Hey Reader,
Earlier this year I opened a client’s automation that looked perfectly fine. Tidy, every step in place, nothing red anywhere. But nobody was getting past one of the first steps.
The step was set to wait until a tag was added, instead of adding the tag. So every new subscriber arrived, sat down at that step, and waited for something that was never going to happen.
Kit doesn’t flag that, and why would it? To Kit, that’s a perfectly valid automation. It just isn’t the one she meant to build.
Forms and automations rarely break loudly. They break quietly, and they keep looking fine while they do. A few I’ve come across lately:
- A pop-up pointing to an old form, so new sign-ups land somewhere nobody is looking.
- People who unsubscribed once and can’t get back in, even when they sign up or buy again.
- An old campaign in another tool, still switched on and ready to send the moment someone new is added.
- A Zap that says it ran successfully, while people still can’t get into the membership they paid for.
- Every person in an automation getting unsubscribed because the re-engagement link wasn't working.
How to spot the quiet ones
- Sign up to your own forms. Every one of them, with a test address, every few months. Do you get what you were promised, and do you end up where you should?
- Look at who’s sitting where. In Kit’s new automation builder, every automation has an overview page with four numbers: how many people entered, unsubscribed, completed, and are in it right now. Inside the automation, each step also shows how many people are waiting there. If a step that should take a second has a crowd sitting at it, you’ve found your leak. And if nearly everyone who enters an automation ends up unsubscribed, check that every link in it still works.
- Read your wait and tag steps out loud. “Wait until a tag is added” and “add a tag” look almost the same in a list of steps. They do the opposite.
- Check the other tools too. Anything that sends emails or adds people to Kit: is it still switched on, and should it be?
That overview page also has a description field, where you write what each automation is for. I’ll admit I haven’t filled it in for a single one of mine yet. But one line per automation is the quickest way to find the ones nobody can explain anymore, and those are usually the ones to look at first.
I’ve written up everything that changed in Kit’s new builder, including that overview page and the new publish checklist that asks “are you sure?” before you go live.
Nothing in your account will tell you it’s broken. So every now and then, walk through it the way a new subscriber would.
