Automation: best practices

A few habits that keep automations doing what you meant, long after you built them.

Start with the journey, not the tool

Before building anything, outline the moments your program should react to:

Which actions or milestones should trigger a message or a reward?
Which contacts benefit most from hearing from you automatically?
Where do contacts usually drop off or go quiet?

Then pick the right tool for each moment:

Something a contact does that you want to react to straight away is an event automation
Something that should reach a group of contacts on a schedule can be a periodic automation, a recurring email under Marketing → Recurring emails, or a recurring issuance: vouchers from the Issuances tab of a promotion under Loyalty → Promotions & Vouchers, or points from Loyalty → Points issuances
Sending data to another system is a webhook subscription, not an automation: see Webhooks: send events from Leat to your own system

Build the basics first

Three automations worth setting up first covers the ones almost every program needs: reward unlocked, a purchase milestone and tier reached.

Give every automation one clear goal

Every automation should serve one purpose: more repeat purchases, less churn, more points redeemed. Start from the outcome and work backwards to the trigger and the filters.

Don't over-automate

More isn't better. Check that automations don't overlap, so one purchase doesn't set off 3 emails. Space messages out with a Delay action.

To keep messages out of the night, set an Execution window on the Settings tab of the editor. It's only there on event-based automations, and it decides when a run may start. Actions after a Delay run as soon as the delay ends, whatever the window says, so check where your delays end too.

Get the Start filters and re-enrollment right

Most surprises come from these two:

Filter at the Start step so only the contacts you mean get in.
Decide on Re-enrollment deliberately, on the Settings tab of the editor. Off means a contact goes through the automation once, ever, and that goes for periodic automations too: with it off, a periodic automation reaches each contact once, however often it runs. Most new automations start with it off, but the Reward unlocked template and automations that start when a contact receives a reward start with it on. Switch on Allow re-enrollment only when the automation should repeat, choose how long a contact has to wait under Contacts can re-enroll once every…, and click Submit.

Make it easy to act

Put the next step in the message: the reward they can claim now, or how many points they still need for the next one. The less effort it takes, the more contacts act on it.

Name automations so you can find them

Put the purpose and the audience in the name, like "Onboarding 1: welcome" or "Win-back 3: 90 days quiet". A new automation is named after its template or trigger, so rename it: open its Information tab, click Edit details, change the Name and click Save changes. When you activate an automation that has no Description, we write one for you, and you can edit it in the same place.

Check your automations regularly

Set a recurring reminder to review:

Are the emails still relevant and on brand?
Are reward details and voucher expiry dates still right?
Are any automations overlapping or out of date?
Does Common errors on the Overview tab under Automation show anything new?
Do the Runs show contacts going through, with no errors? See How to check whether an automation is actually working.

Clean up what you no longer use

Open the automation, click Actions, then Deactivate, and confirm with Deactivate. Contacts waiting in a Delay are cancelled when their delay ends. Then click Actions, then Delete, and confirm with Delete. Delete only shows once the automation isn't active, and deleting it removes its run history too. You can't undo it.