Create a Classic Automation
Use automations to create a targeted series of emails that send when triggered by a specific date, event, or subscriber's activity.
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With Mailchimp's classic automation feature you can create targeted emails that send when triggered by a specific date, event, or contact's activity. Our classic automation builder offers powerful segmenting, scheduling, and design tools, so you can send emails that inform, reward, and engage your contacts automatically.
In this article, you'll learn about classic automations and how you can use them in your email marketing plan.
Here are some things to know.
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Here's some terms you will come across as you build a classic automation.
A regular email campaign sends to your contacts at the time you choose. With classic automations, emails are sent automatically to specific contacts as they meet your trigger and sending criteria.
Create a classic automation, design your emails, and set your sending criteria. We'll use activity and contact data to determine who should receive your emails and when. After you set up a classic automation, we'll manage your queue and sends, so your emails get to the right people at the right time.
For marketers whose contacts have a clear path from signup to conversion or repeat engagement, classic automations can streamline communication. Depending on your business model, you might send a birthday coupon once a year or a series of solicitations every few days.
When you convert regularly sent campaigns to automations, you'll reduce the amount of time you spend on content creation and increase your ROI.
If you connect your store to Mailchimp, you can also use automations for transactional messages, like abandoned cart emails and order notifications. These automations will reach anyone who abandons a cart or places an order in your store, even if they haven't subscribed to your marketing emails.
A workflow consists of all the customizable pieces that shape your recipient's experience with your classic automation. Classic automations include the schedule, trigger settings, and marketing emails.
Trigger settings cover a variety of different criteria, like a subscribed contact's birthday or signup date, or a customer’s purchase activity. Mailchimp offers many classic automation types with built-in triggers for common activities, but if those options don't fit your needs, you can modify them or create a custom automation from scratch. You can also pause and edit the settings of an active automation.
Classic automation emails will be sent sequentially. After a subscribed contact receives the first email in a classic automation series, they'll receive every email in the sequence, unless they don’t meet the trigger or segmenting conditions of an email, or if they are removed from the automation. Subscribers can only trigger and receive the emails in a classic automation one time, with the exception of date-based automations, abandoned cart emails, order notifications, and product retargeting emails.
To learn more about different automation workflows, read Classic Automation Types.
The Campaigns page in your account gives an overview of each classic automation, including sending status and performance trends.
The Campaigns page gives you the option to view your campaigns based on their status. Click Draft to see only campaigns you are working on and haven't sent yet, or click Ongoing to view active and paused campaigns. You can find your archived automations in the Archived folder.
Next to the name of each classic automation, we'll display a label to indicate its sending status, so you can quickly tell whether things are working as expected.
Status | Description |
---|---|
Draft | Your classic automation hasn't started. |
Sending | Your classic automation is sending. To edit emails, you'll need to pause them first. |
Paused | All of the emails in your automation are paused. |
Some Paused | Your automation is sending, but at least one email is paused. |
Archived | You've ended the classic automation. You can replicate it or view its report data. |
On the Campaigns page, you'll be able to view open and click rates for each classic automation. Hover over the percentages of opens or clicks to see the total number.
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If a classic automation uses e-commerce data, the revenue dollar amount will show here, too.
To see more information about your automation's ongoing performance, click the drop-down menu and choose View report.
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Use automations to create a targeted series of emails that send when triggered by a specific date, event, or subscriber's activity.
Learn about Mailchimp's automation types and how you can use them.
Learn about the triggers you can use to activate automations, including signup, product purchases, cart abandonment, and more.
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