Automation
By Maildesk Team ·
Set Up Your First Automation
Connect an email sequence to triggers and exit conditions so the right subscribers get the right emails automatically.
An automation watches for something to happen — a tag added, a form submitted, a field changed — and enrolls the matching contact into an email sequence. Set it up once and it runs forever.
Before you start
- A verified sending domain — see Connect your sending domain.
- An email sequence with at least one published email — see Build an email sequence.
Step 1: Create a draft
- Navigate to Automations > Automations.
- Click Create draft.
- Pick the Email Sequence to deliver and the From Email Address to send it from, then create.
You land in the automation builder.
Step 2: Add triggers
Triggers decide who gets enrolled. Any matching trigger enrolls the contact — they’re OR’d together, not AND’d.
Click Add trigger and choose from:
| Trigger | Fires when |
|---|---|
| When tag is added | A chosen tag is applied to a contact |
| When tag is removed | A chosen tag is removed |
| When form is submitted | A contact submits one of your chosen forms |
| When custom field changes | A field matches a condition — operators include equals, not equals, contains, greater/less than, is set, is empty |
| Date offset | N days before or after a custom date field (e.g. 7 days before renewal_date), optionally at a specific time of day |
| When contact is created | Any new contact is added |
There’s also a checkbox: “Allow contacts to re-enroll if they re-trigger this automation.” Leave it off for one-time flows like welcome sequences; turn it on for repeatable flows like “every time this tag is applied, send the follow-up.”
Step 3: Add exit conditions (optional but powerful)
Exit conditions remove a contact from the sequence before the next step is sent — any matching condition exits them. Choose from:
- Contact opened an email / Contact clicked a link in an email — scoped to emails in this automation or any email ever, optionally within the last N days
- Contact has tag / Contact does not have tag
- Custom field matches
- Contact submitted form
Classic use: a sales sequence that exits anyone who gains the customer tag — no one keeps getting “buy now” emails after they’ve bought.
Step 4: Review and activate
The “How this works” panel shows a live plain-English summary of your setup (“When … Or when …”) — read it and confirm it says what you meant.
Then tick Active and click Update automation. From this moment, matching contacts are enrolled automatically.
Note: Only Confirmed subscribers are enrolled in sequences. Contacts who haven’t confirmed their subscription won’t receive automation emails.
Watching it run
The automation’s analytics view shows Entered, Active, Completed, Exited, Failed counts, an Enrollments Over Time chart, per-email Step Performance (delivered, open rate, click rate, bounce rate), and per-recipient activity — with CSV export.
Next: put it all together with the welcome sequence recipe.
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