How do you put these two automation conditions?

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Is there any way to put the condition “IF contact’s last open is after DATE, do this. IF not, do this other thing” ? Or, it could be “IF contact hasn’t opened any email after DATE, do this. IF not, do this other thing”.

And is there any way to put the condition “IF contact received email X, do this. IF not, do this other thing”?

I noticed that a few of my automations can’t run properly without these two…

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Currently, no, there isn’t a way to do this. This is a topic that has come up a lot internally lately so it’s definitely on our radar.

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Ok, thanks for your answer, Brian. I’ll be waiting for updates.

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Would you be able to accomplish what you want with the use of tags?

Starting with your second example, could you apply a tag like “Sent Email 1” and then test for this tag later in an automation?

For your first example, do you need a specific date? Or is it more a lapse of time - i.e., someone who hasn’t done something in 30 days?

If it’s the latter, then you may be able to handle this with tags as well. Here is a general scenario that may work.

Let’s say you want to be able to tell if someone has been active in the last 30, 60, 90 days. You would create one tag for each of these (something like Recent_30, Recent_60, Recent_90). Then, any time someone opened an email you would apply all three tags. Then you would have an automation that would 1) wait 30 days, then remove tag Recent_30 2) wait another 30 days, then remove tag Recent_60, etc.

Does that make sense?

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@rebar these are some good ideas! Thanks for helping me with this.

You’re right, I wanted to know how to target people who haven’t opened emails in the last 30-60 days.
Recently, Brian shared an automation that uses a logic very similar to the one you explained and it’s just perfect for what I want to do.

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Hi there, Amy from ActiveCampaign’s Customer Experience Team. We’r refreshing our forum page and I wanted to add some help here for anyone who comes across this page/question/post.

If you want the following to happen: “IF contact’s last open is after DATE, do this. IF not, do this other thing”? you would need to set up the following:

  • 2 automations
  • a custom contact field that holds the date that the contact last engaged with your content

Step 1: Create a custom field

  • Open Contacts
  • Select ‘fields’ from the 2nd navigation menu on the left
  • Select ‘Contacts’
  • Click ‘Add field’ button to the right
  • Add a new field (call it anything you want, but some examples are ‘Last open date’ (if you want to note the date of the last open) or ‘last engagement date’ (if you don’t mind tracking the last date a contact opens or clicks a link). Ensure that this is a date based field.

See here for a quick walkthrough.

Step 2: Create an Automation 1 (which will automatically update the custom contact field above)

  • Open Automations
  • Select ‘create an automation’ > select ‘start from scratch’ > select ‘Continue’
  • Select the start triggers:
  • List item Opens/reads an email > you’ll note that there are 3 options here: campaigns, Postmark campaigns and 1:1 emails (you are welcome to set up 3 seperate start triggers for each of these different email types, depending on your use case)
  • List item Clicks a link in an email > you’ll note that there are 2 options here: campaigns and 1:1 emails (you are welcome to set up 2 seperate start triggers for each of these different email types, depending on your use case)
  • In the next step beneath the start trigger(s), select the ‘+’ symbol and select the option to ‘update a contact’ under the contacts tab
  • In this option, click the dropdown and locate the custom contact field you just created
  • Under ‘enter a new value’, select ‘current time’.
  • You are welcome to add any additional steps, such as tags etc. Otherwise, simple add the option to 'end this automation. Please note: if you do not add this option, the contacts will end the automation nonetheless.
    Please know only contacts who have been engaging moving forward from the date the automat
    Please see here for a walkthrough.

Step 3: Building additional automations/editing current automations.
In this example, I’ll use the option of “IF contact’s last open is after DATE, do this. IF not, do this other thing”

  • Go to Automations > edit a current automation or start a new automation
  • Add an if/else statement in your automation
  • Set the conditions within the if/else statement as ‘Last Engagement Date’ (per my example above > you should use the custom contact field that you have created) ‘is after’ ‘select a date’.

If the contact’s Last Engagement Date is after x date then they will go down the ‘yes’ path, if not and the contact’s Last Engagement Date is before x date, they will go down the ‘no’ path. You can add any additional actions should you wish such as re-engaging contacts applying tags etc.

Regarding “IF contact hasn’t opened any email after DATE, do this. IF not, do this other thing”. You would need to use a similar setup as per the above.

Regarding if there any way to put the condition “IF contact received email X, do this. IF not, do this other thing”?, you would need to use ‘has been sent X email’ in an if/else statement.