Automating processes can significantly reduce costs and enhance efficiency, yet without a well-defined strategy, the outcomes can be detrimental.
Email automation is pivotal in engaging audiences and can be easily implemented. By setting up triggers, emails are automatically dispatched upon the occurrence of specific actions, thereby saving marketers considerable time on manual email tasks. According to a survey, 30% of professionals cited the primary advantage of marketing automation as the time it frees up.
When integrated with an effective automation strategy, email marketing yields one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) across advertising channels, with a remarkable $36 in returns for every $1 spent. Moreover, automated emails generate over 14 times more revenue per recipient (RPR) compared to manual messages.
However, without a strategy in place, your brand risks being relegated to the spam folder. To circumvent common pitfalls, adhere to best practices. This guide will delve into the top email marketing automation platforms and their key components or use cases.
Most email marketing automation platforms provide ready-to-use workflows and sequences. These platforms dispatch emails based on predefined rules that reflect subscriber actions or inactions, along with time-delay triggers. Automated emails can include welcome messages, holiday greetings, or re-engagement messages if a subscriber hasn’t made a purchase or opened an email after a certain period.
A robust automation strategy leverages email marketing’s ability to segment customers into targeted groups based on behaviors or characteristics. Marketers employing this segmentation have witnessed revenue campaign increases of up to 760%. The most prevalent marketing automation platforms include:
These platforms offer a plethora of customizable message and journey templates. Once configured, automated flows require minimal maintenance, delivering a highly personalized customer experience through the use of personalization tokens and recent activity data.
Next, we’ll explore the most popular use cases of email automation.
A welcome email is dispatched upon a subscriber joining your list, reaching them at a time when they are most receptive to your brand’s communication.
Given that the subscriber has recently engaged with your website, welcome emails typically achieve an impressive open rate of nearly 70% and a click-through rate of over 16%. What should marketers do with such a captive audience?
Welcome emails are an opportunity to express gratitude to new subscribers, introduce them to the subscription, and inform them about the frequency and topics of your communications. You can also direct new users to your most crucial website pages.
Furthermore, welcome emails help introduce your brand, provide product or service information, and offer instructions for accessing customer portals. Since welcome messages outperform non-automated campaigns by a factor of 4 in click rate and 23 in conversion rate, they are a crucial component for any business.
In the example below, Food52 conveys its mission to new subscribers and offers a welcome discount code to encourage their first purchase.
[Image source: Hubspot]
Email marketing automation doesn’t solely target engaged subscribers. Abandoned cart emails are sent to potential customers who have added products to their carts but haven’t completed the purchase, aiming to recover sales and boost profits.
Prospects who abandon their carts are more likely to convert than new customers, as they have moved further down the sales funnel. Many email marketing automation platforms also utilize browser abandonment automations, triggering an email when a customer has spent time viewing a specific product, even if it wasn’t added to a cart.
Abandoned cart emails remind shoppers of the products that sparked their interest and reignite the emotional state they were in when they were nearly ready to make a purchase. Some companies even offer discounts or additional incentives to prompt a final purchase.
On average, cart abandonment emails convert nearly 4% of recipients and have the highest RPR of all automated flows at $3.52.
[Image source: Shopify]
As a marketer, you frequently ask subscribers to take action, such as downloading an ebook, completing a survey, or exploring a product.
Since you’re often seeking favors, it’s important to express gratitude occasionally. An automated thank you email following a customer’s action can humanize your brand and demonstrate the value you place on your customers.
Common instances for sending thank you emails include post-purchase, after a donation, following an event, or after filling out a lead form.
Birthdays and holidays are excellent opportunities to incentivize customers to make another purchase, as they provide customers with a sense of fulfillment on their special days.
A strategic email marketing approach includes offering exclusive discounts or freebies to customers on their birthdays. These timely discounts make customers feel valued and encourage them to re-engage with your brand. It’s also beneficial to set a time limit for using these discounts to promote urgency.
Holidays present a great opportunity to promote products and services, but competition for customer attention can be fierce. Timing is crucial. Consider using segmentation within your email marketing platform to automate early deals for highly engaged customers or flash-sale incentives for those who haven’t made a recent purchase.
Re-engagement emails are crucial to an automation strategy. These campaigns, also known as win-back campaigns, are a series of emails sent to inactive subscribers after a certain period.
Although targeting disengaged customers may seem counterproductive, nearly 45% of subscribers who receive a “win-back” email will open your future emails. The initial email should acknowledge the period of inactivity and offer an incentive to re-engage, possibly with a time-sensitive offer. Offering a brief survey can also help understand why they stopped engaging.
The timing of re-engagement messaging will vary based on your sales cycle. E-commerce sites may expect customers to make purchases multiple times per month, so a few days of disengagement may trigger an email. Subscription services may wait a month or more before re-engaging.
A replenishment email reminds customers to reorder items when they are running low, while back-in-stock emails notify customers that a particular item is back in stock, particularly if they have previously viewed the item.
Both types of messages are essential for your email marketing automation strategy and contribute to building brand loyalty. These emails increase the number of touchpoints between you and your customers and anticipate their needs, often being perceived as helpful reminders rather than advertisements.
Even for businesses operating on a subscription model, an email reminding customers of an upcoming shipment provides additional opportunities for engagement and allows customers to update their shipping address or payment method.
These automated journeys should be an integral part of your digital marketing strategy to foster relationships with users and deliver relevant content to your audience. An effective email marketing automation strategy ensures that the right messages are sent to the appropriate subscriber segments at the right time.
While automation saves time, it doesn’t negate the need for human oversight. Failing to analyze campaign data and make necessary adjustments can diminish campaign effectiveness or lead to increased bounce rates and unopened messages. Coalition’s expertise and proactive management of email automation have increased a client’s revenue by 110% and doubled their email open rates.
We’ve assisted hundreds of companies in optimizing their websites to boost email list sign-ups before developing a winning email marketing strategy. Our email marketing automation strategies will enhance your performance, increase ROI, and drive new business. Contact us for a free proposal on how we can help your business thrive.
