You can use Contacts and Automations to turn the information you collect in your form into timely, personalized email communication without manual effort. Contacts keep the data you collect from your respondents organized and segmented into contact lists, while automations use that data to trigger targeted emails based on contact updates.
In this article, we’ll explain how to create an automation when a contact is removed from a contact list. We’ll use an example of a newsletter sign up form for when people want to subscribe or unsubscribe from a newsletter mailing list. You can follow the steps in this article for how to create an automation for when a contact is removed and adjust it to fit your use case.
In the form, we’ll ask for their name, email address, and include a multiple choice question to ask if they want to subscribe or unsubscribe to the newsletter mailing list. We’ll then map the respondent’s name, email, and subscription status to their contact profile. We’ll also create a contact list for subscribers and another list for unsubscribers. When people fill out the form, they’ll automatically be placed in a contact list based on their subscription status.
If someone fills out the form to subscribe but then later fills out the form again with the same email address to unsubscribe, this will change their subscription status from Subscribed to Unsubscribed. This will then remove them from the subscribed contact list and place them in the unsubscribed contact list.
Then we can set up an automation to email any contact that has been removed from the subscribed list, confirming that they’ve successfully unsubscribed from newsletter emails.
What you’ll need:
- The Contacts & Automations add on that is available on the Plus, Business, Growth Pro, Talent, Growth Custom, and Enterprise plans.
- Set up a custom email domain to send emails from automations.
Create contact lists based on subscription status
Subscription status is a default property (data field) in your contacts database. You can create contact lists based on your contact properties. You can also add any additional contact properties you need.
Below, we’ll walk you through how to create contact lists for the subscription status Subscribed and Unsubscribed.
1. From your workspace, click Contacts.
2. Click the + button next to Contact lists.
3. Enter the name you want to give your list. We’ll enter Subscribed.
4. In the Add filter dropdown, select what you would like to filter this contact list by. We’ll select to filter by Subscription status is equal to Subscribed.
5. Click Create list when you’re done.
6. We’ll create another contact list for Unsubscribed by following the steps above.
Map form responses to contact properties
In our newsletter sign up form, we use the following question types for:
- Name (Short Text)
- Email (Email)
- Would you like to subscribe or unsubscribe to our newsletter? (Multiple Choice)
After creating the form, we’ll map form responses to contact properties. Follow the instructions in this article for how to map responses to contact properties.
Create automation for when a contact is removed from a contact list
You can trigger an automation to happen when a contact is removed from a contact list. In our example, we’ll explain how to set up an automation for when a contact is removed from the Subscribed contact list, this will trigger an email to be sent to the respondent to confirm that they’ve successfully unsubscribed from a mailing list.
If someone fills out the form to subscribe but then later fills out the form again with the same email address to unsubscribe, this will change their subscription status from Subscribed to Unsubscribed. This will then remove them from the subscribed contact list and place them in the unsubscribed contact list.
1. Click Automations.
2. Click + Create automation.
3. Select what will trigger the automation. We’ll select Contact is removed from a list.
4. Give your automation a name. Click on the default name in the top left corner.
Type in the name of your automation and click Save. We’ll enter Unsubscribed from newsletter.
5. Under Select lists, select the list you want to use in the trigger to start the automation for when a contact is removed from a list. We’ll select the Subscribed list.
6. Next, click the + button to add an action.
Then select Send email.
7. Select who you want to send the email to. We’ll select Contact.
8. Enter the email address you want to send the email from.
Note! Emails sent from automations will need to be sent from a custom email domain. Check out this article for instructions on how to set up a custom email domain in your Typeform account.
9. Enter the following:
- Sender name (optional) - This will appear as the sender name in the receiver’s inbox.
- Reply to email - You can toggle it to be the same as the ‘send from’ email or toggle this off and enter a different email address.
- Subject line - Subject line of your email.
10. Click Create email.
11. Add content to create the email and add a theme by clicking Design.
More detailed instructions on how to create your email can be found here.
12. Click Save and exit when you’re done with customizing your email.
13. When you’re happy with the set up of your automation, click Activate.
Now when a contact is removed from the Subscribed contact list, they’ll receive an email to confirm that they’ve successfully unsubscribed.
Looking for other ways to use Contacts and Automations? Check out some other resources below: