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In this video, we're going to show you how to make a fully automated action plan inside of Sierra Interactive that can automatically text and email, your leads and stops if somebody responds.
If you're already a GGMS user, you have over 50 of these preloaded into your account. and If not, reach out to our team and see how we can help you make it happen.
Navigate to Action Plans in Sierra Interactive
Now that we're in Sierra interactive. All we need to do is go to the top left underneath leads and choose action plans. That's going to pull up the screen that we're looking at right now.
In this video, we're going to show you how to set up a fully automated plan. Check out our video on traditional action plans to see how to set one of those up.
In order to start a new plan, all we need to do is click new action plan. If you're connected to GGMS, you can import these plans into your account. We give you over 50 fully automated action plans to choose from. If not choose new custom action plan.
From here, you have the decision to make an account level plan or a personal plan.
Account-level plans are available account wide personal plans are just that they are personal to the person that made them.
Let's set up a name and choose demo. The description is optional and you also have two toggles at the bottom choose those settings, however you would like, and then click next.
Night Owls and Early Birds Settings
Something unique to fully automated action plans is some of these settings. This one is how to handle night owls in early birds. Fully automated action plans are typically used in lead routing rules which are the way that a lead gets assigned to a person when the lead registers and what action plan gets automatically assigned to the lead.
So, if this happens outside of these business hours, this is asking you what you want to do and if you want to send a confirmation email. Here we're going to choose, yes. And we can choose to either send an email or a text message. For this example, let's choose no and move to the next step.
Overnight Period Settings
Now we can choose what happens with day one activities during the overnight period. We can either choose to send those activities at 7:00 AM the next day or we can skip those activities and just start our day two actions. We're going to choose to send those activities at 7:00 AM the next morning.
Pre-Plan Lead Response Settings
You can also choose pre-plan lead responses. What happens when a lead responds between the time that the plan is [00:02:00] applied and the time that the first activity is scheduled to go out. If a lead calls you, or if you talk to the lead on the phone, you may not want that first activity to go out. This is where you can make that happen.
So if the first activity is set to go out after 10 minutes, And within that first 10 minutes, you're able to get the person on the phone that will allow this action plan to kill itself so that you don't end up looking silly.
In-Plan Lead Response Settings
Next up, we can choose in-plan lead responses. So what happens if a lead responds when the plan is active, this is where you can either choose to stop the plan altogether or pause the plan with the option to resume it later.
We're going to choose to pause it so that if we need to restart it, we can start it directly from where it paused and then keep that action plan going.
Post-Plan Actions for Leads who Respond Settings
On this screen, you can choose post plan actions for what happens when a lead responds. You can either choose to apply them to a traditional action plan or you can apply tags.
Post-Plan Actions for Leads who Complete the Plan Settings
Next up you have post plan actions for when a lead completes the plan. So if they make it all the way through the plan and they do not respond, this is where you can assign them to another plan, or add a tag.
Post-Plan Actions for Leads who Unsubscribe Settings
Last up we have what happens if someone unsubscribes? So if someone unsubscribes from this plan, do you want to add them to a traditional action plan or you want to go ahead and add a tag to them? After you've made it through all those setup screens, you can click save, and that will bring you into this interface where you can actually start building out the campaign.
Fully Automated Action Plan Activity Types
In fully automated action plans you only have three activity types to choose from email, text, and voicemail. In this example, we're going to add an email and a text message to this action plan.
Create an Email Activity
So first up, let's start with email. I'm going to choose email and hit, continue. From here, we can give it a description such as demo.
We can choose who we would like this action plan to be sent from. We can choose if we would like to use a template that is inside of our template picker, or we can choose no template to create a custom message. We can give it an awesome subject line and inside of the body copy, we can add merge fields to add some personality, to our message.
After we've typed out our subject line and our message we can then choose when to send this activity. It can be later the first day, it can be immediately, or it can be on a different day altogether. Here, we're going to send it later [00:04:00] on the first day and we're going to choose a custom time; five minutes later.
You can also choose to set a random time where Sierra interactive will actually schedule this to go out at a random So that you can be a little more lifelike in your responses, but for this, we're going to set it to five minutes.
You also have the ability to choose Saturday and Sunday activities and either push them to the previous day or the next day. So if this activity is set to go out on a Saturday or Sunday, you can choose to move that.
After we've done this, we hit save and that's it. We've added our first step to our plan. But now we may want to add another step. All we need to do is click the plus icon and choose another activity type.
Create a Text Message Activity
Now we're going to set up a text message. After we choose text message we hit continue we're given the same user interface as before except this time we're creating a text message.
Again, we're going to set it as demo. We're going to choose who we would like this message to come from, and we're going to choose if we're going to use a template or a custom message. In text message you can also choose a merge field and give the text message some personality.
You can also attach a photo or a video. And again, you can choose when to send this, whether you want it at a custom time, a random time, and if you want to push your Saturday and Sunday activities to another day.
We're going to click save activity, and that's it. We have now officially added an email and a text message that goes out five minutes after this person is applied this plan.
Final Thoughts
If you're a GGMS user, you have over 50 of these inside of your account already working on your behalf to get your leads engaged.
If you're not currently using GGMS, schedule a call with our team so we can show you how we can take your Sierra Interactive platform to the next level.