Automations: welcome and win-back series
Send the right email automatically, based on what a subscriber does.
What automations actually do
Sumezi has exactly two automation triggers today: welcome, which reacts to a new subscriber, and win-back, which reacts to a subscriber going quiet. There's no third trigger type hiding in the settings — anything else you might expect (a birthday send, a purchase-based trigger) isn't built yet.
Every automation is one trigger followed by exactly one email — there's no multi-step sequence builder. "Welcome series" is really a welcome mail, singular.
Trigger 1 — Welcome
This fires when a subscriber becomes fully subscribed — not the moment they submit a signup form. For a manually added or CSV-imported contact that's immediate, since they start out already subscribed. For a double opt-in signup form, it fires only once they click the confirmation link in their inbox; someone who never confirms never gets a welcome mail.
Every project comes with exactly one welcome automation, created automatically the first time you open the Automations page — you don't build it from scratch, you activate the one that's already there. It starts paused by default. You can set a send delay in minutes (shown rounded to hours in the list) or leave it at zero to send right away.
Trigger 2 — Win-back
This one watches for subscribers who've gone quiet: subscribed for at least a configurable number of days ("inactive after", default 90, minimum 1) with no open or click in that same window. Unlike welcome, it's not instant — a daily scan looks for newly-qualifying subscribers once a day, not the moment they cross the threshold.
It's also one-shot: a subscriber can only ever be enrolled in a given win-back automation once. If they re-engage after receiving it and then go quiet again months later, they won't be enrolled a second time.
The + New automation button always creates a new win-back draft (named "Win-back", subject "We miss you", 90-day threshold) for you to configure and activate — there's no button to create a second welcome automation, since every project only ever has the one.
Status: active, paused, draft
A draft automation hasn't been switched on yet and lives in its own section of the list. Active and paused automations both live in the main list together — pausing doesn't demote it to a draft, it just shows a different pill next to the name. The toggle switch on the detail page flips between active and paused (or turns a draft straight on).
What happens once a subscriber is enrolled
Enrollment doesn't send mail directly — it queues a pending row with a run-time, which a background worker checks in batches (up to 50 at a time) every time it ticks. Most of the time that's invisible: the wait you set (or the daily win-back scan) elapses, and the mail queues up right on schedule. A few edge cases are handled deliberately rather than left to fail silently.
| Situation | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| The automation is paused (or still a draft) when its turn comes up | The enrollment isn't cancelled — it's pushed back an hour and checked again. Reactivate the automation and the queued sends pick up right where they left off. |
| The linked template is empty or briefly mid-edit | Same as above: deferred an hour, not cancelled. This is also why an automation can look "stuck" — check whether it actually has a working template attached. |
| The automation was deleted | The enrollment is cancelled outright — this is the one permanent case. |
| The subscriber unsubscribed before their turn came up | Also cancelled — they were removed from the audience, not just delayed. |
| Everything checks out | The mail is personalized, tracking and unsubscribe links are injected, and it's handed to the send queue — the enrollment itself is then marked "sent", meaning handed off, not necessarily delivered yet. |
Reading the numbers on each card
Each automation shows three figures in the list — in queue, average open rate, and total sent — and a fuller breakdown on its detail page: in queue now, completed, sent, and opened/clicked. "Sent" here always means mail that actually left through the queue, which can lag a step behind "completed" enrollments if the worker hasn't caught up yet.
Troubleshooting
- An active automation isn't sending anything: check that it actually has a working template attached. A missing or empty template doesn't produce an error — the worker just quietly retries every hour.
- A subscriber never got a welcome mail: confirm they actually completed double opt-in. Enrollment happens at confirmation, not at form submission — a subscriber stuck in "pending" was never enrolled.
- A win-back mail won't fire again for someone who re-engaged and went quiet a second time: that's expected — enrollment is one-shot per subscriber, per automation.
- Pausing an automation with people already queued: perfectly safe. Their enrollments just wait — deferred an hour at a time — until you switch it back on, rather than being cancelled.
- Looking for a way to add a second welcome automation: there isn't one. Every project is provisioned with exactly one, and the "+ New automation" button only creates win-back automations.