What if there was a way for you to create emails that reach the right people at the right time with the right message? And you did not have to do all the work every time? 

Well, you are in luck! It’s called Email Automation!

By linking your website analytics in conjunction with lead capturing to your email marketing platform, you can set up trigger messages that deliver emails to your customers based on their previous purchases, website journey, behavior, preferences, subscriptions, and more. 

It’s a digital marketers’ dream, and the benefits of using email automation can make all the difference. If you haven’t included email automation into your strategy, you are missing out, but we’ve got you covered.

Here are three ways you can implement email automation and how it can benefit your business.

Three Ways to Implement Email Automation 

You Must Personalize

In this digital age of emerging technologies and tools, email remains one of the most cost-effective channels to reach your audience with the ability to scale at an accelerated rate.

Even knowing this, there is still a fight to be seen in the inbox, and having personalized content can be the deciding factor between your email being deleted or opened. Personalization focuses on delivering the most relevant content to your end-users and serves as another tool to reinforce the buying decision, taking the guesswork out of what to buy.

Data can help with deciding what to personalize in your email by using your website data and customer purchasing behavior to create marketing emails tailored to specific types of customers to help drive sales. 

Abandon cart emails are one of many, effective automation campaigns for personalization. When a customer leaves without buying after they have added items to their cart, this is considered cart abandonment. 

Roughly 3/4 shoppers decide to leave a site without finishing a purchase. 

While that’s a hard statistic to follow, more than 40% of abandon cart emails are opened.

So what does that mean for you? That you have the opportunity to set up an automated campaign that later sends your customers those abandoned items via email to give them the extra push they need to making a buying decision.

Now you just recovered lost dollars and reengaged your customer.

The Follow Up Funnel 

Retention is when a customer purchases again and again and again…..and again. Who doesn’t want that? It’s way cheaper to drive current customers to make repeat purchases than to acquire a new customer. Retention is where email automation can help! By using purchasing data, you can create an automation email follow-up funnel that keeps your customers engaged. 

Below is a list of a few automation campaigns you can create to follow-up with your customers:

Alert them when you have new products

Send your customer alerts on new products based on their past purchases and interest. 

Do your customers like a particular brand or item, and you just released something new that relates? Let them know! New product alerts keep your customer’s informed on your inventory and also can drive buying decisions.  

Take advantage of upsell or cross-sell opportunities. 

Scenario: If your customers shopping behaviour is indicating that most shoppers who purchase item X also purchased item Y, then when customers who buy item X don’t buy item Y, you have the opportunity to send them item Y in an email, helping to encourage a purchase. 

__________________________________

                            X=iPhone Y=iPad 

Send product replenishment reminders

1. Is it time to restock? If you know the lifespan of your product or have items that need to be refreshed over time, sending well-timed emails can be the perfect way to obtain repeat purchases. 
2.  Is there a trend in how often customers repeatedly purchase a particular item? Whether it’s three months, six months, or even 12 months, use that information to set up automated campaigns. Replenishment reminders are highly effective because you will be delivering the right message at the right time to the right person.

Thank Them For Their First Purchase

1. Set up a ‘First Time Buyers – Thank You’ automation campaign that triggers a week or so after your customer’s first purchase. A Thank You Campaign is a great way to acknowledge your customers and to reinforce their buying decision. 
2. This campaign can quickly expand into asking customers for reviews on past purchased items. Customer reviews are a great way to discover new customers; lets you know what’s working and helps you sell more items. Asking for reviews shows your customers you value their opinion and experience with your brand. 

Offer Discounts

1. Discounts sent to first-time buyers can make them feel special and incentivize them to make another purchase. 
2. Discounts also work well with buyers who have gone dormant. They work well because you already know inactive customers are familiar with your brand, they have shown interest in your products, and they’ve purchased with you before. So by analyzing the purchasing cycles of your customers, you can send discounts that help reengage them without becoming predictable and ineffective with your offers.

Segment Your List

Segmentation is a simple yet often overlooked task. It is done by dividing your subscriber list based on specific criteria, and it’s the difference between blasting your entire email list and sending emails to a smaller, targeted list. 

Having an email list is already a powerful tool, but segmenting that list can have a significant impact on your analytics and revenue. 

In reality, regardless of the products you sell, there is no one size fits all customer and segmenting your list will allow you to create specific messages tailored to your customers in the different stages of their buying cycle.

You can segment your list into smaller groups based upon buying patterns, open rates, location, interest, preferences, purchase history, age, gender, and more. For automation, segmentation is beneficial because it will help you craft different messaging, and content increasing personalization.

You can also get creative. Try using segmentation to set up advanced workflows tailored around nurturing leads to gauge interest around specific products and purchases. Segmentation not only increases engagement rates and conversions, but it also improves customer satisfaction. 

How awesome is that?