Summary

• Introduction
• Workflow Scenarios
• Create a Workflow
  • Select a scenario
  • Basic Information
  • Customize your Workflow
    • Select a Template
    • Define Email Details
    • Design with Mailjet’s Email Editor
  • Review & Activate
• View your Workflow/Statistics
• Unsubscribing From a Workflow
• Modifying an Active Workflow
• Stopping an Active Workflow
• Locking an Active Workflow
• Duplicate a Workflow
• Delete a Workflow
• Related Reading

Introduction

Email automation allows you to set up a series of automated emails - called a workflow - to be sent to your contacts when certain criterion is met.

A workflow can be triggered by an event or action and is based on one of these scenarios:

• Welcome / Onboarding
• Date Based Workflow
• Contact Property Update
• Anniversary / Birthday 

To create a workflow, you simply select a scenario, create one or more emails, and define the sending criteria. Mailjet will then automatically send the emails to your customers who triggered the workflow.

[top]

Workflow Scenarios

Creating a workflow may be overwhelming as there are so many choices and decisions. To help jumpstart your workflow creations, we’ve created a number of scenarios with predefined events:

• Welcome / Onboarding
  Reach out and welcome new customers who join your contact list with one or more customized, personalized emails.
  
  

• Date Based
  Schedule your workflow based on a date & time you select.
  
  

• Contact Property Update
  Automatically send out an email when a customer’s contact property* matches a predefined value. For example:
  
  
  • Send a product recommendations email to all customers who made their first purchase.
    
  • Give a promo code to customers who surpass a certain loyalty points level
    
    
    
  • Send event or course details to registered attendees…
    
    
    
  • Follow-up with a survey or other promotional offers for those who attended.
    
  You can create contact properties for all of your contact lists to store additional information about your contacts such as name, city, membership level, purchase status, etc. Contact properties can be text, numbers, or boolean. (FAQ: How to create & manage contact properties).

  In this guide, you will learn how to create a Welcome/Onboarding workflow to welcome new contact list subscribers and how to manage your workflows.

• Anniversary / Birthday 
  Congratulate your customers for their birthdays or anniversaries with one or a series of personalized emails.

Create a Workflow

From the main menu, select Automation → My Workflows.

Then click 'Create Workflow'.

Select a scenario

At this step you will see all possible workflow scenarios.

For this example, we will create a welcome workflow that will automatically send two welcome emails to customers who join your contact list:

• The first email will be sent immediately when the workflow is triggered, welcoming the customer.
• The second email will be sent three days later with a special offer to these new subscribers.

Click on the ‘Welcome’ scenario.

[top]

Basic Information

You will enter the basic information for your workflow.

Workflow Details:

• Title: Enter a name for your workflow (this is an internal name only you can see).
• Language: Select the display language for all campaigns in this workflow.
• Timezone: Set the timezone for your workflow.
  
  

Eligibility:

The trigger for this scenario is a new sign up to a contact list (via a subscription widget, API call, or manual contact list add).

From the Contact List drop down, select the contact list that will be used for this workflow.

If you have existing segments, you have the option to apply one to your workflow. In this example, we will apply the segment “All Female Customers”, and our workflow will be triggered for new contact list subscribers who have the value of ‘female’ in the gender contact property.

Review your basic information, then click ‘Save and continue’.

Customize your Workflow

You will now create the email(s) that will be sent when your workflow is triggered. In our example, the workflow trigger is a new subscriber to the contact list.

Click ‘Add an email’ to add the first email to the workflow.

For each email in the workflow, you can decide whether the email should be sent immediately or after a delay (minutes, hours, days, months).

We want to send the first welcome email as soon as the customer signs up - check ‘Don’t wait, send immediately’, select ‘Create a new automation email template’ and then click ‘Confirm’.

[top]

Select a Template

The next step is to select a template to build upon.

Enter a new template name and click ’Use this template’.

Define Email Details

Enter the key sender and email information:

Click the ‘Start designing your email’ button.

Design with Mailjet’s Email Editor

Now the fun part - designing your email with Mailjet’s Email Editor! Our Editor uses a drag & drop interface that allows you to quickly design your workflow email. For detailed information on how to use all the features, please read our Guide.

Once your email is ready, click ‘Save & Add to workflow’.

And you have successfully created your first workflow email.

If you wish to edit your email design, subject or sender name, just hover your mouse over the email box and click ‘Edit’.

As per our example, we want to add a second welcome email that will be sent three days after the customer joins your contact list. To add the second welcome email, click on the ‘Add another email to send in the workflow’.

In the ‘Add an email’ screen, type ‘3’ in the text box and select ‘day(s)’ from the drop down list.
Select ‘Create a new automation email template’, then click ‘Confirm’....

And proceed to design the second email in the Email Editor.

Once you have completed the second welcome email, you will be back at the Customize your workflow screen.

Click ‘Save and continue’ to proceed to the last step.

[top]

Review & Activate Your Workflow

Let’s review your workflow:

1) The workflow trigger is a new contact in the “Newsletter subscribers” contact list.
2) The first email “Hello and Welcome” will be sent when a new contact is added to the contact list.
3) The second email “Save up to 15% this week” will be sent 3 hours after the new contact was added. *

To change your workflow details, or edit the emails, click on the appropriate ‘Edit’ link:

Before you activate your workflow, please make sure you have reviewed the workflow details and tested all emails. Once a workflow has started, modifications cannot be made.

If you are happy with the workflow, just click the ‘Save and activate now!’ button.

Agree to the pop-up confirmation window and congratulations, your workflow is now active and running!

Now you can now sit back with a coffee and let Mailjet take care of sending the welcome emails to your new subscribers!

[top]

View your Workflow / Statistics

To view the statistics of any active workflow, click on the workflow title from the ‘My automated workflows’ page.

The top of the page will display the total number of emails that have been sent already in the workflow. You can also view in real-time the number of (distinct) contacts in the different stages of the workflow:

• who has entered (the workflow has been triggered)
• who is currently in the workflow (has not received the last email)
• who has completed

The Email Statistics section will show the statistics per workflow email and is similar to your Stats page you can select which email statuses you want displayed.

The Workflow Statistics section will show the overall performance of your workflow by email status. Similar to the Email Statistics section, you can choose which email statuses to display on the graph. Also, if you hover your mouse over the graph, a popup will appear showing the exact number of emails for that particular date.

[top]

Unsubscribing From a Workflow

To be removed from a workflow, the subscriber must click the ‘unsubscribe’ link from an automated email and confirm the removal. Even if you delete an email address from the automation contact list, the subscriber will not be removed from the workflow and will continue to receive the automated emails.

Modifying an Active Workflow

After your workflow is running and you have reviewed the statistics, you may wish to add a new email, change the sending delay or make other changes.

However, once your workflow is active, changes cannot be made. What can you do?

You can duplicate the current workflow and then make the necessary changes to the new replacement workflow. Select ‘Duplicate’ from the drop-down menu, and then enter the new workflow name in the pop-up window.

Once you have completed the new replacement workflow, you then need to:

1) Lock the current workflow. Locking your workflow allows any contacts currently in the workflow to complete it as scheduled and stop new contacts from entering.

2) Activate the new replacement workflow.

Stopping an Active Workflow

When a workflow is stopped (inactive), no new contacts will enter the workflow. Contacts that are already in the workflow will immediately exit the workflow and they will receive no further emails.

Stop an active workflow by going to the ‘My automated workflows’ page and selecting ‘Stop’ from the drop down list:

Locking an Active Workflow

When your workflow is locked, any contacts currently in the workflow will continue as scheduled but no new contacts can enter.

To lock your workflow, select ‘Lock’ from the drop down list:

Duplicate a Workflow

To duplicate a workflow, click the ‘Manage’ drop down list and select ‘Duplicate’.

In the pop-up window, enter a new workflow name and click ‘Duplicate’. Your new duplicated workflow will be in draft mode and ready for editing.

[top]

Delete a Workflow

Before you can delete a workflow, you need to archive it first.

From the ‘My automated workflow’ page, select the workflows you want to archive and then click the ‘archive’ button.

Now click on the ‘Archived’ tab.

Click on the ‘Manage’ drop down list and select ‘Delete’. Then confirm the deletion workflow message.

Related Reading

•  Managing Your Contact Lists
• Mailjet’s Email Editor

[top]