Holidays, Triggers, and Newsletters in Shape
Marketing & Sales Automation
Use automated follow ups & campaigns to keep leads moving without manual effort.
Holidays, Triggers, and Newsletters in Shape
This video walks through how holidays, triggers, and newsletters work together in Shape to automate timely communication without manual effort. These tools allow you to schedule messages around important dates, customize outreach, and reuse professionally designed content at scale.
Managing Holidays in Shape
Shape comes with all major federal holidays preconfigured, but you can easily add custom holidays based on your industry or business needs. Holidays are managed under System Preferences → Manage Holidays, where you can define how each holiday occurs.
Holidays can be set as:
- Fixed dates (such as July 4)
- Floating dates (such as Father’s Day, defined by week and weekday)
This flexibility ensures automations trigger on the exact day you expect every year.
Sending Holiday Messages with Triggers
Holiday messages are sent through triggers. Shape includes prebuilt Marketing Holidays and Marketing Birthdays trigger folders, which are turned off by default so you can activate them when ready.
Each holiday trigger defines:
- Which holiday activates the trigger
- What action occurs (email, text, task, or other automation)
- The time the message is sent
You can edit any trigger to swap templates, change send times, or adjust messaging without rebuilding the automation.
Creating Custom Holiday Triggers
You can also create your own holiday-based triggers from scratch. When creating a new trigger, select Holiday as the trigger type and choose from either built-in or custom holidays.
Common actions include:
- Sending a text or email
- Creating a task
- Updating a record
- Triggering external workflows
For holiday messages, it’s best to schedule a specific send time rather than “immediate” so messages don’t go out at midnight.
Using Built-In Newsletters and Marketing Assets
Shape includes ready-to-use newsletters, flyers, and marketing assets under Templates & Resources. These materials can be previewed, duplicated, downloaded, or customized to match your brand.
Available assets include:
- Newsletters
- Flyers and posters
- Social media graphics
- Co-branded marketing materials
You can also upload your own PDFs or images to keep everything centralized.
Editing and Customizing Newsletter Templates
Newsletter templates can be edited using the advanced email builder. This allows you to update text, swap images, adjust layout, and personalize content while keeping a professional design.
After editing the template itself, you can update:
- Subject lines
- Visibility settings
- Sender information
- Email signatures
This separation keeps design and delivery settings clean and flexible.
Sending Newsletters to Your Audience
Newsletters can be sent from list views using bulk email. Select the records you want to contact, choose your newsletter template, and send immediately or schedule delivery for a later date and time.
Before sending, you can:
- Preview the email
- Make last-minute edits
- Confirm personalization tokens
- Schedule delivery
This ensures every message looks right before it goes out.
Why This Video Matters
Holidays, triggers, and newsletters work together to remove manual outreach from your workflow. Once configured, Shape handles timely communication automatically while still giving you full control over messaging, branding, and delivery. This allows you to stay consistent, professional, and responsive without adding operational overhead.
