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Automatically keep your relationships warm
Automatically keep your relationships warm

Keep your relationships warm by automating your follow-ups and the follow-up to the follow-up

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Written by Product at Copper
Updated this week

Available with the following plans, except where noted:

Professional, Business

Copper's Email Automation allows you to automate follow-ups with your warm relationships. These features are designed to mirror human behaviors and make your automated outreach nearly indistinguishable from the emails you'd usually send 1x1.

These options are available for both People and Leads. You must have Leads enabled to see the Leads options.

The number of steps you can include in your automation depends on your Copper plan:

  • Professional customers can create automations that send a single email

  • Business customers can create automations that send up to 3 emails

Template options for rekindling relationships

This article will cover:


Best practices for the Rekindle template

We recommend keeping your automated emails targeted and personal.

You can review more best practices in our help center article here.

When creating your automation with a Rekindle template, you will target contacts based on relationship warmth. This is calculated based on the Last Contacted date.

Below are some best practices for maximizing deliverability and email engagement for each relationship warmth band.

Hot relationships

These are contacts you talk to frequently. Your email content should be conversational. Depending on your business, it could also be less formal.

🎯 Goal: stay top-of-mind to encourage repeat business or referrals

Warm relationships

These are contacts you talk to regularly, but you may have missed a follow-up or communication. Like hot relationships, your email content can be conversational and less formal. You may want to remind them of a previously completed project. You can use merge fields to personalize the outreach to each recipient.

🎯 Goal: Reinforce value and stay top-of-mind

Tepid relationships

These are contacts who might still recognize your brand or service but haven't interacted in a while. You want to re-engage with them by providing a compelling reason to reconnect. For example, providing a valuable resource or company update.

🎯 Goal: Re-engage to warm the relationship

Cooling relationships

These are contacts whose memories of your interactions may be dimming. You should tailor your email content to remind them of your past value, spark curiosity, or invite them to check-in. Focus on thoughtful content and personalized messaging. Our AI email template creator includes a "Rekindle" option that is tailored to your business and personalized for the recipient. It uses the content of your website to demonstrate value and includes merge fields such as the # BookingLink field.

🎯 Goal: Save a cooling relationship and re-open conversations that could lead to repeat business or referrals.


💡 Tip:

You can also use our AI email template creator to draft a rekindle outreach email that is tailored to your business and personalized with merge fields ✨


How to create a Rekindle automation to People

Keep your relationships in a constant state of warmth by automatically following up with your contacts.

Rekindle People

Follow these steps to create the automation:

  1. Give your automation a unique Name
    If you plan to create multiple “Rekindle” automations, you’ll want to edit the pre-filled Name we’ve populated.

  2. Give your email automation a Description

  3. Select a People Saved Filter or Contact Type
    Choose the option that aligns with how you segment your customers so you can deliver tailored and targeted emails.
    Please note that the "All People" saved filter and the "All" contact type cannot be selected.

  4. Set the relationship warmth you would like to target

  5. Select which user the email should be sent from
    You may select Contact Owner or a specific user.
    If you select Contact Owner, any contacts who do not have an owner will receive the automated email from the Automation Owner (which is you).

  6. Note the Sending Schedule

    Automated emails will only be sent during these hours, which will adhere to the Company time zone set in Settings > Workflow Automation

  7. Select the email template you would like to send or create a new one

  8. Select a waiting period
    We've set a period of 3 days for Step 1, but you can change it. This is how long Copper waits after sending an email. For a single email, it’s the time Copper waits to see if the activity defined in 'Stop sending if' occurs. In a multi-step series, it’s the delay before Copper sends the next email.

  9. Business plan only: Add step(s)

    1. To add a step, click Send Email

      Add a step

    2. You can choose to send up to 3 emails as part of the automation
      You can only add or delete steps when creating an automation. Once the automation is saved and active, you cannot add or delete steps.

    3. For each individual step, you can choose:

      1. A different email template

      2. A different waiting period

  10. Select which 'Stop sending if' activity qualifies as a ‘successful’ exit from the automation
    Contacts who meet this criteria appear in the Replied section of the automation details panel, while those who don’t remain in the Sent section when the automation ends.

  11. Click Save & Activate.
    When you save your automation for the first time, automated emails will start sending within minutes. Ongoing, contacts will receive the automated email within an hour of matching the criteria.

The stop sending if criterion applies to the entire automation. Contacts who meet this criterion appear in the Replied section of the automation details panel, while those who don’t remain in the Sent section when the automation ends.


How to create a Rekindle automation to Leads

Keep your relationships in a constant state of warmth by automatically following up with your contacts.

Rekindle leads

Copper does not support automated outreach to cold Leads. If you automate emails to unqualified Leads, a Lead list you purchased, or any other recipient who is not expecting an email from you, your emails may be marked as spam, which could directly impact the deliverability of all emails you send from your Gmail account.

Rekindle leads automation

Follow these steps to create the automation:

  1. Give your automation a unique Name
    If you plan to create multiple “Rekindle” automations, you’ll want to edit the pre-filled Name we’ve populated.

  2. Give your email automation a Description

  3. Select a Leads Saved Filter
    Choose the option that aligns with how you segment your leads so you can deliver tailored and targeted emails.
    Please note that the "All Leads" saved filter cannot be selected.

  4. Set the time since the Last Contacted date
    We’ve set a timeframe of 3 months, but you are welcome to edit this field.

  5. Set the relationship warmth you would like to target

  6. Select which user the email should be sent from
    You may select Contact Owner or a specific user.
    If you select Contact Owner, any contacts who do not have an owner will receive the automated email from the Automation Owner (which is you).

  7. Note the Sending Schedule

    Automated emails will only be sent during these hours, which will adhere to the Company time zone set in Settings > Workflow Automation

  8. Select the email template you would like to send or create a new one

  9. Select a waiting period
    We've set a period of 3 days for Step 1, but you can change it. This is how long Copper waits after sending an email. For a single email, it’s the time Copper waits to see if the activity defined in 'Stop sending if' occurs. In a multi-step series, it’s the delay before Copper sends the next email.

  10. Business plan only: Add step(s)

    1. To add a step, click Send Email

      Add a step

    2. You can choose to send up to 3 emails as part of the automation
      You can only add or delete steps when creating an automation. Once the automation is saved and active, you cannot add or delete steps.

    3. For each individual step, you can choose:

      1. A different email template

      2. A different waiting period

  11. Select which 'Stop sending if' activity qualifies as a ‘successful’ exit from the automation
    Contacts who meet this criteria appear in the Replied section of the automation details panel, while those who don’t remain in the Sent section when the automation ends.

  12. Click Save & Activate.
    When you save your automation for the first time, automated emails will start sending within minutes. Ongoing, contacts will receive the automated email within an hour of matching the criteria.

The stop sending if criterion applies to the entire automation. Contacts who meet this criterion appear in the Replied section of the automation details panel, while those who don’t remain in the Sent section when the automation ends.


Example email templates

You can use the below sample templates to automate a follow-up and a nudge for response.

If the Subjects of the email templates used within an automation match, the emails will thread as replies in the recipient's inbox.

Step 1: "Checking in"

  1. Create a shared email template called Rekindle - Professional

  2. Enter the Subject "Checking in"

  3. Paste the below copy into the email body:

    Hi #FirstName,

    It's been a while since we last connected, and I wanted to reach out and see how things are going! I hope life is treating you well – I'm curious to hear what you've been up to lately. Let's catch up soon and discuss any updates or upcoming projects you might have in mind.

    Looking forward to reconnecting!

    Cheers,

    #SenderName

  4. Your email template should look like this:

    Rekindle - Professional email template

  5. Double-check that you have fallbacks for your merge fields by clicking on the merge field in the email copy

    Merge field backup text

  6. Save your email template

Step 2: "Checking in"

  1. Create a shared email template called Rekindle - Nudge

  2. Enter the Subject "Checking in"

  3. Paste the below copy into the email body:

    Hi #FirstName - just checking in to be sure you saw my message!
    - #SenderFirstName

  4. Your email template should look like this:

    Rekindle - Nudge email template

  5. Double-check that you have fallbacks for your merge fields by clicking on the merge field in the email copy

  6. Save your email template


💡 Tip:

You can also use our AI email template creator to draft a rekindle outreach email that is tailored to your business and personalized with merge fields ✨


Have a question? Contact our Customer Success Team using the in-app chat 💬

Have a suggestion? Check out the Ideas board in our Community 👥

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