Sending email blasts manually is both time-consuming and tedious… Not to mention, it takes a lot of time and effort. Between fighting the competition for market share, promoting products and services, and managing staff, sending email marking campaigns manually can be exhausting and difficult.
That’s why it’s important to have some useful tools in the marketing arsenal to help make your job a bit more painless.
Fortunately, there are technologies that can automate routine tasks like this – allowing you to focus your time and attention on activities that generate revenue. While it’s true that these tools help to increase your chances of success, strategy gets you there a lot faster.
Today, we’ll look a bit more into what email marketing automation is, and we’ll give insight on our top 7 email marketing automation workflows for 2019.
What exactly is Email Marketing Automation?
You can already guess what email marketing automation really is: Programing your email marketing. So we can very simply define it as the process of using technology to send out emails to your customers and prospects based on a schedule.
It sounds pretty simple, right? And for the most part, it is. But the problem is marketing automation, in general, can be overwhelming if you lack technical expertise. Luckily for you, there’s help to be had. I’ve put together 7 email marketing automation workflows to get you started.
Now that you have a good idea of what email marketing automation is and how it works, we’ll go over some great email marketing automation workflows for 2019.
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Segmentation
Most eCommerce store owners make a mistake of sending their customers the same generic newsletters without thinking about how totally unique each customer actually is.
This is a big mistake in 2019. Customers are a lot more fickle. They are a lot more demanding and want a more personalized experience. It’s not enough to simply send out group campaigns. Instead, you’ll need to separate your customers into different segments and send targeted campaigns based on their gender, age, location, and shopping behavior. What are the benefits of segmentation?
Increased open rates.
Just think about it. Once you separate your customers into different segments, you have a better idea of what each customer’s preferences and buying behaviors are. So you’re able to send newsletters tailored to their specific needs.
This means they will be more interested to see what’s inside the email and probably even proceed to place an order.
Minimizes the Possibility of Your Email Being Seen as Spam
According to 99 Firms.com, 69% of email recipients report an email as spam based on the subject line alone and about 43% mark messages as spam based on the sender name.
Long story short! Sending too many mass emails can put you at risk of being marked as spam. By sending targeted newsletters and educational information, you make yourself valuable and naturally reduce your chances of being marked as spam.
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Web Tracking
Staying on the subject of giving your customers a more personalized experience, you’ll need to understand your customers’ journeys way before they even make a purchase.
You’ll need to understand how they navigate your site and what they are looking for when they do. By so doing, you’ll be able to understand their buying intentions and make your marketing better based on their preferences.
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Welcome Series
Because it has become a nearly universal aspect of e-commerce marketing, 74.4% of customers expect a welcome email when they subscribe. So it goes without saying that you should send every new subscriber a welcome email. But it’s not enough to simply have a welcome email. It can break or make your relationship so it needs to be really good.
Tips for coming up with a strong welcome series campaign
- Offer a discount or a free trial as an incentive for subscribing.
- Include a call to action to check out your blog or check out your social media page so as to build familiarity.
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Birthday Series
Birthday series is a great way of boosting engagement and connecting with your email subscribers. However, you will need to grab the subscribers birth date when they sign up or else you’ll have no way of knowing when to send the birthday messages.
Two components you should keep in mind when sending out birthday emails
- Send the subscriber a birthday message in the morning and let them know you have a gift in store for them.
- Send a second email with the gift inside. This could be a discount on purchases or free shipping.
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Cart Abandonment Series
Here is a not so fun fact: 98% of people who visit your site won’t make a purchase. However, the biggest tragedy is that 67.91% abandon cart just when they are about to complete the purchase.
Most of us have abandoned cart for all number of reasons. Either because we had doubts or we were simply undecided about making the purchase. But since adding the items in the cart in the first place means that we were in a sense entertaining the idea of making a purchase, sometimes all we need is a little nudge to help clear our indecisiveness. That’s why it’s so important to send a cart abandonment email when your customers abandon the cart.
How to maximize conversions with your cart abandonment email series
- Use a subject line that piques your customers’ curiosity.
- Offer discounts for the product in the email.
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Focus on Retaining Your Current Customers
Getting customers to buy something from you is one thing. Getting them to stay after the purchase is a totally different thing.
By following up on your customers, you let the customers know that you still care about them and appreciate them even though you’ve already received payment from them. Not to mention you also create loyal repeat customers too.
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Focus on Giving Your Customers a Better Experience
Most e-commerce store owners focus on making sales. And while sales are not bad in and of themselves, if you’re in it for the long haul you need to focus on more than just making sales. Instead, you should focus on the customer journey, giving your customers a memorable experience and building your brand.
You need to position yourself in a way that customers recognize your brand right off the bat and trust your brand enough to make a purchase.
There are plenty more workflows you can add, but if you’re playing the long game; these 7 should get you started on the right foot.
