What is a workflow? How is it different than a standard campaign mailing?

An email workflow is series of automated emails that will be sent — or not — based on a behavior or event. With workflows, you can trigger content based on your recipient's actions.  This allows you to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Workflows can be set up in two ways; as a part of a campaign or a published workflow can be added to an existing campaign. Most workflows are part of a campaign. Additionally, some workflows are not available to stand alone.  Administrator access is required for the initial setup.

Workflows are based on action and/or waits. A simple multi-touch nurture workflow would be send, wait, send, etc. Actions that might trigger a workflow are clicking on a link or submitting a form. In these cases, emails in the workflow are triggered automatically when your contact clicks on a previously-sent email, submits a form, sends SMS, or takes another specified action within the workflow. Actions that might trigger a wait workflow are time or an event. Wait-triggered workflows calculate the send time of each email based on the send time of the previous email in the series. So there's nothing that you need to do to schedule them!

Prerequisites

• Please contact your Zift Solutions point of contact to take advantage of the workflow feature.
• ZiftMarcom Administrator access is required to view, create, or edit workflows.

Contents

1. How to Create a Workflow
2. Workflow Detail View

How to Create a Workflow

Follow these steps to create a workflow. After the workflow is created, associate it with a campaign.

1. From Content > Marketing Activities, select Create New Workflow.
2. Add the Name that will display in ZiftMarcom.
3. Add the Display Name that will display in Zift123.
4. Add the Description.
5. Select Create which creates the container that will hold the workflow details.
6. From Content > Marketing Activities, select the workflow you just created. The Workflow Detail page will display.
7. Select Edit Steps to add the details of the workflow. You can now add all the steps to your workflow using the +. By selecting +, you can add the following types of steps to the workflow.
1. Actions
1. Send Mail: Send an email template to contacts. In the Email Templates field start typing the name of the action to search for your email.
2. Alert: Send a notification email to partners.
3. Test Mail: Send a test mail to partners for an upcoming email step.
4. Set Custom Field: Set a lead custom field when they reach this step.
5. Send SMS: Send an SMS message to contacts.
2. Waits
1. Time Wait: Wait for a specified amount of time.
2. Event Wait: Wait for a certain event or condition to happen in the system. The user drops out of this step if an event occurs or if the specified amount of time passes.
3. Fixed Date Wait: Wait for a specific date and time before proceeding.
4. Relative Date Wait: Wait some amount of time relative to a Fixed Date Wait step.
5. Day of Week Wait: Wait for a specific day of the week before proceeding.
3. Transitions -  Not all transitions are available on all steps.
1. Conditional: Conditionally go to a different step based on rules.
2. Go to Step: Go to another step when contacts reach this step. You will need to enter the step number when making this selection.
3. Go to Workflow: When contacts reach this step, finish this workflow and drop them into a different workflow.
8. Select Publish. The workflow must be Published for it to function when activated by a partner. 

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Workflow Detail View

In the Workflow Detail view, you can do the following:

1. Edit Details: The workflow must have a valid description and thumbnail image before publishing. The thumbnail image will be automatically created by the system for emails using the description. Thumbnails are created for other activity types by the Administrator in ZiftMarcom.
2. Archive: Archiving workflows allows you to save the workflow but removes it from view until you need it.
3. Copy: Copying workflows saves time and limits errors if you are creating similar workflows.
4. View Activations: View the activated workflows.
5. Failures: View the workflow steps that failed.
6. Edit Steps: Edit the steps of the workflow. 

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