Overview
The automation campaign builder allows you to create specific flows for your automated marketing activities.
From this screen you can define the conditions under which a contact will enter a campaign, as well as any actions to be triggered (i.e. sending emails, adding the contact to a segment, etc.) and the conditions under which they will exit the flow.
The following conditions can be added to your campaign flow:
You can also set up the following actions to your campaign flow:
Conditions
Entry triggers
An entry trigger (or ‘triggering event’) is the event that enrols a contact in a flow, e.g. contact abandons a basket, makes a second purchase, browsed a specific product, etc.)
Mouse-over the Trigger tile and select the cog icon to configure.
See Automation campaign triggers
Note: The maximum number of contacts entering an automation flow in one go is 1000. Ometria checks for contacts that satisfy an automation trigger every few minutes. When these contacts are identified, Ometria will enter up to 1000 in the flow.
If you are mass uploading your contacts to a segment, be aware that the campaign won’t trigger to more than 1000 contacts at a time, and the remaining contacts will be ignored. To avoid this, upload your contacts in batches of 1000 at a time.
Exit condition
An exit condition is an event which defines when the contact should leave the flow.
For example, the exit condition could be the contact making an order, or visiting your site.
Note: Exit conditions only apply after the segment stage of your flow - not during the entry wait (if set).
Select the cog icon to configure your exit condition:
The exit options are:
- Order:
- Contact has placed an order
- Contact has placed their last order
- Contact has placed their nth order (e.g. 2nd order)
- Contact has placed an order which includes a product
- Contact has placed an order which includes a product with an attribute
- Contact has placed an order with grand total
- Contact has placed an order using a coupon code
- Visit:
- Contact has viewed a product
- Contact has viewed a product with an attribute
- Contact has visited for a time period (in seconds)
- Contact has visited from a source
- Contact has visited a store
- Abandoned Basket:
- Contact has abandoned a basket
- Contact has abandoned a basket with includes a product with an attribute
- Contact has a basket in a store
To set up your campaign so that contacts exit after they’ve made an order, select Order > Contact has placed an order
Select Save to finalise.
If you select more than one exit condition, Ometria checks that both conditions have been fulfilled - i.e. uses AND logic, not OR logic.
Re-entry condition
It’s a good idea to define whether a contact can only enter your flow once, or if they can re-enter after a certain period of time.
To set a re-entry condition, mouse-over your entry condition tile and select the 
icon.
Select Reentry is allowed after period.
Specify your reentry time period (in hours, days or weeks) and then select Save to finalise your reentry condition.
Wait nodes
Entry wait nodes
Before adding any action nodes, you might want to set a wait time to delay any further actions with contacts who have entered your automation flow.
While a wait node in general pauses your contacts until the wait limit is met, the entry wait node (i.e. the wait node immediately after your entry condition) counts backwards, from when the entry trigger occurred.
For example, if you are using an abandoned basket as an entry trigger, you could add a two hour entry wait so that the ‘abandoned basket’ email is sent at the optimum time, rather than as soon as the basket was abandoned.
Or in win back campaigns, if the trigger is placed last order > wait 365 days, the entry wait node looks back for the last orders and begins sending once it finds an order placed 365 ago.
Select the cog icon in the wait tile to define your entry wait, then select Wait a specific duration:
Note: We recommend a minimum of 2 hours wait time for orders.
Specify your wait time (in hours, days or weeks) and then select Save to finalise your entry wait node.
General wait nodes
You can also set a wait node after your segments or other actions in your automation flow.
Select the Add Wait clock icon for a wait node:
Then define your wait type:
- Wait a specific duration - e.g. 30 minutes, 2 days, 6 weeks, etc.
- Wait for a specified time/day - e.g. next Sunday at 11.30am
If a wait node is placed after an email action, this is the length of time the contact stays in the flow after being sent the email (or other action).
For this reason, wait nodes following actions are also a useful way to 'hold' contacts in certain campaigns, e.g. for 24 hours, before they can enter another, helping to space out your sends.
Find out more in Mutual Exclusivity.
Segment conditions
Segments are a way to further filter contacts who enter your automation flow.
E.g. you may want to target contacts who satisfy certain conditions such as lifecycle stage, website interaction etc.
Automation campaign segments work from top to bottom in order of priority and are mutually exclusive, so you should always start with the most granular segmentation first.
E.g. If a contact fulfils the conditions of the first segment, they will enter that one and none of the following segments.
By default, segments include all contacts who meet the entry trigger requirements (‘Everyone’).
Select the cog icon to configure your segment further:
The Create Segment window displays:
See Customer filter for more information on this feature.
Triggering Event
Use a Triggering event to ensure your segmentation (and the template, if correctly tagged) to match the action which triggered the contact’s entry into the flow.
See Segmenting contacts by triggering event.
Split tests
When you add a new segment, the split test tile automatically displays.
If you don’t want to create a split test, leave this as it is, and the same campaign will send to all of the contacts in that segment (i.e. 100%).
To create a split test, select the ‘split’ icon:
Select once for a 50/50 split.
Every time you split a tile it will divide in two, so if you split one of the tiles again, it will become two lots of 25%:
Alternatively, you can select the cog icon 
in the tile and enter a custom percentage:
Note: Split test nodes must always be followed by an Action in order to send emails. Split test nodes do not send emails themselves.
Actions
Send email
When you select Send email on an Action tile, you can choose an email template, enter a subject line and preheader, select a product to recommend and add a coupon code.
Complete the fields as required:
| Field | Description |
| Select template | Select a template from the dropdown list.
|
| Subject |
Enter a subject line for your email. Select Use subject lime builder to personalised the subject line. |
| Preheader (optional) |
Enter a preheader. This is visible after the subject line in an email inbox, allowing you to engage your contact before they open your email.You can split test your email preheaders to optimise them. Note: If you are using an HTML template, you must have the {{email.preheader}} merge tag in the template in order to use the entered preheader. |
| Product recommendation (optional) |
Select a product recommendation to populate the product recommendation blocks in your email template. For automation campaigns, this is the only place you can add product recommendations. For broadcast campaigns they can be added in the templated editor. You must have a ‘recommended products’ block in your automation template to use this feature. Note: Always preview your emails and check the product recommendation blocks before sending. |
| Coupon code (optional) |
Select a coupon code pool from the dropdown list to dynamically add coupon codes. Note: In order to use coupon codes in your campaign, you must have a coupon block or merge tag in your template. |
| Or use the following coupon code (optional) |
Enter a static coupon code here. This field is important for static coupon codes to ensure that they are attributed to the campaign, but be aware that entering the code here does not put the code into the email template. |
Select Save to finalise your changes.
Add contact to a static list
When you select Add contact to a static list on an Action tile, you have the option to add contacts who reach this point in the flow to a saved segment.
Select:
- which is - to choose one segment for these contacts
- which is one of - to choose multiple segments for these contacts
Or otherwise make an entirely new segment for these contacts by entering a title in the ‘or create a new one’ field and clicking Create.
Select Save to finalise.
Remove contact from static list
When you select Remove contact from a static list on an Action tile, you have the option to remove contacts who reach this point in the flow from a saved segment.
For example, if you’ve added a contact to a static list earlier in a ‘post purchase’ automation flow to report behaviour for a specific group, you can add a condition and then use this action to remove contacts who place an order (i.e. make a purchase).
This way you can make sure that the segment contains only contacts who haven’t placed an order, making it easier to report on their behaviour.
Select:
- which is - to remove these contacts from one segment
- which is one of - to remove these contacts from multiple segments
Select Save to finalise.
‘Has placed an order’ exit condition workaround
If you use the exit condition ‘has placed an order’, and a contact places an order after they were added to a segment but before being removed from a segment, they will leave the flow and never be removed from the segment.
A workaround for this use case is to set up another automation campaign, ‘to be removed’.
- Set the entry trigger to has placed an order
- Add a segment condition Customer belongs to segment x
- Add the action Remove contact from static list
Tag contact
When you select Tag contact on an Action tile, you have the option to assign a tag to a contact.
This tag can then be used to report on the performance of the customer groupings in the segment explorer using the Customer filter.
Note: Tagging a contact is not the same as adding them to a segment/list.
Segments have entry and exit events, i.e. contacts can come in and out of segments depending on their behaviour, whereas tags are simply applied to the contact and used as a filtering tool.
We recommend that you use tagging for permanent statuses, e.g. Staff, VIP, Fraud, etc.
Enter your tag in the With tag field and select Save to finalise.
Follow up conditions
Define the follow-up action based on a customer’s behaviour in an automation flow by adding a condition.
Note: Follow up conditions can only be added to flows before they are ‘Active’. To add a follow up condition to an existing automation flow you must recreate the flow and add them.
For example, you can choose to send follow up emails to contacts who have not opened the first email in your automation flow, or to contacts who have not converted to customers yet.
Note: It’s a good idea to add a wait node before a follow up condition to give the contact time to take action.
In the example below, Ometria will wait one week, then check which contacts have clicked on the automation email.
If any contacts have not clicked the email, Ometria sends a follow up.
Alternatively, you can re-target contacts who are not engaging with email via a different marketing channel such as Facebook, Instagram or Google Adwords.
To do this, select ‘Add contacts to a static list’ as a follow-up action to add contacts to a list and then select the Sync option in the Saved segments dashboard to sync the contacts.
Follow up conditions and exit conditions
Be aware that if you set an ‘if’ condition for order, with an action for ‘yes’ (i.e. contact placed an order), you must make sure the campaign doesn’t have an exit condition which removes contacts from the flow if they make an order.
This exit condition will override your follow up condition, and instantly removes the contact from the automation flow once they place an order.
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