welcome_cycle

welcome_cycle is a ruby gem to help you send out a cycle of emails. Specifically when new users sign up to your app.

gem 'welcome_cycle'
bundle install

rails generate welcome_cycle:install

Creates:

config/initializers/welcome_cycle.rb - Defines config and your emails.

app/mailers/welcome_cycle_mailer.rb - Mailer methods for each email, each one is passed the recipient object.

## Config

The configure block should be specified at the top of welcome_cycle.rb

WelcomeCycle.configure do |c|
	c.base_class = Subscription
	c.welcome_cycle_start_date = :trial_started_at
	c.welcome_cycle_end_date = :trial_ends_at
	c.before { run_something_special }
	c.after { run_something_special }
end

base_class - The base model in your app to query for email recipients. (E.g Organisation, Subscription, User, Account, etc.)

welcome_cycle_start_date - The date/datetime field that determines the start of your welcome cycle. (If you want to send email 'n' days after the start.)

welcome_cycle_end_date - The date/datetime field that determines the end of the welcome cycle. (If you want to send emails 'n' days around the end.)

before - An optional callback to run before all emails are sent.

after - An optional callback to run after all emails are sent.

rails generate welcome_cycle:email name_for_your_email_here

The above generator will add an email definition to welcome_cycle.rb, add the mailer method to welcome_cycle_mailer.rb and create the corresponding text and html erb templates.

days_into_cycle – The days on which you would like the email to be sent after signing up. E.g.: 3 = Three days after the sign up.

days_offset_from_cycle_end - The days on which you like the email to go out around the cycle/trial end.

• positive numbers: Number of days before the welcome cycle ends.
• negative number: Number of days after the welcome cycle ends.

scope - An optional arel chain that allows you restrict the recipients to any conditions you like.

• With some simple conditions you can easily set up email variations. E.g. have they performed a certain task? Have they subscribed? Etc.

You must specify days_into_cycle or days_offset_from_cycle_end.

WelcomeCycle::Email.new("We miss you") do
	days 7, 14, 21
	scope do
		where('last_login = ?', nil)
	end
end

WelcomeCycle::Email.new("Trial ends soon!") do
	days -5
	scope do
		where(:subscribed_at => false)
	end
end

Set your favourite scheduler to run the WelcomeCycle::Driver.run daily. E.g. using CRON to send them everyday at 6am:

0 6 * * * cd /path/to/you/app && rails runner -e production 'WelcomeCycle::Driver.run'

1. The email templates and corresponding methods live inside your app.
2. Ironically welcome_cycle is not designed to send an actual welcome_email! You probably want do that immediately when people sign-up. Feel free to use the provided mailer class.
3. We'll try our best to stick to semantic versioning (http://semver.org/)

• Work out a clean way of ignoring the initializer unless rails runner is being used.

welcome_cycle is released under the MIT license:

• www.opensource.org/licenses/MIT