Learn how to enrol a contact into a program that starts straight away.
Overview
Our automation programs enrol once a day by default. But it is possible to start an automation program as soon as a contact signs up to a form or completes a specific action.
There are four options for this:
- Enrol using the API
- Enrol using an address book join action
- Enrol using Pages and form
- The initial email sent is not part of a program.
Each option has some limitations; we'll cover these in this article.
Using a connector?
If you use a pre-built connector with us, there might already be a solution built for you. Check your connector documentation for details.
Enrol using the API
When you enrol a contact into a program using our API, the contact starts their journey immediately rather than waiting for the program's next scheduled execution.
To learn how to enrol a contact using the API, check out the articles:
- REST API: Create program enrolment
- SOAP API: CreateEnrolment
The contacts must already exist in your account before enrollment occurs.
There is a limit of 20 API enrolments per account per hour. If you want to enrol more than 20 contacts per hour using the API, you must add contacts in batches rather than individually.
Recommended method: enrol more than 20 contacts per hour
In this method, you add a collection of contacts to an address book, then enrol that address book to a program using the API. You can then empty the address book at a point in the program and begin the process again.
To enrol more than 20 contacts:
- Add or import contacts into an address book.
- Enrol the address book into the program every *five minutes using the API.
This can be whatever *length of time you want.
- At the start of your program, add a Remove contact node to remove all the contacts from your enrolling address book.
Enrol using an address book join action
You can set your address book to enrol all new contacts onto a program automatically. Therefore, your contacts can sign up for an address book with a signup form and enter themselves into the program.
This option only works for individual contacts, not bulk uploads or API calls.
To learn more, check out the articles:
- Send contacts a campaign or enrol them on a program when they join an address book
- Create a signup form
- Set up a preference centre
Enrol using Pages and forms
You can use Pages and forms to create a form that automatically enrols a contact onto a program after responding to your form. This is done using the submit actions of your form.
To learn more, check out the article Set up submit actions, email alerts, and submit settings of a form.
Whereas this method is almost instantaneous, there might be a delay of up to 15 minutes before your contact is fully enrolled and active in your program.
The first email is not sent using a program
If you're looking to send a campaign instantly and enrol a contact onto a program, you could send a campaign directly from sign up using a join action for an address book.
To learn more, check out the article Send contacts a campaign or enrol them on a program when they join an address book.
You can then trigger the program based on 'contacts who have been sent Campaign1 (and haven't previously been in this program)', ready to send the following email in the sequence. This means contacts will get the first email right away, and there will be no significant delay in sending the first campaign.
However, your program will not contain the first email in the sequence, which could look confusing. It helps to add a note to your program as a reminder.