Email automation: journeys that can switch to WhatsApp
Email automation sends emails on its own when a customer signs up, starts a checkout, buys or goes quiet, so nobody has to send each one by hand. Zappio's journeys can put email and WhatsApp steps in the same journey, and every step checks that person's consent, frequency cap and quiet hours for its own channel before it sends.
The journey features on this page were checked against the Zappio product on 26 September 2026.
A customer starts checkout on your store at 11 p.m., gets distracted and never comes back. Email automation sends the reminder, and the message after it, without anyone on your team having to remember. One-off sends are on the email marketing page.
What email automation is, in plain terms
Email automation is a sequence that starts by itself when a customer does something, then follows the steps you set: wait, send an email, check whether they bought, try something else if not. Marketing automation platforms call these flows or sequences; Zappio calls them journeys, and inside the app email marketing is called Engage. For an online shop, ecommerce marketing automation covers a signup, a checkout left open, a purchase and a customer who stops buying.
In Zappio's email marketing automation, a step can also be a WhatsApp template, sent from the same number as your inbox and broadcasts.
How a journey is built
A journey is one trigger followed by steps in order, top to bottom. It starts from an event, such as a started checkout, narrowed by a property filter; from a person joining or leaving a segment; or by hand.
Events come from Shopify and WooCommerce, Zappio's CRM, ERPNext, a browser snippet on your website, our tracking API, and a webhook mapper with presets for Razorpay, Stripe, PayTabs and Typeform. Products re-sync from each connected WooCommerce store every 6 hours, and "price dropped" and "back in stock" events fire for people who viewed, carted or started a checkout for that product in the last 90 days.
The steps, each doing one thing: wait; wait for an event, such as an order, with a timeout; condition; random split, to compare two versions; send email; send WhatsApp template; update profile; call a webhook; notify the team, which emails a teammate when a person needs a human; and exit.
Exit rules, re-entry and versions
An exit rule takes a person out the moment an event you name happens, for example an order, so nobody is reminded about a checkout they finished. Re-entry is set per journey: once per person ever, again after a number of days, or every time the trigger fires, and nobody is in the same journey twice at once. Edits stay in a draft until you publish them as a new version: people already partway through finish on the version they started, and new entrants get the new one. Pausing stops new entries and holds everyone where they are until you resume. A journey starts with events that arrive after you publish it; it does not go back over earlier ones.
Six ready-made journeys for ecommerce and enquiries
Six journeys come ready-made. Each is added as a draft of email steps and waits: you choose the emails, then publish, and you can add a WhatsApp step to any of them.
| Journey | What starts it | What it does | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome series | Someone subscribes on a Zappio signup form or through your website's tracking code | Three emails: at once, 2 days later and 4 days after that. Stops if they order; once per person. | Signup forms store the consent wording the visitor saw. |
| Abandoned cart | Someone adds a product to the cart | Waits an hour for an order; if none, sends an email, and a second a day later. Stops when they order; can start again after 3 days. | Add-to-cart needs a line of tracking code on your store. To run it from day one, switch the trigger to "Started checkout": a checkout left open on Shopify, or an order left unpaid on WooCommerce. The emails do not list the cart items yet. |
| Browse abandonment | Someone views a product | Waits 4 hours; if nothing went into the cart, sends one email. At most once a week per person, and stops if they order. | Product views need the same tracking code. |
| Post-purchase thank-you and review | An order is placed | A thank-you email at once, then a review request 5 days later. Can run again 30 days later. | The thank-you is transactional, so it reaches every buyer with an email address; the review request needs email consent. |
| Win-back | A past customer joins the ready-made "Lapsed 60 days" segment: bought before, nothing in the last 60 days | One email, and a second a week later. Stops if they order; can run again after 90 days. | Add the "Lapsed 60 days" segment first, or it starts only when you add people by hand. |
| Lead nurture | A new lead in Zappio's CRM or in ERPNext | Emails at once, 2 days later and 4 days after that, then emails your team if the lead is still open. Stops when the deal is won or lost. | Add the address the team alert goes to. A Typeform entry arrives as "Submitted form", so switch the trigger to use it. |
Adding WhatsApp to an email journey
Any journey can include a WhatsApp step, most useful where an email went unanswered and timing matters. Since Meta charges for WhatsApp templates, a sensible order is email first, then WhatsApp for the people who did not act.
- It sends an approved template. The same kind you use for broadcasts, never free text, and it can carry details from the event that started the journey.
- It needs WhatsApp opt-in. Consent is logged per channel. Someone with no WhatsApp opt-in, or no phone number, is skipped at that step and the journey carries on. WhatsApp opt-in is recorded by a Zappio signup form with a WhatsApp box, by an import that includes it, or by your team on the profile; Shopify, WooCommerce and the webhook mapper do not bring it in.
- Meta charges for it. Each template is charged at Meta's marketing or utility rate. You pay Meta directly, on your own payment method, at Meta's published rates, and Zappio adds nothing on top. Rates, and the 24-hour window rules that change on 1 October 2026, are on our WhatsApp API pricing page.
Three journeys, illustrated
These are illustrations, not customer results.
A Dubai perfume shop on Shopify
Here is how a Dubai perfume shop would set it up. Trigger: "Started checkout" from Shopify, exiting on an order. Wait an hour, then email a reminder with an offer to help choose, since it cannot list the bottles yet. Wait a day, then send a WhatsApp template with the checkout details to shoppers who gave WhatsApp consent on a Zappio signup form, because Shopify does not bring it in.
A Hyderabad skin clinic
Here is how a skin clinic in Hyderabad would set it up, if its practice software can send "visit completed" and "appointment booked" webhooks. Webhooks carry no consent, so the front desk records email and WhatsApp consent on each profile. Trigger: "Visit completed" for one treatment, exiting on "appointment booked", with re-entry every time. Wait four weeks and email that the next session is due. Wait five days and send a WhatsApp template to patients with WhatsApp opt-in. Wait two days and notify the team, so the front desk calls anyone who has still not booked.
A Pune coaching centre
Here is how a coaching centre in Pune would set it up, with a Zappio signup form asking for the course and for email and WhatsApp consent. Trigger: "Submitted form" for one course, exiting on a Razorpay fee payment. Email the course details, wait two days, then a random split: a demo-class invitation or an offer of a call. Wait five days and send a WhatsApp template to parents who ticked WhatsApp consent. Wait two days and notify the team, so a counsellor calls.
Guard rails across email and WhatsApp
- Consent. Logged and checked per channel before every marketing send.
- Frequency caps. By default 1 marketing email a day and 3 a week per person, and separately 1 WhatsApp template a day and 3 a week. A journey message over the cap is skipped, not held; emails you mark as transactional are not capped.
- Quiet hours. Marketing emails and WhatsApp templates wait for the hours you allow, including a market's sending hours if you choose one; they are delayed, not dropped.
- Suppression. Lists per workspace and per channel, plus a platform list for hard bounces.
- Unsubscribe. One click, in every marketing email, with an automatic footer carrying your business name and postal address unless your HTML has its own unsubscribe link.
- Bounces and complaints. A hard bounce or a spam complaint stops all mail to that address automatically. A one-off campaign also pauses itself above 5% bounces or 0.1% complaints once 100 emails have gone out; journeys do not pause themselves and rely on the per-address stop.
Segments and predicted fields that feed journeys
Segment rules cover profile fields, including custom ones, events within a time window, consent and membership of other segments, joined with AND and OR. Segments update as events arrive and are rechecked every night, and 10 come ready-made.
A profile joins one customer's email, WhatsApp and CRM activity from the day email is switched on, matched on your customer ID, then email, then phone. Two records with different emails are never merged on their own: they wait for your team to merge or dismiss them.
Lifetime value, churn risk and next order date are predicted from order history, by simple arithmetic on each customer's own orders, and work in segments.
Measuring what a journey does
Every journey step shows its own counts. Revenue is credited last-touch, so one message gets the credit for a sale: an email clicked in the last 5 days, an email opened in the last day, or a WhatsApp template read or replied to in the last 3 days. The two email windows can be changed.
Coming next
These four are committed, but not live today.
- A drag-and-drop email editor.
- AI help with subject lines and copy.
- A/B tests on campaigns. Journeys already have a random split.
- Product blocks in emails, and abandoned-cart emails that show the items left behind.
What email automation costs
Email is priced for the size of your list — tell us how many contacts you have and we'll quote.
WhatsApp templates sent by a journey are charged by Meta, which you pay directly on your own payment method, with nothing added by Zappio. The WhatsApp plans are on the pricing page. Zappio is made by TABSYST, with offices in India and Dubai (UAE).
Questions people ask
Yes: an approved WhatsApp template, to people with WhatsApp opt-in, at any point in the journey. Meta charges for each one. You pay Meta directly, on your own payment method, at Meta's published rates, and Zappio adds nothing on top. The rates are on our WhatsApp API pricing page.
Yes. Both bring in orders, checkouts and customers, WooCommerce also brings in products, and we connect them with you. A started checkout works from day one: Shopify reports a checkout left open, and WooCommerce an order left unpaid. Add-to-cart and product-view events need a line of tracking code on your store, and the ready-made abandoned-cart journey starts from add-to-cart, so switch its trigger to "Started checkout" to use it from day one.
Not yet. The abandoned-cart email is a reminder that does not list the items, and showing them is listed under Coming next. The WhatsApp step can carry details from the checkout event.
Not a drag-and-drop canvas. A journey is built as a vertical list of steps, and the branches of a wait, a condition or a random split sit side by side in columns. Drawing a conversation is what Zappio's separate WhatsApp chatbot builder does.
WhatsApp automation answers the messages people send you, with auto-replies, chatbots and bookings. Email automation starts from what customers do and runs over days or weeks, with WhatsApp templates as optional steps.
By default no more than 1 marketing email a day and 3 a week, and separately 1 WhatsApp template a day and 3 a week, with quiet hours on top. A journey step that would go over the cap is skipped. Emails you mark as transactional, such as an order thank-you, are not capped.
Tell us the first journey you want
Pick one to start with, a welcome, a checkout reminder or a win-back, and we will set it up with you when we switch email on. Email is priced for the size of your list — tell us how many contacts you have and we'll quote. Standard comes with a 14-day free trial, and connecting your number is free with no card.