Ask HN: Do you know any email automation app? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you know any email automation app?

1 pointaymeric6 comments

I want my marketing guy to be able to define emails that will be sent to my users based on queries that he should be able to build.

- If 30 days have passed since user signed in Then send email A

- If user sends first message Then send email B

As a developer I just want to send what a specific user do to this automation app and let the marketer deal with email automation:

- Just signed in (2011-09-10 12:41)

- Sent first message (2011-09-11 13:54)

- ...

Does such an app exist ?

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There are literally hundreds of ESPs (Email Service Providers).

Many of them offers APIs that can be programmed. You just need to define clearly what exact automation functionality you need and then select the right ESP based on API features and other factors, that surely would include pricing.

YC recently funded an ESP as well: http://www.mailgun.com

Take a look

The thing is that I want my marketing guy to be able to set up the email rules and to write the emails without my intervention.

I'm pretty sure Office Auto Pilot has all of these features. I haven't set up the complicated rules but we had an intern do it and another coworker has worked with the API and it's pretty simple.

I haven't used it enough to say it's great or not, but it does all of these things and everyone around me seems happy with it.

Thank you I will check it out.

At least some of this can be done with MailChimp, right?

Well I thought so too.

The way I intended to use MailChimp for this scenario was:

1. All new users go in the Users list in mailchimp.

2. Under the Users list, I have multiple groups:

- Sent first message

- Liked a message

- Edited his profile

etc...

3. When a user does an action, I add him via the MailChimp API to the right group. (Can the same contact be in different groups?)

But then I stumbled upon this article: http://blog.mailchimp.com/autoresponder-triggers-in-mailchim...

"Some users have told us, “I don’t want to send autoresponders based on subscription to a list. I need to trigger them via the API to send to people already on my list.”

Our answer to that is NO."

I don't want my users to have to double opt-in again in MailChimp when they have already done it for my application.

Do I misunderstand how MailChimp works?

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