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Playbooks & Automation
Playbooks and automation overview

Playbooks and automation overview

Use playbooks and automations when Hellotext should read customer signals, decide what to do next, and act without someone on your team manually sending every message.

A playbook is a repeatable system trained for a business mission. It reads signals, decides what should happen for each customer, and acts through the right channel within the limits you set.

If you are comparing playbooks with campaigns and the Inbox, start with How Hellotext works.

A playbook can be an autonomous mission, an AI agent, a journey route, a campaign, or a capture depending on the job it performs.

Signals can include carts, browsing activity, purchases, stock changes, birthdays, replies, customer profile properties, and channel eligibility.

Keep reading: What are signals?.

Choose the right playbook type

If you are deciding where to start, use Choose your first playbook.

If you want to browse common options by business goal, use Playbook library by mission.

Use a prebuilt playbook when the goal is common and the recommended mission already fits your business. This is usually the fastest way to launch.

Use an AI playbook or AI agent when the experience needs to respond conversationally, use product or policy knowledge, recommend items, answer frequent questions, collect customer information, or decide when to escalate.

Use a journey route when you need a multi-step customer flow with a trigger, messages, waits, conditions, branches, and handoffs. A basic abandoned-cart follow-up can be a route template; an AI abandoned-cart playbook can make more dynamic decisions based on signals and customer context.

For that specific choice, see Abandoned cart: route template vs AI playbook.

Use a campaign when you want a one-time send to a selected audience, and a capture when the goal is to collect subscribers or customer data.

Before you enable a playbook

Confirm that the data and channels it depends on are ready.

For commerce playbooks, make sure your store integration is connected and recent activity appears on customer profiles as usable signals.

For WhatsApp playbooks, make sure WhatsApp is connected and approved before sending customers into the flow.

For SMS playbooks, make sure your account has an active sender or short code available.

What to check before publishing

  • The trigger matches the customer action you want to react to.
  • The signals the playbook depends on are available and current.
  • Messages use the right channel and tone.
  • Wait steps give customers enough time before the next follow-up.
  • Conditions and branches send people down the right path.
  • Coupons, links, tags, and product recommendations are working.
  • Human handoff rules are clear when a conversation should leave the route or agent.
  • Frequency, consent, and quiet-hour limits are clear so playbooks do not compete for the same customer.

Keep improving after launch

Start with a focused audience and review the first conversations before expanding. Look for replies, missed expectations, broken links, timing issues, and places where a human had to step in.

Use what you learn to adjust the prompt, timing, branch conditions, or template copy. For revenue, conversion, and handoff metrics, use Playbook reporting.