Email Automation keeps your business workflow on track by automatically sending tailored emails to your clients based on the interactions they have with your business. While you can create your own Custom Email Series from scratch, to save you time we offer pre-built Email Series Samples. They each contain a collection of emails that have been written to complement a variety of different workflows and can be further customized to feature your own message.
The Email Automations tool is accessible from the Marketing section of your control panel. Here you will see email series organized by the tool they are associated with — Proofing, Invoicing, and Scheduler.
Email Series contain individual trigger-based emails that you can send to your clients. You can create as many series as you’d like.
Below is a list of available automated email types by the tool:
| Scheduler Email Types | Invoicing Email Types |
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Appointment Reminder Testimonial Request Book Soon Reminder General Message
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Invoice Payment Reminder Invoice Message General Message
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Editing an existing email series
Click on the name of a tool (Client Galleries, Quotes & Invoicing, and Scheduler) to see your collection of email series.
Next, click on the name of an email series to see the specific emails within the series. You can customize the series to your liking by editing, deleting, or adding emails in the series by clicking new email.
The options you have to edit an automated email vary based on the tool the email series is for and the email type.
Creating a new automated email
In addition to using our pre-built emails, you can also create your own custom emails. When you want to create a new email in a series, first you will select the email type.
The available email types vary depending on if you are working on a Client Galleries, Scheduler, or Quotes & Invoicing Email Series.
The email type you choose will determine the available trigger options (an action or date that initiates an email), which in turn determines when the email is sent.
Email series can be initiated or triggered by dates or actions (e.g., immediately after a new account is created or 3 days before an event expires). Your trigger and trigger date selections determine when an email should be sent.
These selections also determine the available options of who you can include or exclude from receiving the automated emails (your email’s recipients).
Programming & Customizing an Email Series
You can select to start with a “Custom Series” to manually create and add each email you want to be included in an email series. For an easy start, we recommend using one of our pre-made sample email series, which contain scheduled emails that would suit a variety of different business models. For instance, both of the Client Gallery sample series include emails that will welcome clients after they have created an account within your Event and also remind them of when their images will expire.
The sample series you choose will depend on your workflow and how you use the Client Gallery product. If you sell through your Client Galleries events, the “Client Galleries Event & Cart Reminder Series” would be a good one to get started with, as it includes an “Abandoned Cart Reminder” email to remind your customers who have items in their cart to complete their purchase. If you don’t sell directly through your Client Galleries, you can select the “Client Galleries Event Series”, which doesn’t include an “Abandoned Cart Reminder” email by default.
Regardless of which email series you choose to start with, you can customize the series to your liking by editing, deleting, or adding emails to the series. You can create a unique email series with as many emails as you want for each of your Events, Invoices, and Scheduler Services. You can also copy an email series and make changes to the emails within the copied series to personalize the content for your various clients.
Each new email that you create has pre-generated content to help you get started, including suggestions for the email’s subject, message, and preheader text based on the combination of Email Type and Trigger that you selected. After you create an email, you can customize the content to your liking. You can also modify the email’s trigger action and date, as well as the groups of included and excluded recipients.
Note: Automated emails need to be enabled before they are sent, by changing the email’s “active” status to “yes”. This ensures that emails are not accidentally sent to your clients while you may be working on them.
You can preview each email type and edit it. Each email type has its own set of rules and options for trigger dates. there 3 main tabs for each email:
- Details - you'll be able to edit details like which email trigger and the trigger date, and if it is active.
- Content - You can edit the subject of the Email, the message you'd like to be sent to customers, and preheader text, which is the text that summarizes the Email in a preview in their inbox.
- Recipients - you can select who sees this Email in this email series and customize a series even more. Note: only editable for Client Gallery, Scheduler and Invoicing type to an individual, not an event.
| Client Galleries Email Recipient types |
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Include or exclude:
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Once an email series is created and you have confirmed that each desired email within the series is “active”, you can link the series to one or more Client Galleries Events, Scheduler Services, or Invoices to automatically send emails to your respective clients.
You can link your desired email series to your client galleries by making a selection under “Email Automation Series”, found in each products sections.
Enabling an Email Series in Products
You can enable an Email Series for use with your Client Galleries Events, Scheduler Appointments, and Quotes & Invoices in the respective product’s settings.
Client Galleries
Once you start a new client event, click the setting tab. Create a new Client Galleries Event, or click on the gear icon in an existing Event, to access the Event’s settings area. Here, you can customize the event’s expiration date, password, allowed activity, price list, and link an Email Automation Series. Select which series you would like to enable for the Event from the drop-down menu. You can click to edit the emails within the selected series or click to create a new series from this setting. Save your Event’s settings after your selections are finalized.
Scheduler
After you create a new Scheduler Service, you’ll see the new “Email Automations” tab amongst the other settings in the service’s left menu. From this tab, you can select, edit, or create an Email Series. Once you save an email series selection, clients that book appointments for your service will receive the scheduled emails.
Quotes & Invoicing
You are now able to automatically send emails to your invoiced clients to remind them of their invoice’s due date, an outstanding balance, or to send a follow-up message after the invoice balance has been paid. You will find the Email Automation Series selection in the third step of the invoice creation process, the same step where the invoice’s due date, payment schedule, and the shipping method are configured. You can also link an email series to an invoice that has already been sent by clicking on it from your list of invoices and then clicking on the new “email automation” tab.
Email Marketing Notes
Your membership automatically includes 10,000 Marketing emails that you can send each month. Marketing Campaigns and Email Automations share this same monthly email quota, which resets on the first of each month regardless of your billing date.
Once you’ve reached the email limit in a given month, you will need to upgrade your email package in order to send additional Marketing Campaigns, and/or to send any automated emails that have been triggered and scheduled to be delivered within the same month. Keep in mind that you can upgrade temporarily by downgrading your plan before the email quota resets for the next month.
Your Marketing Campaigns and Automated Emails also share the same Unsubscribed and Bounced email lists. I.e., if a client clicks to unsubscribe from a Marketing Email Campaign, they will also be unsubscribed from all automated emails and vice versa.
PhotoBiz accounts need to be verified before an Email Automation Series can be linked to an Event, Invoice, or Scheduler Service. To verify your account, contact our Support Team by phone or live chat.
Important Note:
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Automated emails are sent out once a day at 9 AM based on your account’s time zone (Learn how to change your account time zone).
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Contacts will only receive each email in a series once per event, invoice, or appointment.
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Only emails that match the recipients, actions, and dates criteria will be sent out.
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If a proofing event expires, emails will not be sent unless the trigger “After the event’s expiration date” is selected.
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Updates to existing emails in a series may affect future automation and related tracking data.
Q&A
Will I be able to send automated email marketing campaigns?
In its current phase, the Email Automations tool is designed for you to create and send your clients emailed reminders and product-specific communications, which help you receive more payments by reminding customers of due dates, appointments, and purchases they need to complete. Thus, allowing you to stay connected with your clients without adding additional steps to your workflow. We are actively looking at a separate enhancement for the Email Campaigns to allow the option to schedule your campaigns to send on a future date. We are also considering ways to integrate Email Automations with your other PhotoBiz tools; this is just the beginning!
I send over 10,000 emails each month; why is my email automation not sending?
As we stated before, all Marketing emails Campaigns, and Automations) come from the same bucket. When you’ve reached 100% of your email limit, you will not be able to send any more email campaigns nor automated emails until your email limit resets on the first of the next month. If you need more emails, you can always add more in the premium feature section of your PhotoBiz control panel. You’ll be notified via email when you have reached 80% of your monthly email limit, to allow you time to upgrade your email plan in the current month.
Do I have control over when an email in a series is sent to my customer?
The series’ emails will be sent based on the trigger and trigger date you selected when you customized your email. The “trigger” combined with the “trigger date” determines when an email should be sent after your customer takes a specific action, or in reference to a specific date (e.g., 2 days after the cart was last saved, 1 week before the invoice due date, 1 month after the appointment date).
There is an exception with some Client Galleries email triggers that support the “send immediately” option, which would send the email to your client as soon as they create an account in an Event, select a favorite, send favorites to you, or add an item to their cart.
Can I make custom emails in a series?
Yes, you can add and edit any email type’s subject, message, and preheader text content. There are static elements in some of the email types that cannot be removed or modified, such as the Client Galleries Event’s name and expiration date, the Invoice’s due date and amount, and an appointment’s date and time. We created an email type for each product, “General Message”, to offer you added flexibility.
This email type does not include any static content aside from your logo and footer tagline, and you can still customize the email’s subject, headline, message, and preheader text. The “General Message” email type also offers the option to add a custom button that can link out to your chosen external link. This is a great email type choice to ask clients to leave you a review on Google or to send them to a specific page on your site.
Can I add emails to a premade series?
Yes, if you start with one of our pre-made series, the list of included emails is automatically added for you. You can edit these emails, delete them, or add new emails to the series by clicking on the “new email” button when you are viewing the series’ emails.
Why are custom emails that I created are not sending?
When you create a new email type for a series, either custom or premade, it is set to not active by default so that undesired emails are not sent out to your clients while you are still perfecting them. Once you have finalized your email’s content, trigger, and recipients, you can change the email’s “active” status to “yes” in the email builder’s “details” tab.
Can I modify the emails in premade series?
Yes, you can modify the trigger, trigger date, subject, message, preheader, and recipients in any email.
I don’t see the Email Automation option in my control panel.
Email Automations can be found under the Marketing product’s menu as long as you have an active Client Galleries or Invoicing product in your membership. Email Automations is available with PhotoBiz 9 and beyond. If you currently using our Legacy Builder, Portfolio and Flash, we recommend upgrading to utilize all the new tools available.
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