Actions

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There are more than a dozen actions you can automate with Ontraport. Learn how they work and how to add them to your automations.

In this lesson you'll learn:

Your options for automated actions
How to send email and SMS, fire off tasks, change tags and more automatically
How to configure your settings for actions
Where to add specific types of actions in your automation maps
Advanced options for actions

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Transcript

Actions are the elements that do the work in your automations. They send messages, update records, assign tasks, grant access, send data to other apps, and more. Let's walk through them group by group, so you know what's available and when to use each one. In Edit mode, click What Happens Next? where you want the step, and choose an action. The more technical ones are on the Advanced tab. Click the element to open its settings, fill them in, and click Done. Actions run as contacts reach them, so add waits between them. Otherwise six Send an Email elements in a row would go out at nearly the same time. Send an Email and Send an SMS send a message you've already created. Choose the message from the dropdown. For SMS, you also choose which Ontraport number to send from. The SMS messaging lesson covers getting a number. Update Contact changes any editable field on the record. For example, after a purchase, switch the contact's status from lead to client. You can also clear a field, or set a date and time field to Now to record when a contact reached this step. Change Tags adds or removes tags. For example, after a purchase, add a customer tag and remove the lead tag. Assign Task is for steps a person has to do, like a sales rep calling a new lead. Choose a saved task, who it's assigned to, like the contact's owner, and how many days they have to finish it. The Ontraport for sales teams course covers tasks in depth. Notify With Email and Notify With SMS send important information to someone on your team, or to a partner like a shipping facility or contractor. For example, text yourself whenever a sale comes in. Add to Automation sends the contact into another automation map, where they enter at its Added to Automation trigger. They come back to the original map when they reach an End or Exit on the new one, or when they achieve a goal on the original map that's set to Move here when achieved. That return can take up to 15 minutes. To keep them moving on the original map at the same time, put a Fork above the Add to Automation element. You'll learn about Forks in the next lesson. Remove From Automation takes a contact off a map. It's handy for housekeeping, like removing a new buyer from your lead follow-up. Pause/Unpause Automation pauses a contact on a map, like holding long-term follow-ups during a promotion. Paused contacts stay where they were until another automation unpauses them. Update Membership Access changes a contact's access to your Ontraport membership site. Set the status to Enabled, Suspended or Disabled. When you enable access, Ontraport sends the contact a registration email. For example, enable access after a purchase, or suspend it when a payment fails. For WordPress sites running PilotPress, use the WordPress membership access elements on the Advanced tab instead. Request Payment creates an invoice from a saved offer and emails it to the contact with a link to pay. Use it after a deal closes or a service is finished. You'll need a saved offer and a connected payment gateway. Invoicing is available on some account levels, so check the pricing page. Cancel Open Orders stops a payment plan or recurring payment, for example when a member fills out your cancellation form, so they aren't charged again. Recharge Transactions retries charges that are in collections. And Add Product to Purchase History adds a product to the contact's purchase history. The Ontraport for payments course goes deeper. Send to Fulfillment List adds contacts to a fulfillment list, and Remove From Fulfillment List takes them off. A fulfillment list gathers contacts into a CSV file and emails it to you daily, on weekdays, weekly or monthly. It's useful for orders you fulfill outside Ontraport. You can pick a list or create one right in the element's settings. Add to Lead Router sets the contact's owner to someone on your sales team, using a lead router you've set up, either round robin or weighted random. Route every new lead, or only those who reach a certain lead score. The Ontraport for sales teams course covers lead routing. And if your account uses custom objects, Update Relationships links related records automatically. On the Advanced tab, Facebook Custom Audiences adds contacts to an audience or removes them, on Plus and above. Send a Webhook sends data from Ontraport to another system, like sending a contact's email address to your webinar platform to register them. You set the destination URL, the method, any header info, and the data, usually built with merge fields. It's technical, so bring in a developer or an Ontraport Expert if you need help. If a webhook fails, Ontraport can email your team. Add their addresses under Administration, Integrations, Webhook failure notification. If the receiver was down, restore it and inspect the saved request before using Replay in Webhook Logs. Check the other system first, so you only resend what didn't go through. And the AI Assistant. Give it a system role and a prompt, and it can merge in each record's data to generate, edit or analyze content. Store the response in a field to merge into emails and pages, in memory for later AI steps, or both. You choose the model and the maximum credits per request. It's available on all account levels and uses AI credits. You can also start from a prebuilt map that already includes one. So: actions send your messages, update your records, bring in your team, move contacts between automations, manage access and payments, and connect to other tools. Next up: filters, which decide where your contacts go next.