Getting Started With Automation
This article will cover the process of editing an Automation, a feature of the Advanced Marketing Campaigns Package. To access this feature, please upgrade to Advanced Marketing Campaigns.
Currently, there is no option to set an Automation to "live" when associating that Automation with an existing contact list with pre-loaded contacts. The workaround for this would be to create a new, empty list within your account. From that point, you will add the relevant entry/exist criteria and set the automation to "Live", at which point you will see the Automation sent the first time a contact is added to the associated list.
If your contact list already exists, once the Automation is set to live you can export a CSV of your existing target audience, and re-upload them into this newly created, empty list. This will prompt the automation to send to these contacts and work around that limited ability of the automation.
Editing an Automation
When editing a Live Automation, you can edit select aspects, such as the Subject Line, Email Pre-header, From Sender, and Email Content.
While you can make changes to your in-progress Automations, it is important to keep in mind that there are some features cannot be edited once an Automation is set to "Live". Below is a list of what you cannot edit while an automation is live.
Limitations - Once an Automation is set live, you CANNOT edit:
- Entry Criteria
- Exit Criteria
- List/Segment associated to the automation
- Intervals between emails
- Cannot modify the order of the emails
- Cannot add emails to the series
- Cannot delete emails from the series
- Unsubscribe Groups
- Categories
- IP Pool
In order to make changes to any of the items listed in the section above, you will first have to disable the automation.
Within your live Automation, navigate to the Automation Options dropdown and select "Disable Automation." This step will not erase progress spent on the creation of the Automation, but will allow you to make necessary edits and changes to your Automation.
It is important to note that any changes made to an automation will only take effect to newly added contacts in the series. If you have made changes to an email within your automation series that a contact has not received yet, they will receive the updated versions.
Other Aspects - Duplicate a Campaign
If you need to edit the order of the emails, the "Select Send Time" or delete any email already created or other aspects of the Automation, you can “duplicate” a campaign, and make changes from there. Note: this will be a new Automation and existing contacts in the previous automation may not carry over.
Conclusions & Additional Resources