You have built an automation, someone signs up or gets a tag, and nothing happens: no email, no sequence. In the vast majority of cases the cause is one of the five points below. Work through them in this order. Each point also tells you what to do about contacts that have been missed in the meantime.
1. Is the automation set to Published? #
This is the number one cause. An automation that is set to Draft does nothing, even if every step is correct. Open the automation (CRM & Emails → Automations) and look at the switch in the top right. If it is on Draft, change it to Published.
Worth knowing after a migration: automations moved across from the old Autorespond are deliberately set to Draft, so that nothing goes out before you have checked them. Go through them (trigger step, steps, linked email sequence) and publish them one by one afterwards.
2. Is the trigger step correct, and did the trigger happen after you published? #
An automation only starts at the moment the trigger step happens: a tag that is applied, a list someone is added to, a form that is submitted, a purchase. Two common misunderstandings:
- The tag was already there. If a contact already had the tag before you published the automation, it does not start retroactively. Remove the tag and apply it again, or add the contact manually (see point 5).
- The wrong tag, list or form was chosen. Open the trigger step and check that it holds exactly the tag, list or form that is used in practice. Watch out for tags with almost identical names.
If you want someone to be able to go through the automation again (on a second purchase, for example), tick Run the automation multiple times in the trigger step. If that is switched off, it starts only once per contact.
3. Is the contact allowed to receive email? #
The automation may well have started without any email going out. Open the contact and look at the status: a contact with the status Unsubscribed, Bounced or Pending (double opt-in not yet confirmed) receives no automatic emails. With double opt-in the contact has to click the confirmation link first; only after that do the emails run.
4. Test it yourself with a test contact #
Create a test contact with an email address you can access yourself and do exactly what a real customer does: fill in the form, or apply the tag manually. Then open the Reports tab in the automation: there you see per contact which steps have been taken and where it stops, if it does. If your test contact does not appear there, the problem is in point 1 or 2. If it does appear but no email arrives, it is in point 3 or in the email step itself.
5. Letting contacts that were missed take part after all #
If someone signed up while the automation was still on Draft, the system does not catch that up by itself. You have two options:
- Start the email sequence directly: open the contact, go to the Emails tab and add the contact to the sequence in question there. The sequence then starts at the first email.
- Run the whole automation again: remove the trigger tag from the contact and apply it again (or add the contact to the trigger list again). The contact then goes through every step, including any integrations or access.
