# Automated email sequences

Send a welcome series, a thank-you after payment or a review reminder automatically, one contact at a time, when something happens in your shop.

An automation is a sequence of steps that runs for one contact when something happens: a welcome email when someone joins your list, a thank-you after a payment, a reminder to leave a review three days later if they have not. You build the sequence in the dashboard; Ha Tang runs it for every contact, with the right waits in between.

Building and enabling automations needs the **Manage** level on the Email module.

## How it starts: events

Every automation starts from an **event**, a named moment in your business such as `order.paid` or `review.submitted`.

- **Built-in**: `hatang:contact.created` fires whenever a contact is added, from the dashboard, a CSV import or the API. Use it for welcome series.
- **Your own events** are sent by your website or app, usually by your developer, through the API. A shop sends `order.paid` with the order number and total, for example.

To define your own events:

1. Open **Email → Automations** and go to **Events**.
2. Enter the event **Name**, for example `order.paid`.
3. Optionally describe its **Payload**: the fields that come with it and their type (`string`, `number`, `boolean`, `date`), such as `order_id` and `total`. Ha Tang then checks incoming values and converts them.
4. Click **Add event**.

Your developer finds how to send events in the [automations guide of the developer hub](https://hatang.dev/docs/guides/email/automations).

## Build the flow

1. Open **Email → Automations**, enter a name and click **New automation**.
2. Click **Start from an event** and pick the event.
3. Click **+** under a step to add the next one, and set it up in the panel on the right.
4. Click **Save**, then **Enable**.

![An automation: thank-you email, three-day delay, wait for a review, then a reminder or a segment](https://hatang.dev/help/img/en/email/automation-flow.webp)

| Step | What it does | Set up |
|---|---|---|
| **Send email** | Sends a published template to the contact | Pick the template; optionally override **From** and the subject |
| **Delay** | Waits before the next step | A number of minutes, hours, days or weeks, up to 30 days |
| **Wait for event** | Waits until another event arrives for this contact, or gives up | **Until this event arrives** and **Give up after** (30 days by default). Two exits: **Event received** and **Timed out** |
| **Condition** | Goes one way or the other | A field, a comparison (equals, greater than, contains, is set…) and a value. Two exits: **Yes** and **No** |
| **Update contact** | Changes the contact | Set property values, or unsubscribe or resubscribe the contact |
| **Add to segment** | Puts the contact in a segment | Pick the segment |

Conditions can look at the event that started the run (`event.total`), the contact (`contact.city`, `contact.tier`…) and the event a **Wait for event** step received.

Inside **Send email**, template variables are filled from the event first, then from the contact, so a template with `{{{order_id}}}` receives the order number your shop sent with `order.paid`.

Ha Tang refuses to enable an automation without a starting event, with a template that is not published, or with an email that has no sender address.

## Example: thank-you and review reminder

1. **Start from an event**: `order.paid`.
2. **Send email**: the "Thank you for your order" template.
3. **Delay**: 3 days.
4. **Wait for event**: `review.submitted`, **Give up after** 4 days.
5. On **Timed out**: **Send email** with the "How was your tea?" template.
6. On **Event received**: **Condition** `event.stars` at least `5`, and on **Yes**, **Add to segment** "Loyal customers".

## Test it

At the bottom of the flow, **Send a test event** sends the starting event for an address you type, with an optional payload. The contact is created if needed and the enabled automation runs for real, so use your own address.

## Change a running automation

- The steps of an **Enabled** automation are locked. Click **Disable** to edit them, or **Duplicate** to build a new version beside it.
- Disabling cancels the runs still in progress.
- A run keeps the version of the flow it started with, even if you edit the automation later.

## Follow the runs

Each time a contact enters the automation, Ha Tang creates a **run**. The **Runs** tab lists them by status:

| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| **Running** | Executing steps |
| **Waiting** | In a delay, or waiting for an event |
| **Completed** | Reached the end of the flow |
| **Failed** | A step failed; open the run to see the error |
| **Cancelled** | Stopped, for example because the automation was disabled |

Open a run to see each step, when it ran and its result. A contact who has unsubscribed from everything is not emailed: the **Send email** step shows **Skipped**. Emails sent by automations also appear under **Email → Emails** like any other email.

> [!NOTE]
> Email automations send email to contacts. To automate conversations in the Inbox, such as auto-replies or ticket rules, use [workflows](https://hatang.dev/help/automation/workflows) in the **Customer Support** module.