Automated emails used to be just for advanced marketers, business-to-business sales cycles and bigger retail companies. Now, every marketer should have at least three basic automated emails. Most email platforms (including emfluence) make it pretty easy to set up, and if you find that you’re doing the same list segmentation or same campaign regularly, you may be able to take advantage of setting up an automated message instead. An automated email is any email sent based on an action that your buyer or email subscriber takes, such as a click, a purchase, an abandoned shopping cart or even lack of activity.
Here are three big automated emails that all — ok, most — companies should be using:
1. A Welcome Email. This is the most basic type of email automation: someone signs up and you send them an email automagically. It’s pretty common to confirm new email sign-ups with an automatic thank you email, which can set expectations for the new subscriber. You could go one step further and set up a welcome series, for example: two or three emails that “drip out” slowly to new sign-ups over a few weeks to help continue the conversation. This is a great way to engage new subs, right out of the gate. Tnemec, an Industrial client who makes coatings and paint, uses their welcome emails to tell new subscribers what they’ll receive, how often and where else to connect with Tnemec online. They even offer a soft sell – new email subscribers are some of their warmest leads!
2. A Sales or Service Follow-up Email. Especially if you can sync your sales or appointments to your email marketing platform, follow up with a customer after a purchase, asking them to review the product or service they received either on your website or on popular review sites like Yelp or Google. This is a great way to solicit positive reviews from your happy customers (since they don’t always remember to review your product or service if they’re happy). You’ll also be able to quickly remedy any negative feedback. For example, Mercedes-Benz of Kansas City accepts nothing less than perfection, so they encourage any service customers who rate their service less than a 10 to provide constructive feedback on something that could have made the experience outstanding.
3. A Re-engagement Email. Statistics show that up to 40% of your email list hasn’t engaged with you in over a year (sometimes more!). Re-engage your subscribers and customers by monitoring their activity. If a customer stops opening or buying, you can reach out to see if you need to update contact information or you can offer them something extra-enticing to get them buying again. As an example, find out what the tipping point for your lapsed purchasers is: how long will they go without purchase before they’re unlikely to ever purchase again?
Hostess kept their email subscriber list clean by sending an email with a Twinkie the Kid plea, “I miss u.” Those contacts who at least opened the emails stayed on the list. Those who never opened, never clicked and who Hostess couldn’t re-engage were removed from the regular mailing list. Their cleaned list going forward showed much better response rates than before.
The take away – adding automated emails to your mix is the free money of email marketing. It runs whether you remember it or not and because it’s triggered by a user’s actions or purchase, it tends to hit subscribers when they’re ready to hear from you, not just whenever you send.
Interested in setting up an automated email campaign for your company? The emfluence Marketing Platform makes it easy to set up a custom solution and start data syncing right away. Contact an expert@emfluence.com to get started.
