Top 5 Email Marketing Automations for Every Business

Implementing email marketing automations within your business can help you in the long run by establishing stronger customer relationships and optimizing your business. Without it, you’re looking at energy and time loss.

On top of that, you’re trying to manage customers, employees, finances, and get through a sea of emails and DMs spamming your inbox every hour of the day from Monday to Friday. It’s too stressful, and there’s not enough time on your hands, especially for handling email campaigns manually.

That’s why in this article, I’ll cover the automations that must be implemented in your business, but not just any…

The 5 best email marketing automations.

• Welcome Series

• Post Purchase

• Abandoned Checkout

• Re-Engagement Sequence

• Drip Campaigns

But first…

What Are Email Marketing Automations?

Email marketing automations are pre-built emails that are sent to your subscribers based on specific customer behaviors or a schedule. This allows you to achieve the best outcome between your automation and its goal. Instead of manually sending campaigns, businesses can rely on email marketing automations to deliver timely, relevant messages at every stage of the customer journey.

How Email Automations Can Benefit Your Business

Email automations benefit any business from dealing with cold contacts and uninterested customers to warming old and new contacts through nurturing with the proper message, ultimately improving engagement and increasing conversions. Automated email workflows create consistent results without constant manual effort.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s turn your business into a behemoth of automation by starting with the most recognized sequence. One that significantly impacts how your subscribers interact, engage, and convert from your emails.

1) Welcome Series

Welcome to the welcome series. If you haven’t guessed already, this is where first impressions about your business are established. Your job is to make a strong first impression by introducing your business the right way. Not sure how to? Here’s how it works…

Truthfully, in a welcome series, not every new subscriber will convert into a buying customer, but if you want to take control and see higher open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement across your emails, then setting a welcome series automation for your business is a no-brainer. 

A welcome series typically consists of 3 to 5 emails, sent 1 to 3 days apart (more or less emails depending on the sophistication level of your business).

Welcome Series Automation: What Each Email Should Include

Don’t complicate the first email; keep it simple. The introductory email should consist of a short welcome followed by fulfilling the incentive for signing up (If any). Right after both, clearly lay out a few “rules” or “expectations” that new subscribers can expect while being on your list. 

This way, your first email acts as a filter, allowing people to leave if it’s not for them, or stay if they resonate with your message and what you offer.

What goes in the next emails? 

This is where all the magic happens. With the following emails, you’ll begin to…

• Build and establish trust and credibility with subscribers almost immediately. People buy from those they trust.

• Introduce your story and values, connecting with subscribers on a deeper level. Resonating with people makes them like you.

• Nurture, educate, and teach lessons to your subscribers with answers to real-life problems they may be experiencing. Earn attention by solving real problems.

Together, all of these factors play a big role in forming the way subscribers perceive you. This results in most businesses seeing an average conversion rate of 2-5% from a welcome series alone. Better than most email types. If you don’t have one already, get one in place.

2) Post Purchase

A subscriber just converted. Your next goal is to turn them into a repeat customer. So how do you reel them back in? By using a post-purchase email automation.

Post-purchase automations are triggered immediately after a customer converts from your store, but they’re not ultimately about upselling or presenting products to your customers. 

Their real purpose is to reduce buyer’s remorse and build trust that eventually translates into recurring purchases.

Once a customer converts, naturally, they begin having doubts and ask themselves:

• Did I make the right choice?

• What’s the next step from here?

• Where can I track my order?

Failing to address these kinds of questions can leave your customers confused, frustrated, or doubtful, which can lead to them writing negative reviews or even returning their purchase. This can hurt your business’s revenue and reputation. 

So here’s how to fix that with a post-purchase sequence of about 4-5 emails.

Post-Purchase Automation: What Each Email Should Include

The first email in a post-purchase automation (confirmation email) is where all customer concerns are addressed. Depending on what’s purchased, your email should include all of the following points to reassure them that they’ve made the right choice.

• Order Confirmation (The Right Way) – Include the product’s name, order number, quantity, and price.

• Reassurance – Reduce customers’ buyer’s remorse by immediately reminding them about their smart choice in choosing you.

• Delivery/Access Details – Provide your customers with easy-to-follow instructions to track their product, access it, or get it started.

• Support Contact Info – You’re not a wizard; you can’t answer every customer concern, so include a way for them to reach out for support.

The following emails mainly focus on helping the customer get started and providing tips about the product, all while continuously reducing buyer’s remorse. 

This allows you to perform a soft sell once you reach the fourth email by suggesting recommended products or complementary items. Finally, before closing out, the last email of the automation should contain a form or survey for customers to leave a positive review.

Instead of risking damage to your business’s reputation, you can use those same customers to improve your social proof, increasing retention and attracting new customers.

That’s the power of having a post-purchase automation sequence in place. Not to mention the 1-3% conversion and 27% customer retention that business owners see on average.

3) Abandoned Checkout

Picture this: a subscriber has added your product to their cart, and just as they reach the checkout page, they leave. This happens more often than not, with an average abandonment rate of 70%.

A rate that high is a clear indication of leaving money on the table, so instead of manually reeling customers back, leave that up to an abandoned checkout automation.

An abandoned checkout sequence can re-engage about 10-20% of customers and nudge them to complete their purchase before they forget about it completely. 

This automation typically consists of about 3-4 emails sent over the course of 5 days. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, so here’s the blueprint.

Abandoned Checkout Automation: What Each Email Should Include

Most automations’ first email is sent almost immediately, but this sequence waits. The best time to send the first email should be between 1 and 3 hours after abandonment.

The goal of each email is to nudge the customer into finishing their purchase, but each email has its own unique element. Here’s what that looks like:

• Email 1, Product Reminder – The first email should act as a product reminder for the customer. For this email, use the abandoned product’s name, image, quantity, price, and stock as urgency (if possible), followed by a call to action (CTA) to bring the customer back to checkout. 

• Email 2, Social Proof – The second email is about gathering testimonials related to the abandoned product. Start by building off the first email in the abandoned checkout automation, except this time make sure to include reviews, ratings, or testimonials alongside the benefits of the product and a CTA.

• Email 3, Urgency – This is where a small nudge becomes a push. Use the third email for urgency. Add scarcity, remind the customer of the abandoned cart, and include a CTA. At this point, you can even introduce a discount or incentive for extra reinforcement.

• Email 4, Final Reminder – This is the customer’s last chance. Compress everything you’ve covered in the previous emails for the final email. The difference here is that you’ll be adding your support/help contact information to remove any last objections. You can also request customer feedback to gather data on what’s preventing customers from completing their purchase.

Abandoned checkout automations help you regain a huge chunk of what would have been lost revenue, earning a spot among the most valuable email automations for your business. Stop letting customers go so easily and win them back with reassurance, guidance, and reminders.

4) Re-engagement Sequence

When customers have lost interest, your last chance to win them back is through a re-engagement automation. 

Many businesses that deal with customers who have lost interest believe it’s a good idea to generate new leads while ignoring existing subscribers, but doing so can ultimately hinder a business’s engagement and potential revenue. 

A re-engagement sequence is a workflow that focuses on regaining the interest of subscribers who have been inactive for a certain period while also cleaning your list to improve engagement rates and quality.

Now, here’s why you might need a re-engagement automation…

• Cleans Your List – Cleaning your email list improves a multitude of metrics within your email marketing. This improves future open rates, click-through rates, and engagement.

• Reduces Spam – Keeping inactive subscribers is a risk to any business. Inactive contacts are most likely to mark your emails as spam. Re-engagement sequences help remove them, which also reduces potential spam rates by about 30-50%. That’s fewer problems to worry about later on.

• Increases Revenue – Reviving inactive subscribers essentially welcomes them back to your list of healthy contacts. These are contacts that may eventually convert from other campaigns, increasing the chances of generating more revenue by 5-20%.

In actuality, re-engagement workflows are less about generating revenue and more about being your safeguard when it comes to maintaining a healthy email list. So, here’s how you can set one up to do exactly that.

Re-engagement Automation: What Each Email Should Include 

Re-engagement sequences greatly depend on conditions to track a subscriber’s behavior accurately, which is why they usually consist of about four emails (with more if necessary). 

A re-engagement sequence is like a filter. It either qualifies or disqualifies contacts, so for every action a subscriber takes, there must be an outcome.

• Email 1, Check In – Keep it light-hearted. Remind the subscriber about who you are and what your emails are about. Instead of a call-to-action, present the subscribers with the opportunity to unsubscribe completely.

• Email 2, Incentive – Follow up 1-3 days after the first email if a contact hasn’t unsubscribed yet. This email represents value. Share a tip, an insight, or an exclusive free resource. Rekindle trust without applying too much pressure. 

• Email 3, Decision Making/Last Chance – Subscriber still hasn’t taken action? Time for a Hail Mary. Remind the subscriber about the incentive one last time, provide the option to remain on your list or unsubscribe completely, and finally inform them of removal if no action is taken.

• Email 4, Removal Confirmation (Optional) – Once a subscriber has been removed from your list, send a confirmation email of removal. Include an option for removed contacts to re-subscribe if they so choose.

Cleaning your list is time-consuming…There’s too much drafting emails from scratch, back and forth, and work involved. Leave it up to a re-engagement sequence to handle the dirty work while you maintain a healthy list.

5) Drip Campaigns

Every automation leading up to this point falls under what’s known as a drip campaign. But what exactly is a drip campaign?

A drip campaign is a series of automated emails sent to your audience over a period of time. These emails are sent based on a schedule or actions, and their purpose is to nurture, educate, or convert leads.

Drip campaigns don’t have a set number of emails that you should send. The number of emails sent is purely based on what you think is best for the type of automation that you’re building for your audience.

Drip automations can be either complex, with multiple paths, triggers, and conditions, or simple, with a singular path to a desired outcome. Depending on the goal you have in mind for your automation, several important factors should be considered…

• Audience – Not every contact on your list is the same. Some might be new subscribers, others existing customers, and others inactive contacts. Grouping your audience before setting up an automation helps get the right message to the right contacts.

• Timing – Certain steps in an automation require emails to be sent immediately, daily, or weekly. This is done to send emails at the best time possible for maximum engagement.

• Triggers – Triggers control when subscribers enter an automation, what happens next based on their actions, and when the flow ends for them.

• Content – Before you can properly guide each subscriber closer to your desired outcome, plan what the contents of each email throughout the sequence should include.

If you’re looking for efficiency, consistency, and effectiveness, then start using drip campaigns across the key areas of your marketing efforts. Successful businesses today operate with systems and automations, not manual guesswork.

Takeaway

Overall, automations are an essential tool, optimizing business marketing, engagement, conversions, and more. Automated marketing strategies are great for generating and achieving positive results for your business, all while saving you time to focus on other business priorities. 

Truth be told, not everyone has the time to set up workflows or, let alone, build each email from scratch — but that’s okay. The Legacy Room understands how hard it can be to juggle the responsibilities of owning and growing a business. If you want to maximize your conversions by setting up email automations, then get in touch with one of us here.