How do I create an automation?
Birdeye's automation makes review solicitation simple and enables business owners to reach out to their customers easily. Automation within Birdeye sends email or text automatically based on the triggers below and runs without an end date.
| Automation Type | Triggers possible |
| Custom |
|
| Review |
|
| Referral |
|
| Survey |
|
| Customer Experience |
|
Appointments (Reminders and recalls) |
To learn more about appointment automation, refer to the help center article ‘How do I set up appointment reminders and recalls within Birdeye?’ |
Creating an Automation
Click the 'Campaigns' tab on the left navigation rail. On the new page, click the 'Create automation' button.
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From the options menu, choose the automation type: 'Custom', 'Review', 'Referral', 'Survey', or 'Customer experience.'
Let's take 'Review' automation as an example to understand how to create and run an automation.
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On the next screen, provide a name for your automation using the pencil icon.
| Email and Text | The request will be sent via both Email and Text. |
| Email only | The request will be sent via Email only. |
| Text only | The request will be sent via Text only. |
| Text first | The request will be sent via 'Text' and it will be sent via 'Email' in the absence of a phone number. |
| Email first | The request will be sent via Email, and it will be sent via Text in the absence of an Email ID. |
Automation Triggers
You can choose automation triggers and select specific contact sources such as ‘Bulk Import,’ ‘Check-in,’ 'SFTP,' ‘Integration,’ 'API,' ‘Quick send,’ and ‘Chrome extension,’ or simply select ‘All’ to include every source except ‘Quick send.’
If you want to change the automation trigger, click ‘Contact is added’ and select the preferred trigger from the dropdown options. Currently, the automation will trigger whenever a new contact is added.
To learn more about contact sources, read the help center article: What are contact sources while running an automation within Birdeye?
Contacts added through ‘Quick send’ or the ‘Chrome extension’ can be included as contact sources for sending automations.
To learn more about contact sources, read the help center article: What are contact sources while running an automation within Birdeye?
When you select 'All' as the contact source, excluding 'Quick send', all available contact sources will be selected.
For all contact sources except ‘Quick send,’ the ‘Send this automation immediately’ option will be available under the ‘Schedule your automation’ section.
Quick Send Conditions
If you select ‘Quick send’ as a contact source, every other option will be disabled.
For ‘Quick send,’ the ‘Send this automation immediately’ option is unavailable under the ‘Schedule your automation’ section. This is to avoid sending duplicate review requests—for example, if a request was just sent manually via ‘Quick send.’ Instead, when ‘Quick send’ is selected as a contact source, you can schedule the automation with a delay, choosing from hours, days, weeks, or months. This would help schedule reminders for communications going out through Quick send.
NOTE:
If users set up automations with Chrome extension as a contact source and select the ‘Send this automation immediately’ option, they must ensure they do not send the communication manually while adding the contact through the Chrome extension. Doing so may result in the contact receiving duplicate communications.
If the Chrome extension is being used to send the initial communication, then the automation should be configured only for reminder use-cases by adding appropriate delays (e.g., hours or days).
Scheduling Automations
In this section, you can choose how and when to send your automation: send it immediately, set a delay in hours or days, or schedule it to send once at a specific time and on selected days—such as the first Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.
NOTE:
NOTE: For all the 'Automation', except ‘Quick send,’ you can choose to ‘Send this automation immediately.’
Selecting Contacts
You can choose to send automation for all of or for selected locations’ contacts.
Click ‘all’ and select the desired locations.
Restrict Review Request
This capability allows businesses to restrict the review requests to those customers who have already written a review, either on the same source or a different one.
For customers who have already written reviews on Google, businesses can target them by sending review requests using Facebook or other source templates. This way, customers still receive review requests, but with options for different review platforms.
Click ‘Add conditions’ while selecting contacts.
In the first field, select ‘Wrote a review.' In the second field, choose ’in none of.’ In the last field, select the source, in this case, ‘Facebook.’
This condition allows you to send review requests to an audience that has not yet written reviews for your business on Facebook.
Whereas the condition suggested in the image below, ‘Wrote a review in any of Facebook,’ will let you send review requests to an audience that has already written requests for your business on Facebook.
NOTE:
If a review is deleted, the corresponding attribution is also removed, resetting the ‘Wrote a review’ status for that specific customer.
Selecting a Template
In this section, you can select the desired template option. If you want to preview the template, click the 'Preview' button.
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Setting Reminders
You can also send reminder emails to your contacts at specific intervals. By default, the reminders are turned off for every automation. To enable them, switch on the toggle button.
NOTE:
Reminder emails will not be sent once the customer clicks any link in one of your emails.
Once the toggle button is switched on, you can customize the following sections:
| Reminder email subject | In this field, you can add a subject to your reminder email and customize the default text in this field. |
| Number of reminders | Click on the drop-down menu to choose the number of reminders you wish to send to your contacts. |
| Interval between reminders | Select the intervals between the reminders. |
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Once you have customized it, click the blue button at the bottom right to launch the automation. You will then be redirected to the 'Automations' page, and a success notification will appear at the top.
HANDY TIP: If you want to save the campaign as a draft and edit it later, click the 'Finish later' button.
NOTE:
For Survey automation, users can’t choose the same survey.
Filter By Automation
You can also add a filter in the ‘Filter by’ section. This helps users choose the type of automation they want to view.
Return to the ‘Automations’ landing page, click the ‘filter’ icon, next from the ‘Automation type’ drop-down menu, select the type you want to view, and click the 'Apply' button.
From the ‘Trigger type’ drop-down menu, users can select the type of trigger to view the automation of that particular trigger.
