Adding marketing actions to automation processes

Automation processes can perform various types of marketing actions. By integrating actions into processes, you can automate tasks that users would otherwise need to do manually. For example, you can have a process send an email to contacts that meet a certain condition or move contacts between different accounts.

You can add actions into the flow of processes via action steps. When a contact reaches an action step in a process, the system automatically performs the given action.

The following action steps are available:

Managing contact accounts

1. Place the Change account action step onto the process designer grid.

2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.

3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.

4. Specify the step’s properties:

   • Account name – select an account for the action to manage.
   • Contact role – you can have the process assign a specific role within the account to the contact.
   • Action – you can either add the contact to the specified account or remove it from the account.

5. Click Apply.

See also: Organizing contacts into accounts

Managing contact groups

1. Place the Change group action step onto the process designer grid.

2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.

3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.

4. Specify the step’s properties:

   • Contact group – select a contact group for the action to manage.
   • Action – you can either add the contact to the specified group or remove it.

5. Click Apply.

See also: Segmenting contacts into contact groups

Setting contact properties

1. Place the Set contact property action step onto the process designer grid.
2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.
3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.
4. Select which contact property the action changes (Property name).
5. Type the new Property value.
6. Click Apply.

See also: Working with contacts

Setting contact statuses

1. Place the Set contact status action step onto the process designer grid.
2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.
3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.
4. Select the Status that the action assigns to contacts.
5. Click Apply.

See also: Assigning statuses to contacts

Deleting contacts

1. Place the Delete contact action step onto the process designer grid.
2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.

See also: Working with contacts

Replicating contacts to Salesforce

Requirement: You need to have Salesforce replication set up to use this action.

1. Place the Import to Salesforce action step onto the process designer grid.

2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.

3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.

4. Specify the step’s property:

   • Deferred replication – if selected, the action step delays the replication of the contact until the system executes the scheduled replication process. Otherwise the action replicates the contact immediately when the step is reached within the process. Using deferred replication helps reduce the number of Salseforce API calls made by your application.

5. Click Apply.

See also: Salesforce integration

Logging custom activities

1. Place the Log custom activity action step onto the process designer grid.

2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.

3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.

4. Specify the step’s properties:

   • Activity type – select one of your custom activity types.
   • Activity site – select the site for which you want to log the activity.
   • Activity title – add basic information about the event that the activity represents.
   • Activity value – you can assign a value to the activity. You can associate values with activities such as e-commerce purchases.
   • Activity URL – enter the URL of the page where the activity occurred.
   • Campaign – you can select a marketing campaign associated with the activity.
   • UTM source
   • Comment – here you can add any additional information related to the activity.

5. Click Apply.

See also: Tracking contact activities, Adding custom activity types

Managing newsletter subscriptions

1. Place the Newsletter subscription action step onto the process designer grid.
2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.
3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.
4. Select a Site and a specific Newsletter.
5. Select the Action – you can either subscribe the contact to the newsletter or unsubscribe from the newsletter.
6. Select the Inherit double opt-in setting check box if you want the Enable double opt-in setting to be inherited from the selected newsletter (the system sends newsletter subscription activation emails for newsletters with enabled double opt-in). If you clear the check box, the double opt-in setting from the newsletter is ignored and double opt-in is always disabled.
7. Click Apply.

See also: Email marketing

Sending transactional emails

Requirement: You must have at least one SMTP server configured for your websites.

1. Place the Send transactional email action step onto the grid.

2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.

3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.

4. Enter the sender’s address into the From field.

5. Specify the recipients of the email in the To field.

   • You can enter multiple addresses separated by semicolons.
   • Use macro expressions to load the address dynamically. For example, {% Contact.ContactEmail %} gets the address of the current contact in the process.

6. Choose the content type of the email:

   • Email template – the content of the email is based on the selected Email template.
   • HTML formatted text – manually write the Subject and Body of the email.

7. Click Apply.

Sending marketing emails

1. Place the Send marketing email action step onto the grid.

2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.

3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.

4. Select a Site and Email feed from which you want to send the email.

5. Choose the specific Email that you want the action to send.

   Note: You can only choose marketing emails that have the Use in Marketing automation flag enabled in their properties. You can enable this flag for existing emails in the Email marketing application.

   • You can adjust the content of the selected email by clicking Edit, or create a new email under the selected feed by clicking New.

6. Click Apply.

See also: Email marketing

Starting other automation processes

1. Place the Start another process action step onto the grid.
2. Integrate the step into the flow of the process by connecting a preceding and following step.
3. Edit the step by clicking it in the designer grid.
4. Select the automation Process that you want to start for the contact.
   • You cannot start a new instance of the same process that you are designing (to avoid the possibility of a process loop).
5. Click Apply.

Adding custom actions

The system allows developers to create custom action steps for use in automation processes. Developing actions step requires knowledge of programming and the Xperience API.

See Developing custom marketing automation actions for more information.