Blog sidebar: weekly tips. It sends "Welcome, here is what happens next" straight away, waits 1 day, sends "The one thing most people get wrong", and continues with three more emails and waits before adding the tag welcomed at the end. Its sender is Anna (newsletter). Right now 155 people are in it, 508 have finished, and it has sent 3,015 emails.

If something does not look right:

• If nobody enters, check the Status says Active and that the trigger matches what happens on your site. Imported records under the silent import lock never enter by themselves; enroll them from Subscribers.
• If one person is not getting the emails, open them in Audience, then Subscribers. Their profile shows every automation they are in and the step they are on. See Seeing Which Automations Someone Is In.

Tips:

• Starting from a prebuilt flow is the fastest way to a good automation. See 📦 The 25 Prebuilt Automations.
• Your edits to a live automation are kept as a draft until you save. See Autosave And Publishing Automation Changes.
• Stop people the moment they buy with an exit rule. See Taking People Out Of An Automation.