This article is part of our extensive series on Automations. The most relevant articles are:

While historically you may have used Sequence Workflows to automate sending emails to your End Users (people who are your customers or prospects) via Planhat, you can now automatically email End Users via Custom Automations, using the "Schedule Email" step type.

Key features of sending emails via Automations:

We go through each of these points - and more - in this article.

A "Schedule Email" step is a type of action step that you can include when configuring a Custom Automation.

This step type is used to automatically send emails to your customers/prospects. These emails are like any other email in Planhat - e.g. they're sent via the Gmail or Outlook integration, they're saved in Planhat as a record of the Conversation model, you can view them on the relevant Company Full-Page Profile, and so on.

You define what triggers each Custom Automation - and therefore the email being sent via the Schedule Email step - meaning you can act automatically in response to any of your Planhat data.

You can use both Automation replacement codes (dynamic references) and email merge tags in the Schedule Email step, so that although you write/select a template email within the step, it can be automatically customized with values such as the recipient's name in each Automation run.

A "Use AI" step in the Automation can generate the contents of the email. This is commonly used in combination with Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) functionality, which pauses the Automation run to allow you (a named approver) to review/edit the contents and then choose to proceed - sending the email, in this case. You can see an example of this in the screenshot below, and we also go through it in further detail in one of the worked examples later in this article.

Schedule Email steps also have options for email engagement tracking (email analytics), and replying within an email thread. We describe the latter option in more detail in one of the worked examples later in this article.

Schedule Email steps are a way for you to automatically send emails to your End Users (people who are your customers or prospects).

Although there are many ways in which you can send emails via Planhat, the particular advantages of using Custom Automations to send emails are:

Example use cases could be:

When you are configuring a Custom Automation (in the App Center), you will see "Schedule Email" as an available step type (in the "Communication" category).

Let's go through the configuration within a Schedule Email step itself.

At the top of the configuration panel, you define who the email will be from ("Sender") and who it will be sent to ("Recipients").

These boxes start as dropdown selection menus as default, for example:

As you can see, you can select named Users you have access to (yourself and email addresses with public email account usage), Account Owner/CoOwner (dynamic references), and Email Automation Provider email addresses if applicable.

However, if you click on an icon of an arrow in a circle, it will change that field into a text entry box where you can enter a replacement code (dynamic references; sometimes called merge tags, not to be confused with standard email merge tags):

After you have set the sender and recipients, you next configure the actual email content - the email subject and body.

This is similar to the process of creating/sending emails elsewhere in Planhat.

For example, you have the option to apply an existing email template ...

... and you can use email merge tags:

In addition to this, you can use Automation replacement codes (dynamic references) within the email (both the subject/body). This is particularly useful if you want to populate the email with data from earlier in the Automation - e.g. text generated from an AI step prior to the Schedule Email step. For example:

Underneath the email text, next in the Schedule Email step configuration panel is "Options". Here you will find a series of checkboxes, which are unselected by default, but you can choose to enable.

The first two options - "Track open rate" and "Track click rate" - are for email engagement tracking (email analytics), which you can read about in our series of articles starting here.

The third option is "Reply to an email". If you select this, you can send this email as a reply in an existing thread, instead of having separate emails. We go through this in a worked example later in this article.

When you select the "Reply to an email" checkbox, this opens up another two fields for you to complete:

Here we'll go through a couple of simple proof-of-concept illustrated examples of Custom Automations with Schedule Email steps, to show you what some of the technical options can look like in practice.

Let's take a basic example involving an AI step and HITL functionality, in combination with the Schedule Email step.

In this example, the Automation has been built to send an automated billing email to a billing contact (End User) at a Company when a bill is due.

Once the Automation is triggered (from Company data), we use a "Use AI" step to generate a draft email to send out.

Click the image to view it enlarged

While you can read more about the AI step type more generally in our separate article here, some key points to point out about our example are:

Next is the Schedule Email step. In our example, it looks like this:

Some important points to note are:

Let's take a look at what the HITL approval process looks like, once the Automation has been triggered to run. As described in the main HITL article, the approver will receive a notification to review the contents of the step before it proceeds - in this case it's the email draft before it's sent out.

Click the image to view it enlarged

The approver checks the draft details - this is particularly important and recommended when the draft has been generated by AI - and can edit it here, changing wording if desired, before clicking "Approve" to allow the Automation run to continue and the email to be sent out.

Let's take a look at how the "Reply to an email" option works, in a basic proof-of concept Custom Automation.

Emails are saved in Planhat on the Conversation model. This example Automation is set up to be triggered when a Conversation is created in Planhat of type "email", and we have specified a particular email subject in the conditions.

In the Schedule Email step, we have selected the "Reply to an email" checkbox.

In the fields that opened up below this checkbox, we have set:

Here is the whole Schedule Email step:

When an appropriate email is synced into Planhat and triggers the Automation, the email we have defined (in the "Email Content" of) the Schedule Email step will be sent, replying to the trigger email in a thread. You can see this thread in both in Planhat and the external email platform - example screenshots below.

In addition to the tips and notes shared in the gray boxes throughout this article ...