Working in Automations

Automations sends email automatically — welcome messages, recurring digests, win-back series — without manual effort. This guide covers everything you can do there.

Tip

The Letterhead assistant (early access — rolling out to select accounts) can report which of your automations are running, paused, or have errors. See how the assistant works.

Triggers

Start an automation from subscriber status changes, tags, curation items, newsletter opens/clicks (narrowable to specific links), date-based events, or re-engagement conditions (e.g. hasn’t opened in N sends).

Can an automation react to clicks on one specific link?

Yes. When an automation reacts to newsletter clicks, you can narrow the trigger or condition to particular links — so it fires only when a reader clicks a specific article or call to action, not just any link in the email. The links to choose from are gathered from the newsletters you’ve put in scope, deduped and ready to pick. Link-level targeting may need to be enabled for your account — contact support. See Branch a simple series automation.

Build the flow

Design message steps on the workflow canvas. Branch by engagement (opened/clicked recent newsletters, specific issues, or particular links) or by subscriber attributes and tags — using the same criteria as segments — and nest branches for multi-level decision trees: a conditional branch can sit inside another branch’s yes-or-no path at any depth, and the canvas lays the whole automation out as a readable tree so even deeply nested branches stay easy to follow and edit. Add tag-assignment steps at any point in any automation, whatever kind of event triggers the journey — while the automation runs, the step shows how many subscribers it has tagged since the journey began. Send a test email before going live. Advanced branching and tag steps may need to be enabled for your account — contact support. See Branch a simple series automation and Split an automation by subscriber attributes.

Unsubscribes

Can readers leave one automation without unsubscribing from my newsletter?

Yes. Emails sent from an automation series carry an “Unsubscribe from this journey” link in place of the usual full-list unsubscribe. A reader who clicks it lands on a confirmation page that removes them only from that running journey — their subscription to your newsletter itself stays intact, so you don’t lose a reader over one automation they’d rather skip. See Journey-specific unsubscribe links in automation emails.

Monitor & manage

Pause/activate a series, update its templates, restart it, and view its configuration without entering edit mode — a running automation spells out the actual newsletters and links it watches, and the full criteria on each branch (match mode, tags, profile fields, newsletters).

Live metrics show on the canvas: the starting card tallies how many journeys have been created, are running, and have finished, plus how many people are currently enrolled, in progress, or done; each wait step shows how many subscribers are paused inside the delay and how many have passed through; and every branch shows how many subscribers took each path. Open any step for a drawer listing who is currently at that step and who has moved past it — each with name, email, and status — and open any email step to see how it has performed across every run of the journey: how many went out and were delivered, a breakdown of bounces, and a ranked list of the links readers clicked most. These live canvas metrics may need to be enabled for your account — contact support.

The company-level Errors Table filters automations by error status so you can see what failed and why.

What happens to my automations if my email provider connection breaks?

Letterhead monitors your connected email service provider and flags the connection as broken if it stops responding or your credentials stop being accepted. The moment the connection recovers, it’s marked healthy again automatically and any automations that were paused because of it pick back up on their own.

What this page doesn’t do

One-off sends live in Emails; segment building lives in Audience.

Who sees what

Access varies by role. If an option isn’t visible, ask your admin — or the assistant, if you have early access.