Email sequences for new members - Ghost Changelog

[Ghost]

When we launched welcome emails earlier this year, we called it our first step toward a broader automation suite in Ghost. You've been telling us where to take it next ever since — and the most consistent ask has been the ability to send more than one email to new members over time.

Now that’s possible, in public beta.

Instead of a single welcome email, you can build a flow that sends a series of emails to new members, spaced out over a timeframe you choose. Greet someone the moment they sign up, follow up a few days later with your best work, and check back a week after that — automatically, every time.

Building a sequence

Once the bata is turned on, a new Automations tab appears in the left sidebar, with two flows ready to go: one for new free members, and one for new paid members. Already using welcome emails? They move over automatically, so nothing you've built is lost.

Clicking into an automation opens the automation canvas — a drag-and-drop editor where you build your sequence from two actions: send an email, and wait for a set amount of time. More actions and triggers are on the way.

Writing your emails

Every email is written with the full power of the Ghost editor, so your automated messages look like everything else you publish — images, buttons, bookmarks, callouts, HTML cards, all of it.

The automation email template also uses the same design controls as your newsletters, from colors and typography to headers and logos. Style it once, and that look applies across all your automated emails, keeping your brand consistent whether on your site, in your newsletters, or through a member's first week with you.

Members stay in control

Members see a new Updates & announcements option in their email preferences, so they can opt out of automated emails without unsubscribing from the rest of your content.

Getting started

Email sequences live behind the Automations (beta) flag in Ghost, which is opt-in while we keep building. To start sending email sequences and get early access to new automation features as they ship, head to Settings → Labs and toggle on Automations (beta) at the top of the list.

What's next

From here, we'll be iterating quickly to bring in deeper analytics, more triggers, and more actions to enable the use cases that matter most for you — shaped directly by what you tell us.

As you get started, let us know what's working and what's missing by hitting Share your feedback at the bottom of the Automations screen, or the feedback link in the sidebar 🙏 👻

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Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

[Jonathan_J_Chiarella]

I recently enabled the beta/Labs feature for automation emails.

This seemed to have completely removed my welcome emails as a separate thing to edit, as if I lost my customized text for the content as well as the ability to send test emails.

The new area to edit automated email content is not under Settings but instead at the main console below Posts, Pages, Tags, and Members. This confused me greatly. I cannot be the only one.

The lightning bolt is also an unhelpful icon; I suggest something different. Maybe, also, a link from within the Settings could help to direct managers of sites. This workflow with welcome and followup emails is the only one where the editing of the content of emails is not within settings, but the email sending address is within settings.

The feature sounds cool, but the change is not intuitive and will catch people off-guard if the same interface goes into non-beta Ghost.

[ROY]

This is great

I’m looking forward to all the custom journeys, triggers, conditions, analytics, and more as part of this native automation suite.

[ROY]

I found the messaging to be pretty straightforward tbh. The team mentioned that a new Automations tab would show up in the left sidebar, which is evident in the first video. Plus, the announcement stated that once this is enabled, the move is automatic and nothing you’ve built is lost.

Another good place to look at is this: Automations (beta)

[Jonathan_J_Chiarella]

I found the messaging to be pretty straightforward tbh. The team mentioned that a new Automations tab would show up in the left sidebar, which is evident in the first video.

I do not understand how you can find the change straightforward if you had watched a video beforehand. It sounds as if you had already gotten familiar with the ins and outs before flipping the switch.

I understand what the change for emails was, but I did not know that the configuration options would be in two separate places.

Because some of the old options are in a similar location and my Ghost deployment did not show a written clue to where the other options had moved, it seemed at first blush that the email contents had disappeared.

I hadn’t already seen the video. The message under Settings (the logical place) said that the change was one-way, but it did not explain where to find the new feature—at least not within my deployment of Ghost. If the new feature requires one to consult external webpages, then this poses a problem for the user interface.

I am glad you were able to navigate this well, but as this is still a time to tweak the feature before it leaves beta, I want to mention that this current implementation may trigger several people to not know where to look when the switch flips. If this is the future of Ghost, then anyone who had been using the old Ghost will one day wake up and see that the setting for the content of welcome emails has moved in a non-obvious way.

When you follow the development of a feature closely or know anything very deeply, it is hard to imagine not knowing that piece of information. (See the curse of knowledge.)

A fresh pair of eyes (like mine) can point out something that was not clear, but I am not requesting elucidation. I am saying that the current implementation could be better. Before the feature becomes automatic for all, the interface should change, at the very least, to highlight the new section or have an explanatory note at the old location for editing email content.

The explanation on a separate webpage (outside of my Ghost deployment) said that automations would get its own section. That was external to my deployment.

On my deployment, I did not see a message that said that the setting of automated email would now have its configuration split up between two places: the old Settings and the new Automations, which is not under Settings.

I say this so the team can be aware of the issue and so that in the future it will not be necessary to individually direct people to this or that tutorial. (Note: I am withholding comments on the webpage tutorials themselves. I am only talking about the fact that they are separate from one’s own Ghost deployment.)

[Val-RealSpokenFrench]

Thank you so much! I was about to sift through the endless sea of email automation SaaS, and this message popped up.

[EchonCique]

Yes! I’ve been waiting for this for years now .

Clean, crisp and good information in the process of activating it. And great that it’s next to Members in the main admin menu. Can’t wait for the next batch of updates for the Automation features .