How to set up push automations: welcome, abandoned-cart & drip

Welcome flows, abandoned-cart reminders, recurring digests, and RSS-to-push.

What it is

The Automation tab is where your notifications send themselves. Instead of writing and sending every push by hand, you set things up once and relaybell sends automatically. It holds five tools: Triggered automations and Journeys (react to a subscriber or an event), RSS → Push (auto-send your new blog posts), Recurring campaigns (a repeating digest on a schedule), and Webhooks (a developer tool that forwards events to your own server).

When to use it

Use it when you want a push to go out on its own: a welcome the instant someone subscribes, a timed multi-message drip, or a reminder that fires when your site reports something like an abandoned cart.

Find it at: Left nav → Automation (five tools, top to bottom: Triggered automations, Journeys, RSS → Push, Recurring campaigns, and Webhooks)

Before you start

Notifications must already be installed on your site and you need real subscribers (done in the Setup tab). Automations have no one to send to until people opt in.
For any Journey that starts 'on event' and for every Triggered automation, your website must send that event to relaybell with the JavaScript snippet RelayBell.track('event_name', { ... }). This is a one-time developer task. The 'on subscribe' welcome journey does NOT need it.
For 'Cancel if purchase' to actually stop reminders, your site must also send a 'purchase' event. Include a numeric 'value' in that event if you want revenue counted automatically.
Event names must match exactly between the dashboard and your site's code - 'cart.updated' is not the same as 'cart_updated'.

Set it up

1Open Automation from the left nav. The two cards you'll use here are 'Triggered automations' (at the top) and 'Journeys' (just below it).
2A1 - WELCOME MESSAGE: In the 'Journeys' card, click 'New sequence' to open the builder.
3A2: Type a name in the first box, e.g. 'Welcome series'.
4A3: Leave the 'Enter' dropdown on 'on subscribe'. This starts the journey the moment a new visitor allows notifications - no website code is needed for this one.
5A4: Leave the 'cancel if' box empty for a plain welcome, or type an event name like 'purchase' to stop the journey if the person acts.
6A5: In 'Step 1', set 'wait' to 0 (minutes) so the welcome sends immediately on subscribe.
7A6: Fill in 'Push title' (required) and 'Message' - for example title 'Thanks for subscribing! (bell)', message 'You will be first to hear about new arrivals.' Add a 'Click URL' if you want tapping the push to open a page.
8A7 (optional drip): Click '+ Add message' to add a follow-up. Set its 'wait' to, say, 1 day and write a second title/message; add another for day 3, and so on. Each added step waits its own delay before it sends.
9A8: Check the live 'Journey preview' (Enter -> wait -> message -> Exit), then click 'Create journey'. It appears in the list marked 'Active' and starts enrolling new subscribers right away.
10B1 - ABANDONED-CART REMINDER (fastest path): Scroll to the 'Triggered automations' card and click the '(cart) Cart abandonment' chip. The form opens pre-filled for you.
11B2: Check the 'Trigger event' box reads 'cart.updated'. This must match, character for character, the event name your website actually sends (see Prerequisites).
12B3: Adjust 'wait' if you want - the recipe uses 1 hour; you can change the number or switch to minutes.
13B4: Edit the 'Push title' and 'Message'. You can include {product}, {price} and {url} - relaybell replaces them with values from the event your site sends.
14B5: Confirm 'Cancel if [purchase] happens first' is set, so anyone who completes their order stops getting the reminder.
15B6 (optional): Tick 'Once per subscriber' so a shopper gets at most one reminder even if the event repeats.
16B7: Click 'Create automation'. It now fires automatically whenever your site reports cart.updated and no purchase arrives within the wait window.
17B8 - Prefer a multi-step re-engagement flow? Build it as a Journey instead: click 'New sequence', set 'Enter' to 'on event' and type 'cart.updated', add two or three message steps at rising delays (e.g. 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days), set 'cancel if' to 'purchase', and optionally add a 'Branch' to keep only certain people going.
18RSS → PUSH (auto-send new blog posts): scroll to the 'RSS → Push' card, paste your feed address (e.g. https://yourblog.com/feed) and click 'Add feed'. relaybell checks it every 15 minutes and turns each new post into a push automatically. Toggle it off any time.
19RECURRING CAMPAIGNS (a repeating digest): in the 'Recurring campaigns' card click 'New schedule', give it a name (e.g. 'Daily digest'), write the Notification title, Message and optional Click URL, choose Hourly / Daily / Weekly, set the time (and day, for weekly) and your timezone, then click 'Create schedule'. It sends the same notification on that repeat until you pause or delete it.
20WEBHOOKS (developer tool): the 'Webhooks' card forwards your project's events to a URL on your own server, signed so you can verify them. Skip it unless a developer asked for it.

Every setting, explained

Enter: on subscribe / on event (Journeys): What starts a journey. 'on subscribe' begins the instant someone newly allows notifications. 'on event' begins when your site sends a named event - you type the name, e.g. signup or cart.updated.
cancel if (Journeys): A single event name. If that event happens for a person while they are mid-journey, they leave it and receive no more steps. Common value: purchase.
Step: wait [number] [min/hours/days] then send: How long to pause before this message goes out. 0 means send immediately. Journey steps allow minutes, hours, or days.
Push title / Message / Click URL: The notification itself. Title is required; the message is the body text; Click URL is where a tap takes the person and is optional.
Branch: field / test / value (Journeys): A gate, not a fork. Pick a subscriber detail (country, language, url, or a tag you've set), a test (is / contains / exists), and a value. People who match continue; everyone who doesn't EXITS the journey there. There is no separate 'else' path.
Trigger event (Triggered automations): The exact event name your website reports. The push only fires when your site sends this event.
wait (Triggered automations): How long after the event to hold before firing the push, in minutes or hours (no 'days' option here).
Cancel if ... happens first (Triggered automations): A second event name. If it arrives before the wait is up, the push is skipped - e.g. cancel on purchase so buyers don't get a cart nudge.
Once per subscriber (Triggered automations): When ticked, each subscriber gets this automation at most once, even if the event fires again later.
{product} / {price} / {url} placeholders: Merge tags for triggered automations. relaybell swaps them for the matching values included in the event data your site sends.
RSS → Push (feed): Paste any RSS/Atom feed URL and each new post auto-sends as a push. relaybell polls the feed every 15 minutes. Enable/disable or remove feeds any time.
Recurring campaigns (schedule): Auto-send the SAME notification on a repeat. You write the title/message/URL once and pick Hourly, Daily, or Weekly with a time, day (weekly) and timezone. This is the only place in the dashboard to schedule sends by the clock; it keeps running until paused.
Webhooks: A developer feature: relaybell POSTs your project's events to a URL you own, HMAC-signed so your server can verify they're genuine. Not needed for normal sending.

Tips

Click a recipe chip (Cart abandonment, Back in stock, Price drop, Welcome back) to auto-fill a working automation, then just tweak the wording.
Keep Step 1 of a welcome journey at wait 0 so it lands while you're fresh in the subscriber's mind.
For drips, space steps out - the Journeys subtitle even suggests day 0 / 1 / 3 / 7 - so you don't overwhelm people.
Watch each item's counters to confirm it's working: journeys show active / completed / exited, and triggered automations show 'N sent'.
Test before trusting it: subscribe yourself as a visitor to see the welcome journey; for event-based ones, fire a test event from your site.
Use the live 'Journey preview' to eyeball the whole Enter-to-Exit flow before you click Create.
Want a regular newsletter-style push without lifting a finger? Point RSS → Push at your blog feed, or set a Recurring campaign for a daily/weekly digest.

Watch out for

Journeys and automations cannot be edited after you create them. The dashboard only lets you pause (Active/Paused) or Delete. To change wording or timing, delete it and build a new one.
A Branch is a filter, not a fork: people who don't match simply exit and get nothing further. If you want everyone to keep receiving messages, don't gate them out with a branch.
The '(wave) Welcome back' recipe is NOT a new-subscriber welcome - it fires on a 'login' event you have to send. For a real welcome, use a Journey with Enter = on subscribe.
Nothing fires until your site actually sends the event name, spelled exactly. A typo between the dashboard and your site's code means silence, with no error message.
Without 'Cancel if purchase' (and a matching purchase event from your site), customers who buy will still receive the abandoned-cart reminder.
A Triggered automation without 'Once per subscriber' can re-send every single time the event repeats.
'Create journey' stays greyed out until at least one message step has a title. A journey made only of branches is not allowed - it needs at least one real message.

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