Types of Autoresponder Triggers

Autoresponders are configured to send in response to a trigger firing. This help article describes the different types of triggers.

Subscribing to a mailing list

This trigger fires when someone joins your list via an email sign-up form that you created. When configuring this trigger, you select which email sign-up forms to watch for new subscribers.

Opening an email campaign

This trigger fires when someone opens a particular email campaign. When configuring this trigger, you select which campaigns you want to watch for opens. You can select draft campaigns, campaigns waiting to send, and other autoresponder campaigns.

Use caution when using this trigger, as some email privacy technologies (like Apple's Mail Privacy Protection) automatically open emails in the background, even if the recipient never actually opens the email.

Clicking a link in an email campaign

This trigger fires when someone clicks a link in a particular email campaign. When configuring this trigger, you select which campaigns and which links you want to watch for clicks. You can select links in draft campaigns, campaigns waiting to send, and other autoresponder campaigns.

Editing a contact

This trigger fires when someone edits a contact. For example, editing the name, email address, or the value of a custom field. This trigger fires if the change is made in the Direct Mail app, via the API (including Zapier), or by the user themselves via the email preferences webpage. When configuring this trigger, you select which list or group to watch for changes, as well as which fields to watch for changes.

Adding a new contact via the API or Zapier

This trigger fires when a new contact is added via the API or Zapier. When configuring this trigger, you select which list or group to watch for new contacts.

Trigger based on date

This trigger fires based on a date that is saved in one of the contact's custom fields. When configuring this trigger, you select which list or group to watch for dates and also which custom field contains the date to watch. Dates must be formatted in a way that Direct Mail understands, specifically:

Year-Month-Day or Month-Day

• Year: Can be four digits or two, or can be left off entirely
• Month: Can be one or two digits
• Day: Can be one or two digits

Here are some examples of valid dates:

• 2015-1-12 represents 12 January 2015
• 82-4-3 represents 3 April 1982
• 10-1 represents 1 October any year

Four-digit years are preferred. If you are using two-digit years, then numbers less than or equal to 29 are interpreted as 21st century (e.g. 2029) and numbers greater than or equal to 30 are interpreted as 20th century (e.g. 1930).

Leading or trailing spaces in the date field are okay.

You also configure how often you want the autoresponder to repeat. For example, a birthday autoresponder would repeat every year. Date-based autoresponders can be set to repeat:

• Never (they only send on the date indicated)
• Monthly (they send every month on the day indicated)
• Annually (they send every year on the month and date indicated)

Autoresponders that repeat monthly will automatically compensate for months that have fewer than 31 or 30 days.

Date-based autoresponders have additional flexibility in scheduling when the message is sent. You can choose to send the message in advance of the trigger date, and you can also choose which time of day you'd like the message to be sent. Time of day is relative to the sender's (i.e. your) time zone.

Trigger after another autoresponder

This trigger fires at some point in time after another autoresponder has fired (e.g. to create a series of emails). When configuring this trigger, you select which autoresponder to fire after, and how long to wait before firing.

Trigger manually

You can force an autoresponder to send to a contact that wasn't triggered automatically. For example, maybe you added a contact to your list by hand (i.e. not via the API or Zapier) and you want them to start receiving your autoresponder emails.

To trigger an autoresponder manually: