This trip’s view. Almost forgot this was the purpose.
Each year for the past 25 years, my best friend and I have taken our daughters on a trip together. We called it “Ya Ya Weekend”—part tradition, part therapy, part chaos. It started with a camping tent, four potty-training toddlers, and a cooler full of snacks we definitely didn’t ration correctly.
In the dead heat of Texas, no less. Remind me to tell you about the time the National Guard had to evacuate us from a flood zone. Fun times.
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These days? We’ve upgraded. Same crew, new chapter. The tent is long gone. We’re at the lake now with central air and enough charcuterie to feed a small wedding party. Although, since three out of four daughters are currently pregnant and there’s a toddler running point in the snack department, we’ll probably be circling back to Goldfish crackers and nap schedules any minute now.
But we didn’t start here. The lake house didn’t show up overnight. It started with a tent, a plan, and a lot of duct tape and good intentions. And automation? It works the same way.
You start with what works, adjust when needed, and build over time. Slowly. Intentionally. Layer by layer.
This week, we’re talking about why that matters—and what happens when you don’t. Because the truth is, building too fast or too fancy is a trap. One cool integration leads to another, and before you know it, you’ve duct-taped twelve apps into a system so complex that you need a whiteboard and three cups of coffee just to troubleshoot it.
It’s easy to fall in love with what’s possible and completely forget about what’s useful.
And meanwhile? The tech is shifting under your feet. APIs change. Tools evolve. Pricing structures get overhauled. What worked last month might quietly stop working tomorrow.
That’s why every automation I build starts the same way: one clean trigger. One clear outcome. I rest it, test it, stretch it. Only when it holds up under pressure do I add the next layer. That’s how you build workflows that won’t buckle when your business levels up—or when your favorite tool decides to sunset your favorite feature.
🧠 Filters, Routers, and Other Ways to Give Your Automation a Brain Last week, we covered APIs and webhooks—the backstage pass that lets your tools talk to each other. This week, we move one layer up: teaching your automations to think.
This is where strategy enters the room. Because once your systems are connected, you have a new responsibility: making sure the right thing happens at the right time.
Here’s where your automations stop being “do this every time” and start becoming “do the right thing, under the right conditions.”
Let’s break down the essential building blocks:
Filters are your gatekeepers. They evaluate each piece of incoming data and decide whether to let it proceed. Think: “only continue if the genre is ‘romance’” or “only send this email if the cart total is over $10.” Filters protect your downstream actions from junk, spam, or outliers that don’t belong.
Routers are your traffic controllers. They direct the flow of data based on conditions. If someone signs up for an ARC, they go to one workflow. If they sign up for a freebie, they go to another. This is where personalization starts to come alive—without manual effort.
Delays, aggregators, and conditionals help with pacing, batching, and sanity-checking. Add a 10-minute delay before sending a follow-up. Wait until five items are collected, then run a batch process. Pause if something looks off.
These tools don’t just add functionality. They reduce risk. They help you avoid sending the wrong email to the wrong person. They let you account for exceptions. They let you trust your automations, not babysit them.
And when something breaks (it will), having logic layered cleanly and purposefully means you can fix it fast—without unraveling a monster.
I build automations like I build systems: one clear decision at a time. Each tool has a role. Each step has a reason. Nothing’s included “just in case.”
📬 Example: Smarter Reader Onboarding (That You Actually Control) Let’s look at something almost every author needs: onboarding new readers.
The easy route? Slap the form from your email platform onto your site and let it do its thing. But that puts your list—and your options—entirely in someone else’s hands.
You’ve heard me say it before and I’ll keep saying it: own your stack.
When you use a form you control—whether it’s a no-code builder like Tally, Fillout, or Gravity Forms—you control what happens next. You’re not locked into a single platform’s logic. You can route the data anywhere. Build in backups. Trigger workflows. Personalize experiences.
Here’s my foundational onboarding automation: Reader fills out a form I control.
This form lives on my own site. It’s branded, flexible, and mine.
That data hits Zapier.
This is where the handoff happens. I use Zapier here because it’s fast, friendly, and fits inside their free tier when the flow is simple.
Zapier logs the info to Google Sheets.
This isn’t just a bonus step. It’s the failsafe. If your email service decides to lock you out or hits a data glitch, you’ve still got a clean, organized list of everyone who opted in. No data loss. No panic.
Second stop: the ESP.
The verified, structured data is now routed to your email platform. But not just dumped in—it’s tagged, segmented, and labeled based on how they came in: freebie reader, ARC sign-up, live webinar attendee, etc.
At this point, you already have a solid system. But it gets better.
🔍 Layer 2: Email Verification This is where you add some polish—and save yourself a ton of money and deliverability drama.
Most email platforms charge you per subscriber. Not per active subscriber. So when a spam address like a@abc.com signs up for your freebie, that ghost is now on your dime. Add a few hundred of those? Now you’re paying extra… for nothing.
Worse, it messes with your open rates, clickthroughs, and domain reputation. Suddenly your welcome emails are landing in spam—even for legit subscribers.
That’s where tools like NeverBounce, Clearout, or ZeroBounce come in. These plug into Zapier as another step. Right after someone fills out the form, the email gets checked. If it’s clean, the automation continues. If not, it stops right there.
No drama. No duplicates. No junk.
Your backup list stays clean. Your ESP list stays tight. And your open rates stay above water.
Now that basic “reader sign-up” automation has become a real intake system:
✅ Resilient (Google Sheets backup)
✅ Clean (email verified before it costs you)
✅ Structured (data segmented from the start)
✅ Expandable (tags, CRM sync, even mail merge ready)
And the best part? It still fits inside most no-code tools’ free plans. You’ve layered protection, logic, and clarity—without adding chaos.
🧠 From Triggers to Thinking Systems Here’s where the real shift happens.
When you stop treating your automations like vending machines—input/output—and start treating them like responsive systems, everything changes. You’re not just “sending emails.” You’re building logic that reflects how you work.
You can start evaluating behaviors:
Did they open the first email? If not, try a different angle.
Did they click a link for thrillers? Send them a curated book list.
Did they download a freebie but never engage again? Pause their sequence, then check in 10 days later.
Every branch in your system gives you a new opportunity to match their journey with your message. And the more this logic lives in the automation—not in your head—the less you’re stuck rebuilding the same flows over and over.
🤖 Next Comes the Brain When you’ve got a few clean, layered automations in place—ones that verify, route, and back themselves up—you’re ready for the next tier: agentic logic.
This is the beginning of systems that respond to context.
You’ve likely already dipped your toes here:
Only send a reminder if no reply is logged
Route someone to a different path if they’ve downloaded more than one file
Skip step three entirely if the tag already exists
That’s agentic behavior. Your automations are no longer just reacting—they’re making simple decisions based on history and state.
And that’s where things start to get seriously powerful.
Next week, we’ll go deeper into this—how to build thinking systems that adapt in real time and evolve with your audience. And how AI can support those decisions, after your foundational layers are in place.
For now? Keep it simple. Build what solves a problem. Let every new module earn its spot.
🧰 This Week’s Build List You know the drill—let’s make this real.
Grab the onboarding Zap I mentioned.
It’s built, tested, and ready to copy. Includes form > Google Sheet > verification > ESP. Drop it in your stack and adjust the labels to fit. Here’s the link to the Zap – free for everyone this week!
Add an email verification step.
Choose a tool like Xemail Verify, NeverBounce or Clearout and add one more step to any subscriber flow you’ve got. It takes five minutes and it will save you real money, I promise.
Audit one automation you already have.
Pick one that’s been running for a while. Ask: Does this still serve the original goal? Is there a cleaner way to do this? Could I simplify it by removing one unnecessary step? If yes, do it.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is progress. You don’t need the lake house on Day One. But you do need a system that holds when the weather turns.
Let’s build it.
—Chelle
Author Automations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.