Date-based automations are a great way to save time and resource by scheduling campaigns which can run automatically. By using custom data in your contact lists, you can send your marketing emails just at the time when people will be most likely to open, click and convert – meaning maximum sales for very little effort.
Our advanced filters mean you can target by demographic/other custom data as well as by date, to really maximise that all-important ROI.
Scenarios where automations can save time and improve results include:
- Anniversary reminders
- Renewal reminders
- Follow-up messages to welcome messages, e.g. to warn that a new subscriber discount code is about to expire
- Birthday promotions/discounts
- Discounts/incentives for subscribers who have not clicked-through from an email for a long time
- A countdown, e.g. to Christmas or Valentine’s Day
- Reminders for those who’ve bought tickets to (or expressed interest in) an event
- Request for product reviews
To begin, you’ll need a list uploaded into Pure360.
Create and upload your list
Start by uploading a list which has a custom field for every date you may want to base the automation on. At step 2 of 3, ensure you tick the box to say it’s a date field and enter the date format from the drop-down as below.
Create your message
Build or import a message into the Pure360 system for use as the automated email.
Create the automation
You’re now ready to set up the automation itself:
- Go to automations then create date automation
- Give the automation a name and choose the relevant list.
- Choose the relevant message
- Choose the required time of day.
- The next option is for which day to send the message. You can choose to send it on the date in your list, or for a certain amount of days, weeks or months before/after the date held.
- Click save.
You’ll be taken to a summary screen – note the red marker means the automation is inactive.
Double-check the details and click save and go live or save as inactive.
Editing/amending automations
By clicking on the automations tab in Pure360, you can view a summary page of all automations. Clicking on details displays more information about each one, and you can amend this using edit.
You can easily toggle each automation on and off using the options for turn on/turn off on the summary page.
Email messages associated with an automation cannot be edited. If you need to change the message content, copy the message, make your changes, then save with a new name.
- Go to automations
- Click edit next to the relevant automation
- Click on the drop-down under send the message to switch to the new email
- Click save
Advanced automations
Create a whole lifecycle campaign and/or filter by gender, location or other preferences as well as by date. For this, you can use a combination of rules and filters. For example, you may want to send a different version of the email to men and women, so you can add two rules, one based on the filtered list of men, one for the filtered list of women. To do this:
Choose your message name, time of day, and date field as above.
Click on the add a filter button
Choose the field, i.e. the custom field from the list that you want to add the filter to. Choose the condition from the ones in the image above and the value – this will depend what text/numbers appear in that field in your list.
For example, if you were using filtering by gender, you’d choose your field name (gender), equals, male. If you want to add more filters to this rule, do so here. For instance, if you wanted to filter just men over 25. Click on add rule to repeat this for any other relevant filters, e.g. women under 25, women over 25 and men under 25.
Click Save to review the automation, then save and go live or save as inactive.