Send & Retain

Automations send lifecycle email in response to events. You emit an event; an automation whose trigger and filter match enrolls the contact and walks it through steps (delays, sends) on a schedule.

Create the automation

Create an automation with a trigger (an event name like trial.started) and an optional filter over contact attributes and event properties. It starts paused — nothing enrolls yet.

Add steps

Add steps (optionally with a timezone-aware send window). A step is one of these types:

send — deliver a template (optionally an A/B split of versions).
delay — a standalone wait before the next step. Stack them, place one at the end, and reorder them like any other step.
wait for event — park the run until a named event arrives, or a timeout elapses, then continue.
branch — evaluate a filter over the contact and either continue or exit the sequence.
set attribute — write attributes onto the contact mid-flow (which can move them into a segment).
webhook — POST the contact + event payload to a public HTTPS endpoint.

Each step has a stable id, so appending steps to a live sequence never disturbs contacts already in flight.

Enable it

Enabling is a separate, deliberate action that validates the sequence's published templates. Only then do matching events enroll contacts.

Emit the triggering event

curl https://sendandretain.com/api/v1/events \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AEM_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "name": "trial.started",
    "properties": { "plan": "Pro" },
    "dedupe_key": "trial-jane-1"
  }'

The response lists the automations the contact was enrolled into.

A/B variants

A step can carry weighted template variants. Assignment is deterministic per contact-run, so a contact always sees the same variant across a sequence. See Automations.

Editing a step that has in-flight runs requires pausing the automation first. Appending new steps does not.

One command for a whole business

Over MCP, email_bootstrap_company installs a business archetype's starter templates and lifecycle sequences in a single call — welcome, cart recovery, trial conversion, win-back — all created paused. It's the fastest way to go from an empty project to an enable-ready setup. See Automations and the MCP reference.

Build an automation