go through james westfield July 25, 2024
Creating an automated email marketing campaign can seem daunting. You must consider a variety of factors that may affect conversions. At the same time, you have to do this while balancing the needs of your customers. Then you need to make sure your automated email series addresses every stage of the buyer’s journey.
To make the process easier, we’ve put together this guide. Follow these email automation workflow best practices for best results:
6 Email Automation Best Practices to Follow
Ready to jump on the email automation bandwagon? Follow these six email automation best practices to send the right email to your subscribers at the right time:
1. Set goals and plan automated workflows
There’s no point setting up an automated email workflow if you don’t know what you want to achieve. Think about it. Without marketing goals, how else can you measure the effectiveness of an automated email sequence?
Your goals determine the type of automated workflow you set up. For example, an email sequence whose goal is drive sales It will look different compared to existing new customers.
Here are other automated email workflow goals you might have:
- inform or educate
- Reduce shopping cart abandonment
- Promote events
- win back subscribers
To ensure the best results, your automation workflows and goals should be aligned with every stage of the customer journey. That’s why creating a customer journey map can be helpful. Think of a customer journey map as a visual representation of the stages your customers go through when interacting with your brand. Essentially, it allows you to visualize your customers’ specific interaction points with your brand at each stage.
The main benefit of this email automation strategy is that it improves your customer retention rates. When you combine your goals with your customer journey map, you can deliver timely messaging that resonates with your customers.
Additionally, when you analyze automated workflows against goals, you can identify factors that are blocking ideal user behavior. This can help you fine-tune your email workflow and help customers progress in their journey.
2. Trigger emails based on customer behavior
When building a series of emails, automatically send them based on specific customer actions and inactions.
Behavioral triggers are email sequences that are initiated in response to an action by the recipient. Common actions that can trigger this type of email workflow include:
In the image below, Sony sends a triggered email in response to an abandoned shopping cart on its Playstation store:
Meanwhile, time-based triggers occur in response to inaction. For example, you can set up an email sequence that triggers after a user has been inactive for a specified period of time. The content, call to action, and goal of each email in the sequence will be win back client.
Triggered emails are crucial because they allow you to speak to your customers at specific moments in their journey. This helps enhance customer experience.
Additionally, trigger emails target specific customer journey stages. So, they essentially guide the customer to take the desired action.
3. Incorporate follow-up actions into automated marketing campaigns
Unfortunately, sending an email to your target audience once is not enough to get them to take the action you want. It doesn’t matter if they show serious interest in your product or service. Life distractions can still distract them and hurt your chances of making a sale or nurturing a lead.
So incorporate follow-up actions into your automated marketing campaigns.
This requires reaching out to customers who have stopped moving forward with their customer journey. For example, a customer might have abandoned their cart during checkout or signed up for a webinar but failed to attend. Regardless, your follow-up email will give them a gentle nudge so they can re-engage with your brand.
In the context of automated emails, your follow-up emails should be triggered based on the actions of the email recipient. Abandoned trolley, lead magnet Downloads, newsletter subscriptions, free trial signups, etc. are all fair game for follow-up emails.
There’s no clear answer on how often you should follow up with clients. As a rule of thumb, aim to automatically send follow-up emails a few days after the initial confirmation email. For example, if a customer abandons their cart, you can wait three days to a week before following up with them.
At the same time, if a customer’s behavior indicates that they need time to consider doing business with you, think long term. Write a series of longer emails with informative content like blog posts and case studies to nurture them until they appear. You can use ready-made Artificial intelligence template Just like the accelerated content creation process above.
4. Implement hyper-personalization
Hyper-personalization is when email marketing leverages insights from historical and live customer data and uses them to deliver relevant and personalized content. For example, in hyper-personalization, you could send this email on the left to male subscribers. Female subscribers will receive the email to the right:
To leverage hyper-personalization in automated email workflows, collect as much data about your customers as possible. Gather their demographics, previous purchases, interests and browsing trends. To do this, use tools like surveys, preference centers, heat maps, and recorded sessions.
There are many ways your email marketing efforts can benefit from hyper-personalization. For one, it helps you create email content and personalized messages that resonate with your audience. When used with email segmentation, you can build dynamic content based on factors such as your audience’s behavior and location.
Additionally, hyper-personalization is also great for customer engagement. It helps you customize your communications in a way that’s best suited to achieve higher conversion rates. With AI-driven automation, you can speak directly to your customers’ needs and Pain points Scale.
Finally, hyper-personalization gives you a deeper understanding of your customers. This benefit is important because it can improve your email marketing opportunities in a number of ways.
Not only can you better target your customers, you can also get the data you need to create a delightful customer experience. Your customers will view your emails as a source of valuable content.
5. Maintain a consistent brand
When your email subscribers open your automated email, they should immediately know that the email is from you. Brand recognition is key to business success. half of consumers Say they will buy from a brand they easily recognize.
To foster this sense of familiarity, maintain consistent branding across your emails and web properties.
There are several ways to do this. The easiest way is to put your company logo in the profile picture section of your email account and in the email header. As shown below, SaaS company ClickUp follows this best practice:
This email design technique ensures that your logo will be the first visual element your email contacts see when they open your email. It’s also the cheapest way to build brand awareness through an email marketing campaign.
Another effective way to maintain brand consistency is to use the same design elements in your emails as on your website. Use the same font and color scheme across your email communications. This will prevent your potential customers from getting confused when accessing your email and other web resources.
6. Continuously track performance
It’s a good practice to continually track the performance of your automated marketing emails. Tracking performance provides a treasure trove of information you can rely on when planning future campaigns.
One way to track performance is to regularly perform A/B testing of various elements of your email. Send two sets of emails with different subject lines, layout designs, and call-to-action copy to both audiences. Then, take note of which version generates higher email engagement rates.
When conducting A/B testing, tracking success metrics will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign. Key metrics to track include open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
You can analyze the results in the email marketing automation software of your choice. Use these metrics to make data-driven decisions related to your workflow, as a B2C or B2B strategy.
You can also use email pipeline conversion analytics to track campaign success.
Email pipeline conversion analytics track how customers move through your conversion pipeline. With it, you can identify bottlenecks that cause subscribers to churn or hinder their journey progress. The data you get from this analysis will help you optimize your conversion pipeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an automated email workflow?
An automated email workflow is a series of emails that are automatically triggered and sent based on specific actions by a subscriber. This action can be anything from a link click to a form submission.
Automating workflows can be a powerful tool for your overall Email Marketing Strategy. Not only do they save you valuable time. They can also help you achieve your business goals with minimal intervention.
What are the benefits of email automation?
Email automation workflows offer several benefits. For one, they help you respond appropriately to customer behavior. Additionally, email automation saves you time. It can automate mundane and repetitive workflows (for example, welcoming new customers). Finally, automated workflows can drive conversions. They help you personalize your email communications and send them to an audience you find relevant.
What are the best email automation tools?
There are many excellent options on the market, but we can confidently say that AWeber is one of the best. It provides all the features you need to automate your email workflow. These include an email generator for design and behavioral automation features. Other great automation tools include HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and GetResponse.
How do I automate my emails?
There are five steps to automating your email marketing campaign. The first step involves choosing email automation software. The second step has to do with determining the goals of your automated marketing campaign. The third step is to target and segment your audience. Step four involves deciding on email triggers. The final step involves setting up email campaigns and launching them.
When it ends
The email automation best practices discussed should get your marketing campaigns off to a great start. Your email marketing campaigns must include follow-up actions to bring disengaged customers back into the fold. Without a goal, creating automated workflows will be a pointless endeavor. For best results, make sure you map them to the customer journey during the goal setting phase.
At the same time, hyper-personalization can help you gain actionable insights about your audience and increase customer engagement. Maintain a consistent branding across your emails, social media accounts, and website. This will ensure brand awareness. Automatically trigger emails to ensure content is sent at the right time based on pre-specified user actions. Finally, continually track the performance of your marketing campaigns. It will help you resolve any issues in future events.
Good luck on your email automation journey!
