Automations

Common tasks

Emailing buyers as their order moves

Automations can email a buyer when their order changes on the Orders board, for example when you confirm it by phone, dispatch it, or collect the cash.

The three order triggers

• An order reaches a stage. Pick one stage: confirmed, packed, dispatched, in transit, delivered, failed delivery, returned or cancelled. The email goes out each time an order moves to that stage on the Orders board. You can limit it to one product, or leave it on "Any product".
• Payment is received. Fires when cash is collected on delivery, or when a bank transfer or other manual payment is marked paid (including an approved transfer proof). Card payments don't use this trigger: they start "Someone makes a purchase" at the moment the buyer pays.
• An order is refunded. Fires when a card or gateway refund is applied to an order (Stripe or Paystack), once for each refund. Tick "Only when the whole order is refunded" to skip partial refunds. You can limit it to one product. A refund made in your payment dashboard reaches the order through the gateway, so it fires this too. Every shop already sends a built-in refund email (Email templates > Order emails > Refund confirmation). When a card or Paystack refund starts an "An order is refunded" automation with an email step, that refund gets the automation's email instead of the built-in one, so the buyer never gets two. A refund the automation does not start (full refunds only, another product, or the buyer is still in it) gets the built-in email, and so does a refund recorded by hand, which starts no automation.
• The delivery person changes. Fires when someone swaps the delivery person of an order that is still out for delivery (Orders → the order → "Change delivery person"), once for each real change. It does not fire for the first dispatch (use "An order reaches a stage" → Dispatched for that), and it does not fire when the same person is chosen again. You can limit it to one product. Put the delivery person's name and phone tags in the message and they show the NEW person, for example "Your delivery person has changed. {rider_name} will bring your order now, call {rider_phone}."

Ready-made "Order updates" templates

Go to Automations → New automation and click the Order updates filter. Each template there already has its trigger and stage set, and its emails already use the order merge tags below. They cover the moments a buyer most wants to hear about: the order is confirmed, it's on its way (with a reminder to keep their phone on for the courier), it's been delivered (a thank-you, then a review request a few days later), a delivery failed (asking them to rebook), a payment was received, and a refund went through.

Steps

1. Automations → New automation → Order updates.
2. Pick a template. The next screen already shows its trigger and stage. Change the name, or limit it to one product, if you want.
3. Click Create automation. It opens in the editor as a draft.
4. Open each email step and read the wording. Change anything you like.
5. Click Activate. Nothing is sent until you do.

Editing the text of an email

An email is made of blocks: text, buttons, images, dividers. A template's email opens as ordinary text you can edit: usually a text block, then a button such as "Finish checking out", then any closing text. Click or tab into a text block to edit it: the formatting bar (bold, links, headings, lists, { } Merge tag) appears on that block only. The other blocks just show their text until you click them, so a long email stays short to scroll on a phone.

Where a button goes

In a Button block, "Button goes to" is either A web address (type it, for example yourshop.com/sale) or a link Lazycom fills in for each person:

• Checkout link (abandoned cart emails): back to their cart, to finish paying. When the reminder was about an unpaid order and the buyer orders through it, the new order is marked "Recovered cart" (see the Orders list's new look, orders/origin-review)
• Order tracking link (order emails): their order's tracking page
• Unsubscribe link If there is no link for someone (for example the order has no tracking page), the button is left out of their email, so nobody gets a button that goes nowhere. The ready-made abandoned cart and order templates already use these buttons. Other merge tags can't be used as a button's link.

• Who gets an abandoned cart reminder — someone who typed their email at your checkout and left becomes a contact who is not subscribed to marketing. They still get the reminder about their own unfinished order from your Abandoned cart automation (and only from that automation: no welcome series, newsletter or broadcast). Every reminder has an unsubscribe link, and one click ends them. If the same person later ticks the marketing box on one of your forms, they are subscribed like anyone else. People already in your contacts are left exactly as they are.

Text message step ("Send text (SMS)")

Under "+" → Messages → Send text (SMS), write the text (add {first_name} or {site_name} with the buttons). Under the box: the characters used and the number of parts (a text is priced per part: 160 plain characters in one part, or 70 when it has a special character such as ₦ or an emoji), a note that every text ends with a short link that lets people stop your texts ("Stop texts: …", added automatically and counted), and, when texts go through Lazycom, "Cost per text to" a chosen country, paid from the wallet before the text is sent. Up to 6 parts. Texts come from Lazycom's shared sender name, so put the business name in the text. How texts are sent (Lazycom or your own Termii account) is chosen in Settings → Text messages. Texts through Lazycom only go out once Lazycom has switched them on; until then a site without its own Termii account can't send them. Whenever a text can't go out (no phone number, unsubscribed, opted out, not enough money in the wallet, no price for the country), the contact simply passes the step and the journey carries on; nothing is charged. A text is never sent twice for the same step of the same journey.

Stopping texts (opt-out)

Someone who taps the "Stop texts" link sees the business's name and the last four digits of their number, and presses Stop texts. From then on they get no marketing texts from that business (other businesses on Lazycom are not affected), and no order or inbox texts either. If the business uses its own two-way Termii number, a reply of STOP (or UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT) does the same, and no automatic reply is sent back.

Images in an email step

Click + Image in the email step, then use "Upload image" (the main button), "Choose from your media" (something already uploaded) or "Use a link instead" (an image hosted elsewhere). Add a short description too: many mail clients hide images until asked.

Order merge tags

In an email step, the { } Merge tag button lists tags starting "Order emails:". They fill in from the order that started the journey:

• {order_number}: the order number the buyer sees
• {order_total}: the order total, including any upsells in the same parcel
• {order_items}: what was ordered, for example "2 × Serum, 1 × Cream"
• {order_status_url}: a link to the buyer's order tracking page
• {courier_name} and {waybill}: the courier and waybill number, if you recorded them when you dispatched the order. If you didn't, a line that is only a label and the tag (for example "Waybill number: {waybill}") is left out of the email, so the buyer never sees an empty label. Put each on its own line for this to work. The same goes for a line that is only a link built from {order_status_url} or {checkout_url}. A sentence you wrote yourself always stays.
• {rider_name} and {rider_phone}: the delivery person's name and phone, listed as "Delivery person's name" and "Delivery person's phone" (in a text step, tap those buttons under the message). They come from the delivery person picked when the order was dispatched (the latest dispatch, if it was sent out again), or the one it was last changed to. Use them in an automation that starts when an order reaches Dispatched (or "The delivery person changes"), for example "Your order is on its way. {rider_name} will bring it, call {rider_phone}." If nobody was typed they are empty, and a line that is only a label and the tag ("Delivery person: {rider_name}") is left out, like the courier. They work in email and text steps (there is no WhatsApp step) and only in the automation that started from that order, so only that order's buyer ever gets them. A broadcast or any other automation shows them empty.
• {refund_amount}: the amount of the refund that started the journey. Only "An order is refunded" automations fill it in; a partial refund shows just that refund, not the order total. The tag list shows it as "Refund emails: amount refunded".

Common problems

• The order tags came out blank. They only fill in automations started by "An order reaches a stage", "Payment is received", "An order is refunded" or "The delivery person changes". In any other automation (a welcome series or an abandoned cart, say) they stay empty.
• The courier or waybill line is missing from an email. You dispatched the order without choosing a courier or typing a waybill number, so that line was left out on purpose. Record them when you dispatch and the lines appear. A line that mixes an empty tag with other text stays, with the blank removed: give the tag its own line to have it dropped.
• The delivery person's name or phone is missing from a message. Nobody was picked when the order was dispatched (that is allowed with a courier company), or the order was sent out again with nobody picked (the latest dispatch is the one used), or the person on your list has no phone saved. A courier company's own phone number is not used instead. Pick the delivery person at dispatch (or change it on the order) and the tags fill in.
• A card order never got the "Order confirmed" email. Card orders confirm themselves when they're paid, so they start "Someone makes a purchase" instead. Use a purchase automation for card buyers.
• Nothing was sent to a buyer. Check that the automation is Active, not Draft or Paused. Check that the buyer has an email address and hasn't unsubscribed: unsubscribed buyers are skipped.
• An order moved but the email didn't go. The trigger fires when the order moves to that stage. An order that was already at the stage before you activated the automation doesn't get the email.

Limits and plan gating

Automations are on plans that include the automations feature; when absent, the item still shows (locked) with an upgrade path. The number of automations a site can have is capped by plan (max_automations).

Editing an ACTIVE automation with contacts already in it

Changing the step tree of an automation that is active AND has contacts currently mid-journey is risky — deleting a step a contact is parked on ends their journey silently instead of erroring. Buildr (the AI builder) refuses this kind of edit outright and asks the tenant to pause the automation first; a human editing directly in the dashboard should do the same before making a structural change (adding/removing steps, not just fixing a typo).