Automations

Build branching email workflows with entry triggers, delays, branches, waits, and A/B splits.

What an automation is

An Automation is a branching email workflow. People enter from an audience, an app event, or a manual enrollment, then move through delays, emails, branches, waits, and exits. Sequences as a separate product object are retired — use Automations instead.

Open Engage → Automations.

Canvas steps

Step	What it does
Entry	How people start: audience, SDK event, or manual / API enrollment
Delay	Wait before the next step. A delay of 0 is No wait
Email	Send a message (blank or from a template)
Branch	Split by attributes or rules. Paths can include Is in segment. Unmatched people follow Everyone else
Wait until	Continue when a chosen event happens (or follow the timeout path)
A/B split	Split contacts by percentage across arms
Exit	End of the automation

Compose Email steps with the same visual / HTML composer and merge tags as broadcasts. Use Send test on an Email step to preview that step’s draft.

Entry triggers

On the Entry step, Contacts enter when:

Mode	Meaning
They are in an audience	All subscribed (consented) customers, or a chosen Segment
They send an SDK event	Enrollment when your app records that event (optional property filters)
You enroll them (Manual or API)	You start people from the dashboard or an API integration

When marketing topics mode is on, assign one topic on the automation so sends respect topic consent.

Lifecycle

Action	What happens
Activate	Publishes the first version and starts enrollment
Publish changes	After Activate, further edits stay in the draft until you publish. Publishing creates a new version
Pause	Stops new people from entering
Resume	Opens entry again
Archive	Retires an automation that is draft, paused, or completed

People already in an automation stay on the version they entered. New entrants use the latest published version after you publish.

Published vN opens version history. Restoring a version copies it into the draft and does not publish by itself.

Analytics shows lifetime totals for the published version.

Re-enrollment

In automation settings, choose how often the same Customer may enter:

Policy	Behavior
Once ever	Enters this automation one time
Once while not already in it	Can enter again after they leave
Every time	Can enter again after they leave, with an optional cooldown in hours

You can also set a conversion goal and optionally exempt the automation from the app frequency cap.

From the terminal

Create, publish, pause, resume, and enroll people with rheo engage automations in the CLI. Publishing a new version follows the same draft-until-publish rule as the canvas.

Set up Engage — Consent, topics, frequency cap
Broadcasts — One-shot sends and the composer
Customers — Segments used by Entry and Branch
CLI — rheo engage automations