Automation Rules can be daunting.

On one hand, Automation Rules are versatile and powerful tools that can be configured to meet your needs and to help you to achieve just about any goal in your community.

On the other hand, Automation Rules have hundreds of available criteria, making it possible to have countless combinations. Email-based rules, in particular, if not properly planned and scheduled, have the potential to spam every user in your site.

Your community site is pre-provisioned with dozens of ready-to-use Automation Rules, which makes getting started with them a little less daunting. Read on to learn about the six email-based Automation Rule that we recommend every organization use.

Access and customize email-based Automation Rules

Each email-based Automation Rule — including those discussed in this article — has a corresponding email template that you can edit for your community and your goals.

1. Navigate to Email > Email Management > Email Templates.
2. Select Automation Rules from the Category menu to filter the list.
3. Locate the template that you want to edit and click its Edit button in the Actions column on the right.

The template opens in the Message Template Edit page. Make your changes and be sure to scroll down and click Save.

TIP: You should immediately customize any of these templates that you plan to use. Apply your organization's preferred styles and formatting conventions so that the templates' messages represent your organization when they are sent.

Let's look at the six recommended templates.

Welcome New Member

Most of the rules below target users who are already active in your site, but what about those who haven’t yet become active? Even if you include your site in your overall welcome messaging to new members, having community-specific welcome messages is incredibly valuable: Appearing to come directly from the community manager, it provides a personal touch to new members, giving them a “friend” in the organization to reach out to, and potentially even specific actions to undertake to help ease them into the site, like introducing themselves in a Discussion forum, completing their profile, and downloading important files from a Library.

Before Automation Rules, community managers were forced to welcome new members individually; with this rule, you can automate this task.

Your First Post (Picture) & Your First Post (Bio)

These twin rules do exactly what you'd expect: If a user posts their very first message in a Discussion and doesn’t have a profile photo or a bio uploaded, the email thanks them for their contribution and prompts them to take a moment to update their profile with a picture and/or bio.

We Miss You

This email is sent to community members who've made significant contributions in the past, but who haven’t posted in awhile. It’s a friendly, appreciative message, and has proven successful in getting lapsed members to re-engage with the community.

Keep the Conversation Going

This rule targets a small segment of users: budding community MVPs. The message is sent to members who've started a thread or post that became unusually active, but who haven’t accumulated a certain number of contributor points yet. It tells them you think they’re great at starting discussions, and invites them to start more. This rule has a high-percentage conversion rate.

Try Mobile App

If you’ve licensed the MemberCentric mobile app for your site and haven’t yet enabled versions A and B of this rule, you should. Version A targets people who use your site frequently; Version B targets anyone who has accessed your site from a mobile browser. It determines whether those people have logged in to the mobile app, and if they haven’t, sends them an invitation to download the app and give it a try.

Terms Issue

Most online communities require its members to accept a Code of Conduct or Terms and Conditions. This rule sends an email to users who've accessed your site but who didn't accept your terms, and gently prompts them to accept your terms and participate in the site.