Multiple source automations allow you to run an automation, then add your audience to it as needed. This is a really handy time saver and can be used for things like welcome series, thoughtful donation thank you emails.
Follow these four easy steps to set up your first multiple source automation:
Step 1: Start a multiple source automation
Step 2: Set up emails and time delays within automation
Once you've created your automation, you'll be prompted to set up the first automated email. Select your Broadcaster, enter the Email name, click Save and Continue and you will be taken to the email editor. (You can start from scratch or you can clone an existing mailing to use as a starting point).
📌Note: All you need to enter is the Email Name. (The slug will be generated for you in the background, and you'll be able to change it later if you need to).
When you click the "Save and continue" button at the bottom of the form, you will be automatically redirected to the email editor. This process will be just like setting up an email blast. However, the banner at the top lets you know that you're configuring this email as part of an automation.
To set up your email in your automation:
Edit the content for your email.
Review your email and click Save to automation.
📌 The email will not be sent until you actually run the automation and you've finished adding steps to the workflow. There is no "Add Recipients" section (unlike a standard email blast), since you define your audience in the automation settings.
Congratulations! You've set up the first email in your automated series. If you need to edit the email, hover over the "Send an email" section and click "Edit".
Adding more steps to an automation
To add more steps to your automation:
Click +Add below your first email step.
2. You'll be asked to add either a time delay or an action. The time delay represents the number of days (or weeks) you want NationBuilder to wait before sending the next email in the series.
📌 Note: It will be relative to when the previous action in your automation was completed (e.g. when it sent the first email).
3. After defining the desired a time delay, you'll be able to select an action to set up the next email in the series:
Step 3. Run your automation
Once you've added at least one email to the workflow, you can start the automation by clicking the Run button in the top right. If only have one email in your automation the following message will appear:
📌 Note: An automation must contain at least 1 email to be run. There are 3, 5, or 10 allowed emails per automation for Starter, Pro, and Enterprise plans, respectively.
Multiple source: If you've created a multiple source automation, the prompt will look like this:
For a multiple source automation, you will need to enroll people in your automation after you have run it.
Step 4. Choose audience, enroll recipients
Once your multiple source automation is running, you can enroll people in your automation from multiple places:
Enroll from a filter result
To enroll a specific group of people into your automation, navigate first to the People section. From there, run a filter to identify the appropriate audience, and click the "Actions" menu in the upper rightmost corner.
Select Enroll in automation. This will enable you to enroll these signups into any running multiple source automation.
📌Note: It is not yet possible to automatically enroll a group of people from a saved filter. You must manually run the filter, then add them to the automation from the "Enroll in automation" option.
Click Enroll in automation to immediately enroll these people in your automation. They will receive the first email in your series shortly following enrollment.
Enroll from a page
To enroll people who take action on a specific page into your automation, navigate to the relevant page in your control panel.
From within the page settings section, (eg. Petition settings, Donation settings, etc.), you'll find a dropdown menu to enroll people who take action on that page into a running multiple source automation.
Once you save the page settings, anyone who takes action on that page going forward will be automatically enrolled into your automation.
📌 Note: This feature is only available on page types that people can natively submit (versus Basic pages or pages with iframed external forms) and is not available on the Moneybomb page type.
Enroll from an ActionButton
In your ActionButton control panel, navigate to your button and click the ... icon and select Add people to automation. This option is only available when the account is connected to a nation and "opt-in" is enabled for the button.
You will then be prompted to select the automation you want to enroll your supporters in. You see a checkbox that gives you the option to enroll existing signups into the automation as shown here:
Check this box if you'd like to include signups who have previously taken action on this button, otherwise, leave it unchecked.
For more detail on ActionButton as an audience source please read more here.
Once your automation is live
After you click Run on your automation, you'll notice that there is now an indicator that the automation is running, and the Run button has changed to Pause:
Once emails have been sent as part of the automation, you can navigate to the Email results tab to see engagement metrics for your emails as that data comes in:
On the Workflows dashboard, you'll see your running automation listed:
📌 Note: Once your automation is live, you will only be able to delete emails in the series that have not yet been sent to anyone, and are not currently scheduled to send to anyone. If someone has received an email in the series directly prior to the one you're looking to delete, you will not have the option to delete it.