Tutorials / Setting it up
Setting it up . 4 min read
Build your first automation
An automation is one sentence: when this happens, do that. A new lead arrives, so send a text. An appointment is booked, so send a reminder the day before. It runs whether or not anyone remembers, which is the entire point.
The shape of one
- Go to Automation and click Create Workflow.
- Choose a trigger. Click Add New Trigger and pick the event that starts it, such as a form being submitted or an appointment being booked.
- Narrow it if you need to. Trigger filters are optional and let you say "only when it came from this form" rather than every form.
- Add the actions. Click Add Action and choose what happens: send a text, send an email, wait two days, add a tag, create a task for somebody.
- Save.
Saving is not switching it on. A saved workflow sits there as a draft and does nothing at all. You have to Publish it. This is the single most common reason somebody says "the automation is not working", and the fix takes one click.
Start from a recipe, not a blank page
There are prebuilt templates for the things most businesses want, including appointment confirmations and reminders. Open one, change the wording to sound like you, publish it. That is a far better first automation than building from nothing.
A first one worth having
When a new lead comes in from any form:
- Send a text within a minute, while they are still looking at your website.
- Wait one day.
- If they have not replied, send an email with two times you could visit.
- Wait five more days, and if it is still quiet, create a task for whoever owns it to ring them.
That sequence is the difference between a lead you lost and a job you won, and it costs you nothing once it is built.
Test it on yourself before it meets a customer. Put your own mobile and email on a test contact and run it through. Read what arrives on your actual phone. Wording that looked fine on a desktop often reads oddly as a text.