How automations work – Marketli Help

Lead automations live at Leads → Automations, and appointment automations at Appointments → Automations. Automations started from inside a workspace, such as review follow-ups, are listed at Workspaces → Automations. Only company owners and admins can manage them.

Every automation is one trigger plus a chain of steps.

Creating one

Go to Leads → Automations for a lead automation, or Appointments → Automations for an appointment one.
Click New automation.
Give it a Name. Only you and your team see this: Website enquiry auto-reply is the kind of name that helps later.
Pick the Trigger.
Click Create and add steps.

The trigger cannot be changed later. If you picked the wrong one, create a new automation instead.

Nothing sends until you switch the automation on with the toggle on its row.

The triggers you can choose

Trigger	When it fires
New lead	The moment a lead arrives.
Lead follow-up	When a lead's scheduled follow-up message falls due. You schedule that on the lead itself.
Appointment booked online	When someone books through your appointment link, once per appointment. Appointments your team creates by hand do not fire it.
Lead moves to a stage	When a lead lands in a stage you choose on the Leads board.
Started from a lead	Only when you start it yourself, from Run automation on a lead.
Contact's birthday	On a contact's birthday, at the time you choose. Set up in Contacts, on the Automations tab. See Birthday texts.

There is no separate "before the meeting" trigger. To remind someone ahead of time you use Appointment booked online and add a Wait step that counts back from the appointment start.

Lead moves to a stage

Pick one or more stages under When a lead moves to. Custom stages you have added to the board are listed alongside the built-in ones. The automation fires the moment a lead lands in any of them, whether you dragged the card, used Update status, or Marketli moved it (an appointment booked online landing in Appointment Booked, a reply moving a lead to Needs Attention).

Two optional filters narrow it down: Only when it comes from limits it to moves out of particular stages, and Lead source limits it to leads from particular sources.

By default each lead triggers the automation once, no matter how many times it passes through the stage. Turn on Repeat when the lead re-enters if it should run every time.

A lead who replies by text has any queued steps stopped, and marking a lead Converted or Lost cancels whatever is still waiting. The Leads board shows a small lightning count on a column when automations fire for leads moved into it.

Started from a lead

This one never runs on its own. Open a lead and choose Run automation; every switched-on automation of this kind is listed there. The first step runs straight away and the page tells you what happened, including why a step was skipped. The lead's Automations and stage history section lists every automation run for that lead, what each has sent and what comes next.

Lead automations can send an email, a text or a push notification, and wait between steps. Tasks, review requests and reward points are for appointment and workspace automations only.

You may also see automations with triggers you cannot pick yourself: Started from a workspace, Review follow-up and the legacy Upcoming appointment. These come pre-built or are started by a person rather than by a sweep.

The steps

Click the + between steps and choose from Add a step:

Step	What it does
Email	Sends an email. Pick one of your email templates. You can override its subject.
SMS	Sends a text. Pick one of your text templates, and which of your numbers it comes from.
Push notification	Pushes to the app. Choose the audience: the client, or named staff.
Wait	Pauses the chain. Either for a duration, or until a set time before the appointment starts on appointment automations.
Award points	Adds reward points. Only offered on appointment and workspace automations, because a lead has no client to award to. Needs a non-zero point amount and a client-facing reason.

Steps run top to bottom. Click a step to open its editor, fill it in, and Save.

Messages are written as templates, not in the automation. An email or text step attaches one of the templates from the same section: Leads → Templates for a lead automation, Appointments → Templates for an appointment one, Workspaces → Templates for a workspace one. Write the message there first, then attach it here. Editing the template changes every automation that uses it, and there is one place to look when the wording is wrong.

Merge fields work inside the templates. See SMS and email templates for the list.

Turning it on

Each row on the Automations tab has a switch. Flip it on and the automation is live from that moment. It does not go back and act on older leads or appointments.

The row also shows a one-line summary of what it will do (the trigger, then the chain) so you can sanity-check it without opening the canvas. Delete an automation with the bin icon.

Reading the run log

Every run is recorded, with a status per step. Most confusion comes from a skipped step, and Marketli explains each one in plain English rather than a code. Common ones:

Recipient has no email address / Recipient has no phone number
The sending inbox is disconnected: reconnect it on your Profile.
No phone number / inbox connected yet
Recipient has opted out of SMS
Email address is suppressed (bounced or complained)
Rate limit reached: too many messages to this recipient or today
This automation has no steps yet
Booked too close to the reminder time: the reminder moment had already passed when they booked.
Automation was created after this appointment's reminder time
Appointment was cancelled

A skip is not a failure. It means the automation ran and correctly decided not to send.

Where to go next

Appointment confirmations and reminders, including the one you get for free.
Lead follow-up automations.