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Time emails around an event

Send reminders before an event and a follow-up after it, timed off the event itself. Covers late sign-ups, moving or canceling the event and event details in emails.

4 min readUpdated
  • automations
  • events
  • webinars

An event-timed automation sends relative to the event: a day before, an hour before, thirty minutes after it ends. You build it once, and every timed step re-times itself if the event moves.

Any automation can be built around an event, whatever starts it. Joined a list can send three emails around a webinar just as well as an event trigger can.

  1. Pick the event

    The triggers in the Events group (Registers for an event, Everyone who registered or showed up, Everyone on a list, timed to an event) ask for the event as part of the trigger. Press Choose the event. For any other trigger, press Choose the event on the card that asks which event the journey is built around.

    The event has to be published before you can turn the automation on. Members cannot see a draft event.

  2. Add an Around the event step

    Press Add step and pick Around the event under Timing. Set a number, then minutes, hours or days, then before or after, then it starts or it ends. A new one starts as a day before it starts. The card shows the exact date and time that works out to, and you can go up to 365 days either side.

  3. Put the email after it

    Add a Send email step after the timed step. People wait at the timed step until its moment, then the email goes. A step before the first timed step runs as soon as someone enters, so an email there works as a confirmation.

  4. Turn it on

    Drry checks the event is set and published, then the automation starts picking people up. See Turn on, edit, pause and delete an automation.

Late sign-ups never get a burst of emails

If the moment of a timed step has already passed when someone enters, the emails between that step and the next wait are skipped. Someone who registers an hour before the event does not receive "two days to go", "one day to go" and "one hour to go" all at once. They carry on from the first step that is still ahead of them.

Any time before an event

On an Around the event step, switch on Any time ("Any time before or after the event, with no exact timing") and choose before or after.

  • Before: the step never waits. It carries straight on as long as the event is still ahead, so a welcome email goes the moment someone enters. Someone who reaches it after the event has started (or ended, if you chose it ends) leaves the automation, so a copy left on an old date stops mailing about it. You can draw them a path of their own instead, and the canvas then shows Signed up in time and Signed up too late. People already past the step are not affected.

  • After: waits until the event starts (or ends), then carries on.

Any time before cannot be used with Every session on a repeating event.

When the event changes

  • You move it: people already waiting follow the new time. A step that is by then too late to be useful is skipped rather than sent late.

  • You cancel or delete it: everyone still in the journey leaves, and nothing more is sent about it.

  • A member cancels their RSVP: on Registers for an event they leave the journey.

  • You swap the event: swapping re-times anyone still in the journey. To run the same sequence again for the same people, copy the journey instead.

To reuse a sequence for next month's event, use Duplicate from the menu on the Automations tab. You get a draft copy, with its own copies of the emails, and the message reads "Copied. Swap the event and turn it on."

Event details inside your emails

On an automation built around an event, the email editor offers event tags: Event name, Event date, Event time, Event link, Event page link and Event location. They fill in from the event the journey is built around. On a repeating event they fill in from the session that person is on.

If a link cannot be made for someone, for example a contact when the event has no public page, that email is skipped for them and the Activity page shows Event details missing.

A Send email step can also Attach a calendar invite, which adds the event to their calendar without asking them to RSVP.

Example: a webinar follow-up

The Webinar follow-up template lays this out. It starts on Everyone who registered or showed up, waits until 30 minutes after the event ends, then asks Attended the event. People who came get one email and the tag attended-webinar. People who did not get a catch-up email, a three day wait, and the tag webinar-no-show. You write the emails.

Remember that Attended the event only works for an event hosted in Drry. See Conditions: the questions an automation can ask.

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