Email is likely the main mode of communication you use to stay in touch with your stakeholders. To save yourself time and effort, setting up automations is a great way to onboard/welcome new stakeholders to your effort, remind them of important action items, and more. Sometimes called drip campaigns, automations in SparkInfluence are a great way to “set it and forget it”, letting the system do the work to generate messages to your stakeholders as they qualify for various series.
Staying in touch with your stakeholders, even when there may not be an urgent advocacy ask, is crucial to the success of your effort. Think about the types of messaging outside of newsletters and calls to action that you may want to send to stakeholders. Maybe that’s a set of welcome messages when they first join your effort, or a series of reminders of an upcoming event or action you want them to take. It could even be a funnel to re-engage those who have not taken action or engaged with your email in a while… the possibilities are endless! With automations, you can set up this messaging once, and then the system will automate the send as stakeholders qualify for the series (and remove them from the group once they no longer qualify).
To start, click into the Automations main nav item. Then click Add New Automation. More than likely, you’ll want to select Engagement Series — here, you’ll be able to apply the automated messages to ANY group of your choosing.
Click Add Automation.
On the Create screen, enter a Title for your automation (this is internal, for your reference only). Enter an optional description, and select the applicable stakeholders. Like a regular outbound email, you’re able to choose from any saved search in the system. If you’ll be looking to create a new search group for your automation, don’t worry, you can always change your selection before activating the automation.
Click Create Automation.
On the next screen, you’ll be taken to the workflow for your automation. Here, you’ll draft each individual message within the series and set the options as you see fit.
- Email – The Edit process will take you through the steps you’re familiar with for sending outbound email. You can select a template to start from, set the email basics, and more. The Preview function will allow you to preview the message to ensure all looks good before you activate your automation.
- Trigger – This is where you can set the timing of your messages. Please note: the first message in the series will automatically be sent immediately to any stakeholder who qualifies for your search. The remaining messages can be customized according to the timeline you see fit.
- Tags – You can assign any existing tag(s) to be applied to stakeholders who receive any of the messages in your series.
You can exit the workflow at any time – but be sure to leave the automation inactive until the moment you are ready to start sending the first in the series of emails. As soon as you toggle the automation to Active, the system will soon begin to process and send your first message to applicable stakeholders.
Please note: the system processes automations at the top and bottom of every hour (:00 and :30).
To quickly and easily change out the applicable stakeholder group, click the blue Update Settings button in the top right of the screen.
When all messaging, settings, and applicable stakeholders are in place – and you’re ready to activate your automation – simply toggle to Active, and you’re all set!
Please note: If, at any point in the future, you need to make edits to your automation (especially any changes to the emails themselves), be sure to temporarily switch the automation to Inactive while you are making your changes, and reactivate when done.