How Automated Emails work + examples

The Automated Emails add-on is an incredibly powerful tool to help you increase your sales by automatically sending follow up emails after users take specific actions in your client galleries.

The moment a user takes a targeted action (like adding a favorite), the add-on looks for any automated emails you have set up where the trigger is related to favorites. If there is an automated email that matches, then it will queue up an email for the user. It schedules it for the specific time based on the email's settings. When that scheduled email time arrives, it will then check if the user/recipient has met the selected criteria for the email. If the criteria is met, the email is sent. If not, the email is not sent and removed from the queue.

Recipients who have unsubscribed are skipped at both points: no new email is queued for them, and anything already waiting in the queue is passed over when its time comes. See unsubscribing from automated emails.

Triggers

Triggers are an action a user can take or Sunshine can determine to add an email into it's queue:

1. After user registers
2. After user adds item to cart
3. After user adds image to favorites
4. After user submits order
5. After user views gallery for first time
6. Before gallery expires
7. After gallery expires
8. After providing email to access gallery
9. After free image download
10. After free gallery download
11. Assigned gallery users have not yet visited
12. After gallery is published

After gallery is published

This trigger is the one to use for "your photos are ready" emails. It waits until the gallery is genuinely finished before anything goes out.

When you publish a gallery, Sunshine holds the email back until the gallery actually has photos, every one of them has finished processing, and uploading has stopped for a few minutes. Only then does it send. Your client never gets an invite to a gallery that is still filling in with half the photos missing.

The email goes to the customers assigned to that gallery. If nobody is assigned to it, nothing is sent.

That means it does not cover a password-protected gallery where no customer account exists. For those, use the Messaging add-on, which lets you send a gallery message to any email address by hand and can include the gallery password.

Each assigned customer gets this email once per gallery. If you add more photos to that gallery later, they will not get a second one. Someone you assign to the gallery after the fact will still get theirs.

This trigger needs Sunshine Photo Cart 3.7.1 or later, along with the Automated Emails add-on version 3.3 or later.

Limiting an email to specific galleries

By default an automated email applies to every gallery on your site. If you only want it to run for certain ones, use the Galleries field to pick them.

Child galleries are included automatically, so selecting a season or an event covers everything beneath it without picking each one by hand. Leave the field empty and the email applies everywhere, which is how every existing email already behaves.

This is useful when a particular client or event needs different wording, or when you want to run a favorites reminder on your wedding galleries but not your school work.

The field is hidden for the "After user registers" trigger, since registration is not tied to a gallery. It is also hidden for "After gallery is published", because the galleries it applies to do not exist yet when you are setting the email up.

Time

You can set the how many hours/days/months either before/after (depending on the selected trigger) when the email should get set to the email address.

How email address is determined

There are several ways Sunshine determines which email address to use for sending an automated email:

• User is logged in to their own account with an email address
• User provided an email address to access a gallery
• User has been assigned to a private gallery

Depending on the trigger, Sunshine will look for relevant email addresses that match.

Personalizing Emails

You can personalize your email content with the following template tags to improve their effectiveness and help guide users to the best place on your website based on the email being sent.

General tags

These tags work with any trigger:

[first_name] - First Name [last_name] - Last Name [site_name] - Site Name [site_url] - Site URL [sunshine_url] - Sunshine Galleries Page [register_url] - Registration URL [discount_code] - Generated Discount Code (Discount add-on required) [cart] - Items in cart [favorites] - Images in favorites [unsubscribe_url] - Unsubscribe link (added automatically at the bottom if you don't place it yourself)

Gallery tags

These tags are available when the trigger is related to a specific gallery (gallery view, gallery expiration, add to cart, etc.):

[gallery_name] - Gallery Name [gallery_url] - Gallery URL [gallery_password] - Gallery Password [gallery_images] - Images in the associated gallery [gallery_featured_image] - Featured image in the associated gallery [gallery_expiration_date] - Gallery expiration date

Order tags

These tags are available when the trigger is "After user submits order":

[order_number] - Order Number [order_name] - Order Name (e.g. "Order #1234") [order_total] - Order Total [order_date] - Order Date [order_status] - Order Status [receipt_url] - Order Receipt URL [receipt_link] - Link to Order Receipt [gallery_names] - Gallery Names from the order (comma separated)

Custom Discount Codes

If you have the Discounts add-on installed, you can also have a custom Discount code generated specifically for this user based on an existing Discount. Simply select an existing Discount and it will be cloned with a new code and expiration date based on the settings in your email.

Example: Favorites follow up

In this configuration example, a user who has added images to favorites but not yet ordered within 3 days of adding their first favorite image will receive this email. The email will also include a unique discount code just for this user that is only valid for 1 day to save 15%.

An email like this can set a sense of urgency in the user to help convince them to make a purchase.

Example: Abandoned cart

In this configuration example, we are are sending an email to a user who has added items to cart but did not complete an order within an hour. This is often referred to as an "abandoned cart". These emails can help get people back to your site to complete an order if they were feeling hesitant about completing for some reason. A custom discount is also included to help push the user into action.

This email is set to send 1 hour after the initial add to cart, but feel free to play with the timing to see what works best for your customers. However, I don't recommend going longer than a day for this type of email.

Example: Gallery expiration reminder

When creating a new client gallery, you can set it to have an expiration date where images will no longer be available. It can be helpful to send reminders to anyone who has visited the gallery that it will expire soon.

Any users who have entered their email address to access the gallery, are set as private users on the gallery, or have visited the gallery while logged in will be sent this email.