Email and automation setup

What email and automation setup is

This is the building. You have decided that a new subscriber should get five emails over three weeks, that somebody who books a quote and does not proceed should hear from you twice, and that people who have not opened anything in a year should get one last message. Setup is the work of making those things exist inside your platform: the triggers, conditions, segments, waits, exits and links, plus a full test before any of it reaches a customer.

It is not the writing. The words in those emails are a separate service, and they matter more than the wiring. Welcome sequences covers the first five emails a new subscriber receives, when attention is the highest it will ever be. Drip campaigns covers the longer automated series that keeps working once you have stopped thinking about it. Buy the writing and the setup together and you have something that sends; buy setup alone and you have a well-built pipe with nothing worth reading in it.

When you need it

When the emails are written, or nearly, and the platform is where they stall. The drafts sit in a document, somebody logs into the platform, discovers that building an automation means understanding tags, lists, segments and triggers, and closes the tab. Six months later the drafts are still in the document.

It is also the right buy when something is already running and behaving oddly: people getting two emails at once, customers who have already bought still receiving the sales sequence, or a flow that quietly stopped firing when somebody changed a form.

You do not need this if you send one newsletter a month and nothing else. A broadcast newsletter needs no automation at all, and the useful purchase there is a sending plan built around your list and Canadian anti-spam law. You also do not need it if you have a capable person in the office who simply has not been shown how; training on the software costs less and leaves the skill with you.

What the work covers

• The flow on paper first. Every sequence drawn out before anything is built: what starts it, who qualifies, how long between each email, what takes somebody out, and what happens when two sequences would both fire.
• Segments and tags. The lists and tags your platform needs, named consistently, so that in a year somebody can still tell what “list-3-new” was supposed to mean. Existing tags are tidied where they have multiplied.
• The build. Each email created in the platform, formatted to look like your business rather than like the default template, with the links, images, unsubscribe and sender details correct.
• Triggers and integrations. Wiring the sequence to whatever actually starts it: a website form, a shop purchase, a booking, a tag added by hand. Where the shop and the email platform must speak to each other, that connection is set up and tested.
• The full test. The whole flow run end to end with a real address, on a real phone, in real time. Every email received, every link clicked, every exit condition triggered deliberately to confirm it works.

The platform is whichever one you already pay for — Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot or something smaller. I do not move you to another one unless yours genuinely cannot do what you asked for, and if so I say it on the first call rather than after the invoice.

What you get

The sequences, live. Built, tested and switched on, or left switched off with a date, if you want to launch them yourself.

A flow diagram. One page per sequence showing triggers, waits, conditions and exits. It saves a great deal of confusion the first time somebody asks why a customer got a particular email.

The test record. A short document listing each email, when it arrived in the test, and confirmation that every link and exit condition behaved.

A one-page operating note. How to pause a sequence, how to change one email without breaking the rest, and what to check if something looks wrong. Written for whoever in your office will be logging in, not for a marketer.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A small Ontario company selling maple products online has a list of about four thousand people, a shop, and a welcome email that was set up in 2021 and has not been opened since. New subscribers get one message, buyers get the same message again, and nobody is sent anything after a purchase.

The writing is bought separately: a five-email welcome sequence and a three-email post-purchase sequence. Setup then takes six working days. The existing flow is documented before it is touched, because it feeds a tag three other things depend on. New segments separate subscribers who have bought from those who have not, so the welcome sequence stops running at the point somebody orders and the post-purchase sequence picks up two days after delivery. A rule prevents anyone receiving both on the same day. The whole thing is then tested with two addresses, one subscribing and one buying, and the owner watches the emails arrive on her own phone before it goes live.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which platform you use, what sequences you want, whether the emails are written, and what is already running that we must not break. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Priced on the number of sequences and emails, and on how much of the existing set-up needs untangling first.
3. Access. An administrator login to the email platform, and to the shop or form that triggers the sequences.
4. The map. The flow drawn on paper and approved by you before anything is built, which is where the awkward questions about overlap get settled cheaply.
5. Build and test. Three to ten working days depending on the number of sequences, ending with the live end-to-end test and your sign-off before anything sends to a customer.

What it costs

Quoted in CAD after the half-hour call, because a single welcome sequence in a tidy account and six sequences in an account nobody has maintained since 2021 are not comparable jobs. The price depends on the number of sequences, the state of the existing set-up, and whether a shop or booking system has to be connected. The pricing page shows the four ways of working; where this sits inside a monthly arrangement it is included rather than billed separately. The number is fixed in writing before anything is built, and the platform subscription remains yours.

What happens next

Once the wiring exists, the useful work moves back to the words. Most businesses add a second sequence, usually something for buyers who are interested but not ready, which drops into the structure already built. Some put the regular sending on a planned calendar so the automation is not the only thing the list ever hears from. And where a sequence points at website pages, those usually need work of their own: one page, one audience, one action. None of it is assumed. The setup is finished when the test record is signed off and the diagram is in your hands.