Automations are flows that you build out in a visual canvas by connecting shapes, this shapes create different personalized pathways, that a contact would progress to when interacting with your business.  It allows for the easy and efficient delivery of information to your contacts. There’s 3 different types of shapes in GoCRM, these are filers, events, and actions. 

Creating an Automation

Each automation starts with a segment, the segment defines which contacts should enter the automation. It may be that they are on a static list or they submitted a form.   

Select Your Contacts

After you enter your title you will be asked to select a Segment, these will be the contacts entered into the automation. To learn how to create a segment view the following article.

 →  Segments

Workflow

Actions

Actions are things that happen to contacts when they are in an automation. You may want to send them an email or an SMS or wait for a certain period of time to pass to follow-up. You can also do updates like adding contacts to a list, or creating a task.  

Filters

Filters are the traffic directors of the automation, they check if a contact meets a certain criteria and then routes them accordingly. For example, I may want to send a different text message to contacts depending on the time of day, or if it’s a weekday or a weekend, or if they have responded in the past or not. 

Events

Events are conditions in order for the next step to continue, the automation waits until the user or contact has completed one of these steps before progressing to the next shape. For example, the automation may wait until the contact has replied to a text message, or the deal stage has been changed by a user. 

Connecting the Steps

Now we will connect each action shape together, when connecting a filter, make sure to select the appropriate option to stop or progress contacts through the automation. When these shapes are connected into sequences the automation will progress through each stage doing exactly what you tell it to. Automations will not become active until you're completely ready to go, this means there’s no accidental emails sent or confused customers. 

Review

When you're ready you hit Start Automation, and the automation will do the busy work for you. 

For ideas on how you can use automations, visit our blog! But for now that’s what is an automation