Mainstack's Marketing Automation feature helps you automate repetitive marketing tasks by creating workflows that respond to customer actions. Whether you're welcoming new subscribers, following up after a purchase, or nurturing leads over time, automation ensures your customers receive the right message at the right moment.

This guide provides an overview of Marketing Automation on Mainstack, explains how automation works, and highlights practical ways to use automated workflows to improve customer engagement.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation is a feature within the Marketing section of your Mainstack dashboard that allows you to create workflows that run automatically based on predefined triggers.

Instead of manually sending emails or tracking customer actions, you can build workflows that respond to specific events, helping you deliver consistent communication while saving time.

Automations continue running in the background once they're published, allowing you to focus on growing your business while Mainstack handles repetitive marketing tasks.

Why Use Marketing Automation?

Automation helps you maintain meaningful communication with your customers without requiring constant manual effort.

With Marketing Automation, you can:

• Welcome new subscribers automatically.

• Send thank-you emails after purchases.

• Deliver onboarding content to new customers.

• Share educational resources over time.

• Encourage repeat purchases.

• Follow up with customers at the right time.

• Maintain a consistent customer experience.

• Save time by reducing repetitive tasks.

By automating routine communication, you can engage your audience more consistently while ensuring no important follow-up opportunities are missed.

How Marketing Automation Works

Every automation on Mainstack begins with a trigger: an event that tells Mainstack when to start a workflow.

Once the trigger occurs, Mainstack performs one or more predefined actions, such as sending an email after a specified delay.

By combining triggers with actions, you can automate customer communication and create a more consistent customer experience without manual follow-up.

Triggers

A trigger is the event that starts an automation.

Whenever the selected event occurs, the automation begins running for the affected customer.

Available triggers:

At present, Mainstack supports two automation triggers:

1. Purchase Made

This trigger starts an automation whenever a customer completes a purchase.

It's ideal for automating post-purchase communication such as:

• Thank-you emails

• Product onboarding

• Product recommendations

• Follow-up messages
  
  

2. Cart Abandoned

This trigger starts an automation when a customer adds products to their cart but leaves before completing checkout.

It can be used to:

• Remind customers about their abandoned cart.

• Encourage them to complete their purchase.

• Recover potentially lost sales.

As Mainstack continues to evolve, additional automation triggers may become available.

Actions

After an automation is triggered, Mainstack performs the actions you've configured for that workflow.

Depending on your automation, actions may include:

• Sending an email immediately.

• Waiting for a specified period before sending an email.

• Sending follow-up emails as part of a sequence.

These actions help ensure customers receive timely and relevant communication without requiring manual intervention.

Getting Started with Automation

Setting up an automation involves choosing a trigger, configuring any necessary conditions, and defining the actions you want Mainstack to perform.

Once your workflow is complete, you can save it as a draft, review it, and publish it whenever you're ready.

For step-by-step instructions on creating your first workflow, see How to Create an Automation.

Managing Automations

As your marketing strategy evolves, you may need to update existing workflows.

From the Automation dashboard, you can:

• View existing automations.

• Edit workflow settings.

• Update triggers and actions.

• Publish new workflows.

• Save unfinished workflows as drafts.

• Disable automations that are no longer needed.

Reviewing your automations regularly helps ensure they continue to reflect your business goals and customer journey.

Best Practices for Building Automations

When creating workflows:

• Start with a clear objective.

• Keep customer journeys simple and easy to follow.

• Send only relevant communication.

• Space emails appropriately to avoid overwhelming customers.

• Review workflows regularly.

• Update automations whenever your products or services change.

Well-designed automations should feel helpful rather than repetitive.