Run an automation for every session of a recurring event

If you run the same class or webinar every week, you do not need a copy of your automation for each date. Choose Every session and one automation runs again for every session of the repeating event, timed off whichever session each person is on.

It works with three triggers: Registers for an event, Everyone who registered or showed up and Everyone on a list, timed to an event. On any other trigger it cannot be turned on.

Which trigger fits

• A weekly webinar for a custom list: Everyone on a list, timed to an event, with a list picked. The list is read fresh for every session. Everyone on it today is in this week's run, and anyone you add before next week is in next week's. Contacts on the list come in whether or not they are members. This is the one to use when you want the same people to get your lead-in and follow-up every week without doing anything.

• Every member, every week: the same trigger with the list left empty. Every member of your community rides each session's timeline. Owners, admins and editors do not.

• Members who RSVP: Registers for an event. Only members who RSVP "going" to that session. See the note below.

• People tied to each session: Everyone who registered or showed up. For each session it picks up that session's own invited, registered and attending contacts, and nobody else.

What happens for each session

• Each session is its own run. A person goes through the automation once per session. They can be in several runs at once: this week's follow-up and next week's lead-in.

• When a session's run starts. It opens when your earliest "before" step comes due, a little ahead of it. If the first timed step is three days before, each session opens about three days out. With no "before" step, it opens shortly before the session. It stays open until your last "after" step is due, counting the session's length for steps timed off when it ends.

• People who arrive late. Someone who joins the list or RSVPs after a step's moment has passed skips the emails that are already behind them and carries on from the next one ahead.

• A canceled session. Everyone in that session's run leaves and nothing more is sent about it. Other sessions carry on.

• Event details. Event tags and calendar invites use the session each person is on.

• You are never picked up. Owners, admins and editors are not enrolled by member triggers.

Limits

• 52 sessions at most. A repeating event is created up front with no more than 52 sessions, about a year of a weekly event. After the last one there is nothing left for the automation to run on. Set up the next series and press Swap the event to follow it.

• Published sessions only. A draft session does not start a run.

• No "Any time before" step. That option needs one dated event to be before, so it cannot be used with Every session.

• No "Attended the event" branch. Drry will not turn on an automation that uses it with Every session, because that branch needs the automation pointed at one event.

• Overlapping runs share the daily limit. A person gets at most three automation emails in 24 hours across all their journeys, and an event-timed email over the limit is skipped, not delayed. If lead-in and follow-up for neighbouring sessions land close together, space the steps out. See The daily email limit and why a step was skipped.

If your audience is defined by a tag

A tag cannot start an event automation and cannot narrow one. Event triggers take a list or nothing. There are two ways to run a weekly sequence for people you track with a tag.

• Put those people on a list, and use the list. This is the simplest. Pick the list on Everyone on a list, timed to an event. The contacts on it come in whether or not they are members.

• Leave the list empty and check the tag first. Every member rides each session's run. Make the first step an If / else on Has a tag. Tagged members take Yes and carry on. Everyone else takes No into an End journey step. The check happens when their run for that session starts, so the tag has to be on them by then. This only reaches members: an empty list means members, so a tagged contact with no list and no membership is not reached.

Two things to know. Tags belong to the person, not the session, so a Tag someone step in week one leaves the tag on in week two. Add a Remove a tag step at the end if you need a clean slate for next week. And nothing tags people automatically when they RSVP or turn up. Add a Tag someone step if you want that. See Tags in automations: what they can and cannot do.