Automated emails

ℹ️ Support
1

I would like to set up emails to automatically go out after a certain period of the recipient receiving a trigger. For instance the normal welcome to email can go out when the subscriber subscribes and then 2 weeks later I can follow it up with an email to ask them how they are doing and then a month later I can follow that up with a tip etc. Is this possible? I have a cronjob running so there will be no need for me to process the queue each time.

2

The Autoresponder plugin will probably do what you describe. You can see the available plugins through a link on the Manage Plugins page, menu Config > Manage plugins.

2 Likes
3

Hi Duncan. Thanks for your help, the plugin works great but I am battling to get it to run continuously by itself. I don’t have much experience with cronjobs yet, still learning. The cronjob you suggested I run was:
php /home/me/www/lists/admin/index.php -m Autoresponder -p process -c /home/me/www/lists/config/config.php

I managed to get the process queue cronjob working with the following:
/usr/bin/php56 -c /usr/www/httpd/php5-ini/blinkq/php.ini /usr/www/users/blinkq/lists/admin/index.php -pprocessqueue -c/usr/www/users/blinkq/lists/config/config.php

So I tried adapting your cronjob with that one to get it working:
/usr/bin/php56 -c /usr/www/httpd/php5-ini/blinkq/php.ini /usr/www/users/blinkq/lists/admin/index.php -m Autoresponder -p process -c /usr/www/users/blinkq/lists/config/config.php

but this doesn’t seem to process the autoresponder queue.

Thanks again, you have been a great help.

4

The process page doesn’t do the sending of messages. All it does it change any autoresponder messages that need to be sent from “draft” to “submitted”. The sending will be done by the next run of processqueue.

7

Thanks Duncan, it is working perfectly. After adding subscribers to the list I immediately clicked the Process Autoresponders and it starts running the responders in sequence with the cronjob. I didn’t realise that the trick was to click the Process Autoresponders to start it off.

I am having a different issue with the autoresponder, let me know if I should open this in a new query.

The attributes don’t seem to be working properly since I started using the autoresponders. I’ve been doing some testing and the name attribute works 100% but the attribute I have set up for their [domain] is giving me issues. It seems to replicate the same attribute for all the different subscribers so they are not getting the correct information. It is using the same domain I use to host the phplist which is also the first subscriber I use on the test list.

So I have tried 3 scenarios:

  1. Tested it as an autoresponder using [domain]. All subscribers receive the same attribute.

  2. Tested the same html in a campaign (not an autoresponder) and the same thing happened. All the emails get the same result.

  3. I changed the attribute name from “domain” to “website” and then sent a campaign out but no attribute is inserted - instead the campaigns appear with [website], the same as I created it. I went back and looked at the html and it seemed to replace [website] with [website]. So I changed them all back to [website] and then the same result I get in the first 2 scenarios occur.

I am a bit baffled. Is it possible that the autoresponder feature is messing with the attributes. I noticed that for every autoresponder I add there is a new attribute eg attribute: 3 autoresponder_2. The [name] attribute still works 100% fine.

Thanks in advance

8

I think that domain and website are used as placeholders by phplist for your phplist installation. They are the values that you entered on the Settings page.
If you really need these for each subscriber then you will have to create attributes with different names.

9

Thanks again Duncan. You are correct. It would be great if there was a list of the attributes that were already in use - that was a bit baffling.

I look forward to contributing to you and the phplist team on a regular basis in the near future. Thanks for all your help.

10

Hi, the phpList.com service provides this I know, near the campaign window. It is indeed useful!

Sounds good :smiley: What’s your “skill-set” - you a developer? Documenter? etc

11

Hi Anna. Not a developer or documenter unfortunately - just a reseller. I have budgeted to financially contribute 10% of my sale price to the community. I’ve just launched the product though so it may take some time …

12

Ohh, no, that all sounds great :slight_smile: You can mail me more about it if you like, links etc :slight_smile: 10% to community sounds amazing! But yes, these things take time :smile:

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