Academy: Automation Specialist Track

Design chains, not features: triggers, AI decisions, actions, and audit trails.

Lesson 1: The anatomy of a chain

Every good automation is: a trigger the system can see → a decision AI can make safely → an action the CRM executes → a log a human can audit. Read Using automation and identify all four parts in the welcome series.

Lesson 2: Reply handling

Send a campaign to a test household and reply with "yes", a question, and "STOP" (from a test phone). Watch where each lands: task, review queue, and instant suppression. Understanding the routing is what makes you comfortable scaling volume.

Lesson 3: Sequence design

Draft your own sequence on paper first: trigger, timing, message (both languages), exit conditions. Good exits matter as much as good messages: a client who answered shouldn't get step 3.

Lesson 4: Guardrail literacy

Know your caps: opt-out enforcement, quiet hours, daily ceilings, velocity limits. Design within them rather than around them: they're what make automation defensible to carriers and regulators.

Lesson 5: Measure

Pick two numbers per automation (e.g., reply rate and tasks created) and review weekly. Kill or fix anything that doesn't earn its sends.

Checkpoint: you can design, ship, and audit a compliant sequence. That's the specialist bar, and the certification when the program opens.