Automation steps

Steps are the ordered list a contact walks down after your trigger fires. Add them from the + button on the canvas, drag to reorder, and click any step to edit it in the inspector.

Quick answer

Five step types, in two groups. Timing: Wait. Actions: Send email, Add tag, Remove tag, Grant access, Revoke access. An automation can hold up to 50 steps.

Pause before you edit

Steps are read-only while an automation is active. Pause it, make your changes, then resume. See the lifecycle.

Wait

Holds the contact where they are for a set time, then moves them on.

Set a duration and a unit — minutes, hours, or days. The minimum is one minute; the maximum is 365 days.

The wait is measured from the moment the contact reaches the step, not from when they entered the sequence. Three steps of "wait 2 days" means six days total, not two.

A sequence with no wait between two emails sends both more or less at once, which reads as a glitch to the person receiving them. Put a wait before every email after the first.

Send email

Sends one email to the contact, using your verified sender.

The step needs two things: a subject, and the email itself. Click Create email to open the email builder — the same builder you use for campaigns, with the same blocks, styling, and preview. From there you can preview the email and send yourself a test before you go live.

The step shows Incomplete until it has a subject and content, and an incomplete step blocks activation. A personalization variable that can't resolve — a first name with no fallback, say — also keeps the step incomplete. → Personalize the email

Your sender has to be ready first

Email steps need a verified sending domain. If Sender Setup isn't finished, finish it before you activate. → Set up your sender

Who actually receives it. Only contacts who can receive marketing email. Unsubscribed and suppressed contacts are skipped — they stay in the sequence and continue to the next step, they just don't get that message. Automation sends are held to the same list-quality standards as campaigns, so a sender with delivery problems can have sends held back until the problem clears.

What it costs. Each recipient uses one send from your included allowance, then from your Klixey Wallet, exactly like a campaign. → Email sends and Wallet

Add tag / Remove tag

Applies or removes one of your manual tags on the contact.

Pick the action (Add tag or Remove tag) and the tag. Only manual tags are available — Klixey's own System tags can't be set by an automation.

Tags are the connective tissue between sequences. Common uses:

• Mark progress. Add Onboarded at the end of a welcome sequence so you can build a Smart List of people who finished it.
• Chain sequences. A tag added here can be the trigger for another automation. Klixey allows this up to 5 hops deep, so two sequences that tag each other can't loop forever.
• Stop double-sending. Remove a Prospect tag once someone buys, so your prospect sequences stop applying to them.

A tag step can start other automations

If the tag you're adding is the trigger for a live sequence, this step enrolls the contact in that sequence too. That's often exactly what you want — just be deliberate about it.

Grant access / Revoke access

Gives a contact access to one of your products, or takes it away — without a checkout.

Pick the action (Grant access or Revoke access) and the product. Four product types can be granted this way:

• Courses
• Communities
• Digital downloads
• Lead magnets

Appointments, events, and memberships aren't available here — they carry scheduling or billing that an automation step can't stand in for.

Send access email. A grant has a toggle for whether Klixey sends the usual product access email — the same one a buyer gets after checkout, with their link into the product. Leave it on when the grant is the point ("here's your bonus"). Turn it off when you're about to send your own email in the next step and don't want two emails landing together.

Granting is safe to repeat. A contact who already has access stays as they are; the step doesn't create a duplicate or reset anything.

Revoking ends access, not the record. The contact keeps their customer record and their history — they just lose entry to the product. If the access came with a subscription, revoking it also unlinks the billing so you don't keep charging for something they can't reach.

Revoke is immediate

There's no grace period. The contact loses access the moment the step runs. If you want to give notice, put an email step and a wait ahead of it.

What happens when something goes wrong

Steps are retried on failure with a backoff, so a temporary problem — a queue hiccup, a provider blip — doesn't lose the contact's place. A step that can't complete after repeated attempts is recorded rather than silently dropped, and the editor surfaces sending problems as a banner so you know a sequence is struggling before your customers tell you.

If a contact is deleted while partway through, their remaining steps are skipped.

Related

• Automations overview — lifecycle, plan limits, and enrollment rules.
• Triggers — what starts the sequence.
• Create & send campaigns — the email builder, in depth.
• Manual enrollment — granting access by hand, one customer at a time.