Is it possible to automatically email individuals once I manually add them to a group?

Question

I'm with a small non-profit, and we'd like new additions to our general mailing list to automatically receive a "welcome" email when we manually add them to the list (a group in Civi). Is this possible?

I read that we could set up an "automated message," but my impression is that this will only work if we have a subscribe button on our site that the individual must click on.

My preference would be to continue inputting new contacts manually then have an automatic email go out when I add them to the mailing list group, but I am open to new suggestions if this is not possible.

Could you provide insights on this or point me in the right direction? I am very new here; please let me know if I need to include more info and apologies for my ignorance. Looking forward to your input.

Answer 1

You are able to use Scheduled Reminders (Administer > Communication > Scheduled Reminders) to automate messages and set when they go out. For your goal, you could limit the messages to go out only to a specified group/mailing list and you can based the automation on something such as when the contact record was initially created.

Click "Add Reminder", give it a title, choose entity type "contact" and "created date". Under "limit or add recipients" choose your mailing list. Then set up various messages and times based on creation date.

Answer 2

Another option would be to check what the CiviRules extension has to offer.

Answer 3

An other easy way to do that (if you are based upon Drupal and use webform integration) :

• Create a custom field such as "belong to group A" (yes or no")
• Create a dynamic group A for those who have this field set to "Yes"
• Create a webform to manage this contact custom field (or add it to an existing one)
• Use the webform emailing feature to send a pertaining email each time you complete this webform