You want to send the same email every week, without having to send the same email every week!

If you haven’t yet come up against this challenge in your email marketing system, chances are, you probably will.

I do it myself in my business. The reasons can be wide and varying, however, in my business, I use them to remind my subscribers of a regular and upcoming Zoom call that I run each Thursday.

The desired outcome

In ConvertKit, just like with most other email marketing platforms, there’s no simple way to build such an automation. Most systems are designed to manage drip-fed email sequences and one-off email broadcasts.

How to create the automation in ConvertKit

Start by creating a new ‘Visual Automation‘ in ConvertKit, using the menu option ‘Automate – Visual Automations‘;

Click on the ‘New automation‘ button;

Click on the ‘Start from scratch‘ button;

Click the ‘START BUILDING‘ button;

Choose the ‘Is added to a tag‘ option, then choose the relevant ‘tag’ from the drop-down list, and then click the ‘Add Event‘ button; (if you haven’t already created your ‘tag’, you can create one directly from the text box at the top of the drop-down list);

Your automation will now consist of this single step, which is the ‘trigger’ that starts the automation (in other words, whenever a subscriber gets tagged with this ‘tag’, they enter the automation);

Next, we serve them the reminder emails for the Zoom call; I send 2 reminders, the first one 24 hours before the call, and the second one an hour before the call.

Click the ‘+’ icon below the first step and choose the relevant subscriber from the drop-down list;

Now your automation will look like this;

Next, click the ‘+’ icon again, this time choosing to remove the ‘tag’ that triggered the automation initially;

Now, I add a 5-day delay to the automation, meaning the subscriber will remain there for the next 5 days;

Next, I add that ‘tag’ back to their profile again – this will then re-trigger them to rejoin the automation, just in time for next week’s reminder emails to go out again;

Now, the subscriber exits the automation and will automatically rejoin it because we tagged them again with the ‘trigger’ tag;

An important setting to set inside your email sequence

By default, an email sequence is configured to be sent to each subscriber just once. Even if they get tagged again, if the email sequence is set to only be sent once, they’ll never receive the emails again.

So, to change this setting, you need to go to the ‘Settings‘ of the email sequence;

Once inside ‘Settings’, set the option (under ‘Sequence Behavior‘) to ‘Yes, enable the ability to restart the sequence multiple times‘;

This will now enable the same email sequence to be sent to subscribers, week after week, providing they flow through the automation without changing their preferences.

Here’s a screenshot of what the finished automation looks like;

⚡️Summary

Even though it may seem like a lengthy automation to set up, in reality, it takes less than 30 minutes to set up, including time to write your email sequence.

Here’s a summary of the steps;

1. Create a new Visual Automation using a ‘tag’ as the trigger.
2. Deliver the emails in your sequence.
3. Remove the ‘trigger’ tag from the subscriber’s profile.
4. Wait for 5 days (make the delay time relevant to your process).
5. Add the trigger tag back to the subscriber’s profile.
6. Exit the automation.

This will create a never-ending repeating loop of reminder emails, which can switched off whenever a subscriber updates their preferences that they no longer want to receive reminder emails about this Zoom call (that part is done via subscriber preferences).

If you haven’t yet joined ConvertKit, here’s the link to get your free account, including a 14-day free trial of all premium features: convertkit.com

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The Freelancer’s Guide to Email Marketing gives you everything you need to know to design, launch, and run an effective email marketing system in your business. ​ Download your free copy now

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