Hello, and welcome back!
In the last video, I covered a few different triggers that you can use and gave you a few ideas and examples for what those triggers could be used for.
Now, let's dive into the "action steps".
In the automation builder screen, I want to bring your attention to the little "+" sign.
If you click it, a new menu will pop up on the right-hand side of the screen. This menu contains all the action steps that you can use here in the StudioHub builder.
Again, just like I did in the last video, I'm going to cover some of these action steps here. I won't be covering everything because that would take way too long, and also wouldn't be able to come up with every single idea for how to use all these action steps. The goal is that you become familiar with the automation builder so that you can play around with it and generate your own ideas.
Let's dive in.
{{ADD EACH STEP AS YOU TALK ABOUT IT}}
Add contact tag - I wanted to start here because this one is really self-explanatory. This action let's you add a tag to a contact whenever the person gets to this action step.
Remove contact tag - Again, self-explanatory. This action removes the contact tag when someone gets to this step.
Assign to user - To explain this action, let's pretend that you created an automation where you send people a text message that asks them: "Do you want to stay with us for another year? Reply with Yes, or No. Then if they reply "no" you want those contacts to get assigned to your admins who focuses on retention so that she can give them a call. For a situation like this, you would use this action step. You can assign a contact to any of your staff members added in StudioHub by using this action step.
Send Email - This action step is pretty straightforward. You can pre-program an email that you want people to receive when they reach this action step. For example, let's say you want someone to receive an email as soon as someone fills out a form on your website, you would use this action step.
Send SMS - This is exactly the same as the step above, except with a text message. If you want to pre-program text messages that you want people to receive when they get added to this automation, you would use this action step. An example of this would be if you wanted to created a text message follow up campaign that follows up with people who filled out a form. This is an action step that you'll be using very often! Use it wisely. Do not upset people by creating an automation that sends them 10 text messages per day!
Wait (cover the different types of wait) - This is a super useful action, and it has many uses. I'll give you 2 examples. For the first example, imagine you want people to receive a message 1 minute after they got added to the automation, and then another message 3 days later. You would need to use the wait action step to create those delays in time. Imagine you had a lot of "Send SMS" action steps back to back. If you didn't add the wait steps, people would receive all the messages at once. The other example for why you would want to use a wait step has to do with appointments in a StudioHub calendar. For example, if you want someone to receive a message 1 day before their appointment, you would use this wait step as well.
Send review request - This action step sends people a Google review request when they get to the step. We use this automation step successfully to increase our client's Google reviews. To get this to work, your Google account needs to be integrated into your StudioHub settings.
Messenger - This action step sends people a Facebook messenger message when they reach the step. For this action step to work, the person needs to have contacted you through Facebook messenger first.
Send internal notifications - This is another action step that we use often. This action step can send you, your team member, or anyone you choose a notification when they reach this action step. For example, if you want to get notified anytime someone fills out a form, you would use this action step. Another thing to note about this action step is that you can choose the types of notifications you want to use, for example, if you want to receive the notifications as an email, you can choose the email option. You can also choose to send notifications as text messages, or as a notification in the StudioHub app. For the StudioHub app notifications, you need to make sure that you have the StudioHub app downloaded in your phone.
If / else - This action step is not really an action step. What this does is allows you to create multiple paths in the automation. Think of it as creating a fork in the road. "If this situation happens, go this way. If that situation happens, go that way". An example of this could be if you wanted to send a specific message to people if it's between 9am and 5pm, but you don't want to send anything outside of that window. Another example of this would be, you want to send people a message if they have a certain tag, but not send anything if they don't have that specific tag. The point is that this "if / else" step allows you to create multiple paths in the automation based on a certain condition that you set up. It takes creativity to use this action step, but it allows you to do so many things with the automation. I'll let you explore and find out.
Add to workflow - This action step allows you to add a contact to another workflow when they reach this step. As an example, imagine that you created 2 different workflows: "Workflow year 1", and "workflow year 2". At the end of "Workflow year 1" you ask people "Do you want to continue with us? reply with yes, or no." If they text back no, the automation will send a notification to your retention admin, but if they say "yes", it adds them to the "Workflow year 2". To do this, you would need to use this action step.
Remove from all workflows - This one is self-explanatory. When people get to this step, remove them from every workflow they are in. I want to give you a heads up. This one is a VERY POWERFUL action step, and you want to use it carefully! If you use this wrong, people can get removed from the wrong automation, it can also cause the automations to seem like they stopped working for you. I can't warn you enough. Be REALLY careful with using this automation. We've had clients who used this action step and lost a lot of money because the contacts got removed from the follow-up automations that were preventing people from falling through the cracks. One last time, be super careful.
Remove from workflow - This one is less dangerous than the one above. With this automation you can pick which automations you want to remove contacts from. For example, if you want a contact to be removed from the follow up automations if they fill out a form, you would use this action step.
Again, I know I skipped a lot. If you're curious, and you want to learn more, you'll have to play around with the automation builder, and test things out yourself.
Let's talk about the next lesson.
Now that I've added all these steps, I want you to bring your attention to the entire screen here.
{{Show the screen with all the action steps in it}}
I want you to notice how the automation is a series of steps happening one after the other, from top to bottom.
Once the automation gets to the bottom, it's finished.
This automation doesn't make much sense, since I wasn't trying to build something useful, but you still get to see the point. Whenever someone enters the automation, they start at the top where the trigger is. Then, the person starts going through each of the action steps in order from top to bottom.
Later in this training, I've included some videos that walk you through creating an automation from start to finish, so that you can see what a real automation looks like.
Before we get there though, I need to explain the rest of the settings here in the workflow builder.
I'll save this workflow as is, and I'll see you in the next video!