How to get started with email marketing automation

Love to have more customers buying from your business with less effort? Find out how you can use email marketing automation to grow your leads and sales.

Are you currently using email marketing automation in your business? If the answer is ‘no’ then you could be missing out on important opportunities to nurture existing customers, and increase your customer loyalty and sales.

And while it may sound complicated, email marketing automation can easily be implemented by small businesses using your existing email software.

Find out what email marketing automation can do for your business and get ideas for the four most effective email marketing workflows.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is the use of software and services that automates marketing actions, automatically sending time or action triggered emails to subscribers. 

Which basically means you can create successful multifunctional campaigns in no time.

With marketing automation, you can collect useful customer data, create personalized messages and eventually build strong customer relationships. 

Properly integrated, email marketing automation also offers more and quality leads and a reliable analytics core. 

Why do you need marketing automation?

When used correctly, email marketing automation can help you generate and manage leads, build and manage email marketing campaigns. And, once it’s set up, it’s doing all this in the background while you’re getting on with running your business.

Here are just some of the things you can achieve with email marketing automation software like Moosend, Omnisend and MailChimp:

  • Identify, track and engage potential customers online.
  • Filter your leads based on their level of engagement and interest.
  • Get a full prospect activity to help your sales and marketing teams align.
  • Nurture and obtain quality leads.
  • Offer memorable personalised customer experiences to all types of audiences.
  • Save time to focus on your marketing strategy.
  • Improve your sales funnel.

Here are a few Mailchimp alternatives to help you get started.

Email marketing tools also enable you to measure your campaigns against your KPIs to ensure that your marketing is delivering the results you need.

The four most effective email marketing workflows

So now you have a general idea of the benefits of email marketing automation. But how specifically can you use it in your business? Here are four of the most effective email marketing workflows.

1) Abandoned cart emails

According to SaleCycle, 75.6% of visitors leave websites without completing their purchase. This is known as an ‘abandoned cart’.

The abandoned cart email is one of the most effective, revenue-generating emails that you can send. It’s purpose is to remind your potential customers about their incomplete purchase, and ideally drive them back to your site to complete it. 

A successful abandoned cart email consists of a compellingly clickable subject line and, ideally, attractive images of the abandoned products. Customer reviews are also a good idea. 

2) Thanks for subscribing emails

When someone joins your mailing list, it’s a great opportunity to make the right first impression with a polite welcome email.

It’s also the perfect opportunity to remind new subscribers about what you do, and direct them to any important pages, or to your social platforms, as welcome emails generate 4x more opens and 5x more clicks than regular email marketing campaigns. 

As well as being the polite thing to do, a well-crafted thank you email sets the tone so your subscribers know what to expect. 

Your welcome email should reflect your company’s branding and tone of voice. It’s also a good idea to offer a discount code that your subscribers can use for their first purchase, or a gift guide to lead them directly to your website. 

3) Re-engagement emails

It might seem a bit of a long shot emailing someone who hasn’t engaged with you for a while but, according to Visually, around 24% of disengaged subscribers will read a re-engagement email.

Plus it it’s five times cheaper to keep and re-engage an existing customer than it is to go out and acquire a new once. 

When creating a re-engagement email campaign, remember that honesty is essential. Telling your customers you miss them and asking them to come back is the whole point here, so don’t be shy. 

If you can, it’s a good idea to segment your list according to the reasons each customer disengaged, and tailor their emails accordingly. 

Some of the most common reasons customers forget you are: 

  • Unexpected delivery costs.
  • Complicated checkout process.
  • Having to register.
  • Website crashes.

Whatever the reason why they’re not currently engaging with your business, you might want to consider including a sale coupon or offer in your email. Who doesn’t like an incentive to shop?

4) Up-sell and cross-sell emails

If a customer has already bought from you, it’s a fairly good sign that they need and want what you’re selling. So it’s worth finding out if they need anything else.

This can be an additional product, more of the same, or something more expensive. Think about what might compliment their existing purchase. Or what kind of thing that buyer may also buy.

So, for example, if you sell beauty products and someone has just bought a lipstick, you could email them with a recommendation or offer for a lip pencil or a matching nail varnish. 

Talk about the benefits of your product and, if you can, include product shots in the email.

Timing is everything with up-sell and cross-sell emails. For the best results, send it soon after the initial order has been placed, or on its delivery date.

Ready to use email marketing automation in your business?

Email marketing automation can be a game-changer for business. It can make lead nurturing more effective, provide highly personalised customer experiences and reduce your marketing costs. 

And once it’s set up, in many cases it needs little day-to-day management to run successfully. So if you’re not already using it, look for opportunities to get started.

Read more email marketing tips

You can read more advice on email marketing in these articles:

Photo by Xtra, Inc.