Emails. You remember reading every single one that a company ever sent you, right? Most likely, not. 

The truth is, capturing the attention of consumers who are overstimulated, or rather bombarded, with mass emails on a daily basis is not always easy. But, what if there was a better way to engage with consumers that didn’t involve mass emails?

Email marketing automation is a simple and cost-efficient way to engage both high-value and low-value customers and to re-engage at-risk customers with timely, targeted, relevant, and personalized emails.

 

The best part? It’s all automated! Set it up once and you’re ready to sit back, relax, and stand out to your customers from all the noise.

 

How Does Email Marketing Automation Software Work?

Email automation software intelligently tracks actions taken by subscribers when interacting with your brand and other contextual data. The software then automatically sends emails based on certain identified “triggers.” These triggers include:

 

• Specified dates or predetermined lengths of time, for time-sensitive matters This includes birthdays, anniversaries, or feedback requests emails.

• Behavioural triggers, based on something a subscriber does or doesn’t do. This includes new customer signs up, app uninstalls, abandoned online carts, etc.

 

Tracking allows you to gain insightful data on creating products and services that your customers actually want and need.

 

Top Benefits of Email Automation

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business, or corporation selling B2B or B2C, establishing an effective automated email marketing strategy provides profitable benefits including:

• Higher Click-Through Rate: triggered emails are opened 199% more than mass emails, according to Epsilon. 

• Increased ROI: by delivering the right emails to the right customers at the right time, they’re more likely to engage and take action. This results in faster and higher conversion rates. 

• Higher Customer Satisfaction & Engagement: sending emails to customers that are timely, relevant, and personalized fosters a customer-centric model that creates positive touchpoints for your customers with your brand. 

• Higher Customer Retention: email is proven to be the greatest driver of customer retention throughout the customer lifecycle. 
• Increased Efficiency: automating manual and repetitive tasks saves your precious time and eases your stress by simplifying workflow.
• Improved Customer Market Segmentation: automatically segment your audience to easily and accurately identify groups that each one of your customers falls into with email lists. This not only ensures that the emails each customer segment receives are relevant and targeted based on their previous interactions, but it continues to collect data so that your segments lists are automatically and routinely updated on potentially changing preferences or behaviours. 
• Improved Marketing Data Collection: track and gauge consumer response and interaction to your various campaigns to establish more effective and targeted email marketing campaigns going forward by viewing detailed data on which customers opened your email and clicked on links in addition to their geographic location. You can also see and manage bounced emails as well as the reasons why your email bounced back.

 

Automation in email marketing provides your brand with the tools to create and deliver marketing campaigns based on critical data without time-consuming manual effort. The result is more effective email marketing campaigns that increase conversion rates and work for everyone.

Quick Examples of Email Marketing Automation

1. Automated Welcome & Onboarding Emails

Introduce your brand, make a great first impression, and kickstart engagement with new leads by greeting new customers who have signed up with a friendly welcome email or promotion at a time when they are most receptive to emails from your brand. You can also orient them with your service or product offerings by giving them an easy-to-understand walk-through of how it works and what they can expect from you. 

 

Given that larger companies like Amazon and Netflix have adopted and used email automation platforms for years, 74.4% of people have come to expect a welcome email when they subscribe to a company’s email system. 

 

Welcome emails can also have long-term impacts on your bottom line by delivering 33% more long-term engagement and 4x the open rates and 5x the click rates compared to other bulk promotions. It also provides 3x the transactions and revenue per email compared to regular promotional emails. Translation? Show subscribers your gratitude and reap the rewards of their attention!

Credit: Really Good Emails

2. Automated Email series

Launching an effective automated email system often involves creating an email series that guides your leads down the marketing and sales funnel. With this method, different emails are sent at different times in a series based on identified triggers. 

 

These sequences can be used for a variety of different goals including:

• Re-engagement: create different re-engagement email sequences for contacts who have interacted with your emails recently and those who haven’t to get at-risk customers back. 
• Brand education: send a different series of brand education emails to contacts who may have recently followed you on social media, visited your landing page, downloaded media or content from your website, or displayed interest in a specific brand-related topic or item. 
• Sales initiatives: send a different series of emails for contacts based on shopping categories or based on shopping frequency to encourage them to buy specific services or products.
• Event information: send a series of emails based on events that subscribers have signed up to such as event reminders, thank you messages for their attendance, and event recaps.

 

Email Series can also be easily updated and changed based on the constantly changing needs of your brand.

3. Automated Re-Engagement Emails

Send powerful re-engagement emails with eye-catching subject lines to reactivate dormant or at-risk customers. Incentivize subscribers by showcasing your latest product or service launches, providing them with exclusive access to special features or freebies, or promotions that will expire soon to meaningfully win them back!

4. Automate Window Shopping & Abandoned Cart Emails

Send emails to incentivize purchase on items that your customers have been eyeing on your website or kindly remind your shoppers that they left something in their cart every time they abandon their cart. Automated abandoned cart emails can bring back 8 to 13% of customers. Use tactics like discount codes or customer reviews to encourage them to place an order. It’s that simple!

 

Credit: Really Good Emails

5. Automated Transactional Emails

Transactional emails generate a whopping 8x higher open rates compared to other marketing emails. 

 

Send a wide range of automated emails based on recent transactions including:

• Thank you emails
• Post-purchase emails
• Subscription confirmation emails
• Account activation emails
• Password reset emails 
• Trial expiration emails

 

Also, include key information such as similar product suggestions to keep customers engaged with your brand!

6. Automated Milestone Emails

Celebrate milestones by wishing your customers a happy birthday or anniversary to let them know that you care. Build a positive relationship with your customers by giving them an offer on that special day.

 

7. Automated Feedback Requests

Gain insightful feedback on recent customer interactions with your brand including app uninstalls, subscription removals, or recent purchase quality/experiences. Use this information to improve offerings and manage customer relationships better going forward.

 

8. Automated Update & Informational Emails

Automation of email marketing helps keep your contacts up to date with a multitude of informational emails.

Examples include:

• Product usage metrics emails: track customer usage of your products or services and send them regular progress updates such as how many workouts they have completed or how close they are to winning a badge.  
• Event information emails: encourage contacts to attend upcoming events by letting them when and how to sign up. 

Ensure your contacts are always informed by automatically sending emails that keep them informed and motivated.

 

9. Automated Invites 

Offer VIP access to online communities or exclusive events to high-value customers or contacts who are particularly engaged in your campaigns to deepen their relationship with your brand.

Embrace Email Marketing Automation With ActiveTrail

Regardless of the type of business that you’re running, marketing automation for e-commerce is a powerful tool for turning visitors into paying customers and casual clients into regulars by standing out from all of the noise. 

Are you looking to embrace everything email marketing automation has to offer? Start your free trial today and see how you can leverage automation to send timely, targeted, and personalized emails.