Introduction
Tasks are a powerful feature that adds a whole new level to your email and SMS marketing. You can create messages that will be automatically sent when certain conditions occur, and specify when those conditions should be checked. For example, you could check once a week whether there are users that have not opened an email message for over 3 months, and send them a "re-engagement" email.
Generally speaking, you can use tasks to do three things:
- Send an email automatically
- Send a text message automatically
- Segment your customers automatically assigning or moving them from one group to another
Workflows and tasks: how to use them both
Please note that if you create an automation task that does the same thing as the first message in a workflow, the workflow may never start. To avoid this situation, you should EITHER use workflows OR automation tasks to send the same message when the same condition occurs, not both. You can use tasks and workflows at the same time when they serve different purposes, of course. Just not when the purpose is the same 
.
Here are some examples of when tasks could be used.
Re-engagement campaigns
Email marketing campaigns devoted to re-engage recipients that have become "idle" - for whatever reason - are becoming a more and more important part of a good email marketing strategy. Tasks allow you to automatically attempt to re-engage customers that have not clicked or opened messages, and either re-engage them or ask them to unsubscribe.
Post-signup marketing
Many businesses leverage triggered messages to automatically follow-up with customers who sign up for their service, whatever the service may be (e.g. a Web application, an online magazine, etc.). The post-signup messages could be sent to inform new users of how to best take advantage of the service that they just signed up for, or to re-engage users that have not logged in, etc.
Post-purchase marketing
An eCommerce store - maybe using an eCommerce system that has been integrated with MailUp - can leverage data stored in one or more Recipient fields to send targeted campaigns to customers. For instance, a discount 60 days after the last purchase, or a "Thank you" coupon to those that purchased more than $500 in the last 12 months.