Automations

An automation is a trigger and a series of steps. Somebody does something, and Cobber does the follow-up you would otherwise mean to do and forget.

The pieces

What you can build with

Piece	What it does
Send Email	Sends an email to the person. You write the body; the header and footer come from the letterhead the step sits on. You can send yourself a test before it ever runs.
Send SMS	Sends a text. Costs money per message, so the step shows the estimated cost.
Delay	Waits. The most important step in most automations — the ask lands better three days later.
Condition	Local groups on whether the person has a tag, doesn't have a tag, is in a list, or has viewed a page.
Add Tag / Remove Tag	Tags the person for segmentation later.
Create Task	Puts a job in front of a human.

1. Choose a trigger

   Choose a Trigger is the first decision: what starts this. There are ten — a donation, a membership, a contact submission, a signup, a volunteer, a petition signature, an MP contacted, a survey submitted, a tag being added, or an event RSVP.

   To act on one particular survey answer rather than every submission, give that answer a tag on the survey (see Surveys) and use Tag Added scoped to that tag. Add a Create task step and the answer lands in someone's task list instead of scrolling past in Recent Activity.

   Narrow it while you are there. Scope to a page ties the trigger to one specific page rather than every page you run, so a welcome sequence for one petition does not fire for another.

   On a New Donation automation, Run for each new gift sends the journey again when the same person makes another one-off donation, after the previous run has finished. A monthly renewal does not start it again. New donation automations have this ticked. One you already saved stays on the first gift only until you tick it and save.

   

2. Add the steps

   New Step then Choose an Action. Build the sequence in the order it should happen, and use Delay generously — an automation that fires three emails in ten minutes reads as a malfunction.

   

3. Set exit conditions

   Exit conditions take someone out of the journey when it stops being relevant — most usefully, when they have already done the thing you are asking for. Nobody should keep receiving a donation ask after they have donated.

4. Set sending hours on a send step

   Sending hours sits on each Send Email and Send SMS step. Leave it off and that send goes out the moment the step is reached, including overnight. Turn on Only send between certain times to choose a from and to, a timezone, and the days of the week — for that step only.

   That is how a thank-you can go out as soon as someone fills the form, while an ask a few days later waits until morning. The same pair of times covers a daytime window (8:00 am to 8:00 pm) and an overnight one (8:00 pm to 8:00 am). Matching from and to means any time on the days you tick. Hours and days both have to match — Saturday 2am is Saturday, even if Friday evening was inside the window.

   A send that would go out outside the window waits until it next opens. It is not skipped. Tags, tasks, conditions and delays still run at whatever hour they are reached. A thank-you email that is waiting still holds the steps after it.

5. Activate it

   Automations start as drafts. Nothing happens until you make one active, and you can put it back to draft later without losing the design.

Writing a Send Email step

The step has three parts: the letterhead it sits on, the Subject, and the Body.

The letterhead

At the top of the step is a small picture of the letterhead this email uses, with its name — usually Default Newsletter. That is the header and footer the email sits inside, and it is the same one your outreach campaigns use. The step stores only what you write in the body, so if someone later changes that letterhead’s logo or footer, this email changes with it. That is the point: you set it once and every email follows.

There is nothing to choose here, and for most organisations nothing to change — one letterhead is normal.

If your organisation has more than one and you are a national admin, a Change button appears. It shows each letterhead as a picture rather than a name, because the name tells you nothing about what arrives, along with how many campaigns and automations already use it. That count is worth reading: switching affects this email, but the letterhead itself is shared, so it is worth knowing what else is on it before you go and edit it.

Editing the letterheads themselves happens in Settings → Email. Both editing them and switching between them need the permission to manage settings, so if you are a branch or state admin you will see which letterhead is in use but not a way to change it. Ask a national admin.

The body

A brand new step has no body yet. Instead of an empty box it offers three ways to start:

• The welcome starter — a headline, two columns and a button, the same starter outreach campaigns get.
• An email you have already sent — pick one of your campaigns and it copies that campaign’s words across. Only the words: this step keeps its own letterhead.
• A blank page.

Picking one of the three saves the step there and then, and the options are replaced by a preview. That is deliberate — it means nothing in the panel can wipe what you have written. If you do want to start over, clear the body in the editor and save; the three options come back.

The preview is the real email — header, footer, unsubscribe link and all, rendered by the same code that does the sending, at the width a phone would show it. It is not a sketch of the body on its own, so if the letterhead does not sit well around your words you will see that here rather than in somebody’s inbox.

Click the preview to open the editor. The header and footer appear greyed around the edge so you can see the finished email, but you can’t type in them — only the body in the middle. Use Merge tags in the toolbar for {{first_name}}, {{organization_name}} and the rest. You don’t need to add an unsubscribe link: it is part of the letterhead footer. Save & Close saves the step, so the preview catches up straight away.

Who it comes from

From name and From email, under the preview, are both optional. Leave them blank and the email sends from your campaign sending address — the same one your outreach campaigns use, set in Settings → Email. The step names that address underneath the fields so you are never guessing.

If your organisation has no campaign sending address yet, the step says so in an amber box. That is worth acting on: without one the automation fails when it runs, and because it runs on its own there is nobody watching when it does.

Check it before it goes out

Two ways, and they show you the same thing:

• Send a test to yourself, under the preview, saves the step and emails it to an address you type. Nobody is enrolled and none of the automation’s numbers move.
• Preview & test, at the top of the step, opens the email full size with a desktop and a mobile view, and a box for sending a test from there.

Merge tags fill with sample values in both — {{first_name}} reads as a real first name rather than the tag — unless the address you test to belongs to somebody on your list, in which case their own details are merged.

Organisations still in trial mode can’t send tests, because nothing is delivered in trial mode. Use Preview instead.

Watch what happens next

Each automation reports Total Enrolled, how many are Currently Active, and how many Completed or Exited, with an open rate against each email step.

Read it as a funnel. If a hundred people enrol and eleven complete, the step where they stop is the one to rewrite — usually the one that asks for money too soon.

Build one, watch it for a fortnight, then build the next. Three automations you understand beat ten you have lost track of, and every automation is a message going out with nobody reading it first.