How does a welcome series start?

Choose Joins an audience or Submits a form as the trigger. Each new contact then enters at the first step, usually an email sent straight away. Contacts brought in by an import stay out unless you turn that on.

What happens to people inside when I edit an automation?

Nothing changes until you publish, because edits are a draft. Publishing freezes the draft as a new version. People already inside finish on the version they entered with, and people who enter afterwards get the new one.

Does every automation email have an unsubscribe link?

Yes. Every email an automation sends carries an unsubscribe link. Someone who follows it leaves the automation and gets nothing more from it.

How is an automation different from a broadcast?

A broadcast is one email sent to a whole audience at a time you choose. An automation starts for each person separately, when something happens to them, and sends its emails at that person’s pace.

Writing & sending

Automations
A series that sends itself.

Choose what starts it, lay out the emails, waits and yes or no questions, then publish. Each person walks the path at their own pace.

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In short

What is an email automation?

An email automation is a series of emails that sends itself. Something starts it for one person, such as joining a list, and timed steps decide what that person gets next and when.

How it works

A trigger and a path of steps

It starts when a contact joins an audience, signs up through a form, does something your product reports, reaches a birthday, or is added by hand. Each step sends a published template, waits, asks a yes or no question, or updates the contact.

See who is on which step

The People tab lists everyone who entered, the step each person is on and why anyone left. People already inside finish on the version they entered with, so publishing an edit never moves them.

A report for every step

The Report tab counts the people who entered, finished and left, and for each email how many were sent, opened and clicked. Days are counted in the automation’s own time zone.

What you get

In the product today

Custom fields

Keep your own values on a contact. A step can set one, and a yes or no step can read it.

Events from your app

Report what a contact did in your product to start an automation or to end a wait.

On the API too

The REST API, every SDK, the command line and the MCP server work with the same automations.

Good practice

Getting the most out of it

01
Begin from a starting point
Welcome series, trial follow-up, birthday greeting and win back each open as a draft you can change before anyone enters.
02
Set the hours before you publish
Pick the time zone and the hours emails may go out, so a step that comes due at night waits for the morning.
03
Keep live automations within your plan
A plan covers a set number of live automations. After a downgrade the newest ones beyond it pause, so pause the ones you can spare first.

Questions

Asked often

Keep going

Works well with

Audiences

Named lists of your contacts, filled by hand or from a CSV file, to send to and to watch grow.

Templates

A body written once, versioned, and sent many times: from the composer, from your own code, or by an agent.

Broadcast reports

Every send to an audience on a page of its own, with delivery, opens, clicks, unsubscribes and each person’s copy.

Start

Your domain,
your mail.

Point a domain at Nextmail and read it in a mailbox built around it. The free plan covers one domain.

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AutomationsA series that sends itself.