Set Up a Rule to Send an Automatic Email

Location: Marketing Automation / Rules -> New Rule = Rule Editor

Overview: Use a rule to send an automated email message to a contact based on a trigger you define, such as filled out a form, or purchases a product etc.

Use a Rule to send an email message to any specified contact.

You can by-pass setting up a sequence if all you want to do is send a single email to someone based on any of the rule triggers. This can be used to send an email to both your web visitors who perform actions on your website as well as to send emails to internal contacts (e.g. staff etc) to notify of actions performed by your web visitors.

For instance if you are selling access to a survey, and wanted the customer to get the access link email each time they purchase the product, you would want to set that automatic email to go out as an email message sent via rule.

Or, if you just wanted to send out a notice to your staff that someone answered a specific question on a form with a specific answer, you can create a rule with the form/ and form field answer as the trigger, and the action would be to send message to a specified contact defined in the rule.  (See example in screenshot below.)

Click on image to view full screen.

For Rules, Create the Email Message in the Email Templates Finder

You will need to create the email message as an email template, and you can use associated variables to populate the email with the data points the web visitor entered. For instance, if it is an email associated with form/ and form field answer as the trigger, you can populate the Email Template with the completed form answers variable, so the email message will have intelligent data for the person receiving it.

Note: Feel free to ask for a list of available variables if you like. There are over a hundred, so we do not have an easy insert menu for these just yet.

Sending an Automatic Email Message as Rule: 

• Email History is recorded for both the Contact who performed the trigger, and the Other Contacts associated
• Email History is not checked: for both the Contact who performed the trigger, and the Other Contacts associated they will both get it each time the trigger is performed.

Summary of Steps to Create the Rule to Send an Email Message

1. First Create or Identify the Email Template ID that you will want to send out via the Rule in the Email Templates Finder.
2. Next in Marketing Automation/Rules click New to access the Rule Editor.
3. In the Rule Editor, define the Trigger based on what your needs are. (When This Happens section.)
4. Add a Condition if relevant. (If This is True section.)
5. In the Action Menu select Email - Send to Contact. (Then Do This section.)
6. Next find the Email Template you created or identified in step one.
7. Decide if you want the contact who triggers the rule to receive the email, the default is no. If you do want the web visitor contact to receive the email, be sure to check the box to allow it.
8. Last if you want the email to go to "staff" click Find next to a blank field to associate the contact(s) in your database that you want to send the email message to.

Click Next to continue through the next modules on Marketing Automation - Rules and Sequences, or you may jump ahead to a specific topic by visiting the Course Content page for a linked Index.