Automated messages

Automated messages send a message for you when something happens. There are four event rules plus a welcome, and every rule is switched off when you create it — nothing sends until you turn it on.

Open them at Automated messages in the creator app. The welcome has its own screen.

The rules

Setting one up

1. Open the rule and write the message — up to 2,000 characters.
2. Set a delay, from none up to 30 days after the trigger.
3. For the quiet-fan rule only, set how long counts as quiet: 3 to 90 days, and 14 by default.
4. Switch it on.

Setting the quiet window on any other rule is refused with “quietAfterDays belongs only to the rule that waits for silence” — refused rather than quietly ignored, so you cannot believe you configured something you did not.

Switching a rule on requires your account to be in good standing. Switching one off is never blocked.

What the welcome reacts to

The welcome screen is labelled “Someone subscribes · Fires once, on their first payment”, and that is what it does: it goes out one time, when a fan starts a paid subscription to you. Write it as a greeting to somebody who has just paid you for the first time.

The welcome’s delay can be set from none up to 7 days (the event rules allow up to 30).

Personalisation chips

The rule editor offers three chips — Fan name, My name and Subscription price. They insert {fan_name}, {my_name} and {subscription_price} into your message, and each one is filled in as the message goes out, with that fan’s name, your name, and the price they are paying.

The Attach paid media switch in the rule editor attaches media to the rule’s message and prices it, so the fan unlocks the attachment the way they would any other paid message.

When a rule does and does not send

Sends are worked through by a background runner that wakes about once a minute, so an automated message arrives shortly after its delay rather than to the second.

The quiet-fan rule re-checks the silence before sending. If the fan wrote to you in the meantime, it does not send.

Every send is checked against that fan’s preferences at the moment it goes out:

• A mute or a block stops all four rules and the welcome.
• A promotional opt-out stops the subscription-expired, quiet-fan and unlock rules — but not the gift thank-you, because thanking somebody for money they sent is not promotion.

Reading the history

Each rule keeps its last 50 sends, each marked one of three ways:

• Sent — it went out.
• Suppressed — it deliberately did not go out, with a reason: muted, opted out, rule switched off, the chat is gone, the fan replied first, or blocked.
• Failed — something went wrong.

If a rule shows on but its history stays empty, nothing has triggered it. The history is the honest answer to “did it send”.

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