Overview
A Beehiiv automation is a sequence of one or more emails that Beehiiv sends to a subscriber in response to a certain condition. Automations are most commonly used for welcoming someone who has just registered for a free account or just purchased a paid subscription.
Subscribers on the Lede platform are pushed to Beehiiv via the Beehiiv API rather than through a Beehiiv-hosted signup form. Two quirks of the Beehiiv API affect which automations fire automatically:
- Beehiiv’s Signup trigger does fire when Lede creates a new subscriber via the API, but it evaluates trigger filters at the moment of signup. If your automation uses a Signup trigger filtered to a paid tier, it will only fire for subscribers who are already at that tier when their Beehiiv record is created — not for free subscribers who upgrade later.
- Beehiiv’s “Subscriber updated” trigger does not fire when a subscriber’s tier is changed via the API. So you can’t rely on it to catch existing free subscribers who later upgrade to a paid product.
To make sure the right people receive the right welcome emails, Lede lets you assign Beehiiv automations directly from the Publisher App — separately for non-paying registrations and for each paid product purchase. Lede then enrolls the subscriber in the assigned automation at the moment they register or complete a purchase, so the email fires at the right time regardless of how Beehiiv’s own triggers behave.
Prerequisite: Add an “Add by API” trigger to your automation
Before an automation can be assigned in the Publisher App, it must have an active “Add by API” trigger in Beehiiv. Without it, Beehiiv rejects API enrollment requests and the automation will not fire.
- In your Beehiiv dashboard, go to Automations and open (or create) the automation you want to use.
- In the Trigger step, add an “Add by API” trigger.
- If the same automation also serves subscribers who join through Beehiiv-hosted forms, leave any existing Signup trigger in place alongside it.
- Activate the automation.
Lede only lists automations that have an active “Add by API” trigger. If you don’t see your automation in the dropdowns described below, double-check this trigger in Beehiiv.
Assigning automations in the Publisher App
Open the Publisher App and go to Settings → Newsletter Options. The page is organized into three groups:
Beehiiv Settings
Displays the read-only Publication ID that Lede syncs subscribers to. If you ever need this changed, contact Lede support.
Non-paying Subscribers
Controls what happens when someone registers for a free account on your site (no purchase).
- Default newsletters on registration — newsletters that newly registered, non-paying customers are auto-subscribed to. Premium newsletters are not eligible here.
- Welcome Automation — choose a Beehiiv automation from the dropdown to enroll every newly registered, non-paying subscriber. Leave it empty if you don’t want to send a welcome email to free registrants. Paying subscribers do not enter this automation — they go through the per-product automation configured below.
Newsletters and welcome automation by product purchase
For each active product (subscription, gift, donation, etc.), you can configure:
- The newsletters that purchasers should be auto-subscribed to. Premium newsletters appear only for products whose entitlements include
premium-newsletter. - An optional Welcome Automation dropdown for that specific product. When a customer completes a purchase of that product, Lede enrolls them in the selected automation.
You can use different automations for different products — for example, a “welcome to the membership” series for your annual subscription and a separate “thank you for your gift” series for gift purchases.
Click Save Settings to apply your changes.
Alternative: Trigger Automations from a Segment
If you’d rather build automations around newsletter subscriptions or other subscriber attributes — for example, a tailored welcome series for each newsletter — you can use Beehiiv’s “Added to segment” trigger instead of (or in addition to) the automations assigned in the Publisher App.
Lede maintains a Beehiiv custom field for each of your newsletters and updates it whenever a subscriber opts in or out. You can build a Beehiiv segment that captures subscribers of a given newsletter, or subscribers at a particular paid tier, and then run an automation any time a contact joins that segment.
- In Beehiiv, create a segment whose filter is Custom Field → Newsletter: [Your Newsletter Name] → is true (see the Sending to Newsletters: Segments in Beehiiv article for details on building segments).
- In your automation’s Trigger step, choose Added to segment and select the segment you created.
- Activate the automation.
When a Lede subscriber opts into that newsletter — at registration, when purchasing a product, or by toggling their preferences in their account — Lede updates the corresponding Beehiiv custom field. Beehiiv recalculates segment membership, the subscriber is added to the segment, and the automation fires.
Choosing the right approach
- Use the Non-paying Subscribers → Welcome Automation field when you want a single welcome flow for everyone who registers for a free account.
- Use the per-product Welcome Automation field when you want a different welcome flow for each paid product, or to make sure existing free subscribers receive a “welcome to paid” series the moment they upgrade.
- Use a segment-triggered automation when you want flows tied to newsletter membership or to lifecycle events that happen later (for example, when an existing subscriber opts into an additional newsletter).
- You can combine these approaches. The automations assigned in the Publisher App and segment-triggered automations are independent — a subscriber may be enrolled in both.
Tips
- Every automation referenced in the Publisher App must have an active “Add by API” trigger in Beehiiv. Without it, Beehiiv rejects the enrollment and no email will fire.
- If you have an existing automation that uses only the Signup trigger, you don’t need to recreate it — just add an “Add by API” trigger alongside the existing one.
- Automations assigned in the Publisher App apply to new registrations and new purchases going forward. To backfill an automation for existing subscribers, contact Lede support.
- Only one automation can be assigned per slot (one for non-paying, one per product). If you need multiple automations to fire for the same audience, prefer the segment-trigger approach for the additional ones.