Automations in Goldilocks

So you’ve built out content in Net-Results in the shape of emails, forms, landing pages, etc. and now you want to launch your content to your target audience. Where do you do this within Net-Results? You accomplish this through a Net-Results Automation.

A Net-Results automation is where you execute your marketing strategy and leverage the Net-Results elements you’ve built (emails, forms, landing pages, segments, etc.). Automation’s in Net-Results are a place where you can automate not only the sending of emails, but also other actions you’d like to take within a campaign – such as, modifying list membership.

Before your launch your Automation, be sure to check out how creating smaller campaigns can help your marketing effort.

Automation Types

There are three types of Automations’ in Net-Results: Drip Series, Workflows, and A/B Email Tests.

Drip Automation

Drip Automations exist solely to send an email or text or a series of emails/texts, with optional lead scoring based on opens or clicks of the email(s). Drip Automations do not conditionally branch; if 5 emails are configured to send on a schedule, all contacts will be sent all 5 emails unless they bounce or unsubscribe.

Workflow Automation

Workflow Automations can take a variety of actions, including send email, and they can do so conditionally based on the attributes and/or behavior of the participating contacts. Workflow Automations can “hand off” to other Automations using the Modify List Membership action, or automatically re-send an email to all of the contacts who didn’t open the previous email. You must use a Workflow Automations if you wish it to perform any actions outside of sending an email (and lead scoring based on clicks/opens), including but not limited to:

• Syncing data to your CRM
• Registering a contact for a GoToWebinar
• Modifying List Membership
• Assigning Lead Ownership

A/B Email Test Automation

A/B Email Test Automations are commonly used to gauge performance for different subject lines, content, or other subtle email variations to a subset of your audience prior to sending to your entire audience. With Net-Results, the process is straightforward and only relies on a few settings.

One Time vs Perpetual Auotomations

There are a lot of ways to explain “One Time” and “Perpetual” Automations. When creating an Automation and deciding on whether you’d like it to be One Time or Perpetual, ask yourself: Do I want contacts who qualify at this moment to receive the email? Or do I want contacts who could qualify in a few days to receive the email? We like to use a little metaphor to explain the differences between these campaigns.

One Time Automations

Imagine that when you launch an Automation, a gate opens. If you are launching a One-Time Automation, that gate is going to open and anyone who qualifies at that time will be allowed in. Once everyone who qualifies at the launch date is in, that gate closes and will never open again.

Perpetual Automations

Now, imagine when you launch an Automation that same gate opens – but this time you are launching a Perpetual Automation. That gate will open at the time of launch and will allow anyone who qualifies at that time in. Then, from that point forward, our ‘gatekeeper’ (aka the system) will check roughly every 15-25 minutes for any new participants that qualify.  You can choose to let a perpetual campaign run until you manually retire it, or you can set a date for retirement in the future and it will retire automatically.

Need help planning your next Automation? Check out our blog for how to use a flow chart for planning.