Every marketer knows that timing is everything in email marketing: delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time can increase engagement and sales exponentially. Although the best time to send is simple in theory, most email marketers aren’t practicing it. Enter email marketing automation.
The objective of automating your email marketing is to deliver the right message to the right customer, at the right time, every time. Here's how automation can help you navigate your way into the crowded and noisy inboxes and streamline your marketing.
How
Automating email marketing makes it easier for marketers to send real-time messages based on preset trigger rules. You can set up multiple automation campaigns based on your most important customer segments.
For example: when someone signs-up for your email list, they’ll receive a welcome message or a re-engagement campaign triggered by the subscribers' lack of action, say, a customer who hasn’t visited your site in the last 30 days will receive a reengagement campaign just at the right time (e.g. subscriber’s birthday or anniversary).
Why
Automated emails get 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails. In this age of personalization, automating your campaigns can be hugely beneficial for your online business. You can tailor your messaging for every stage of the customer through lifecycle marketing, plus it's a great way to target subscribers by their behavior and activity done on your site.
Here is a list of few campaigns that every email marketer should automate to build a deep relationship with their customers and in turn boost sales and conversions.
Welcome Campaign
According to Salesforce 74% of consumers expect to receive a welcome email when they sign up. Your customers are the most engaged at the beginning; don’t waste this opportunity and engage them when they are expecting to hear back from you.
By automating your welcome email, you can ensure each and every subscriber is receiving a message based on when he/she has signed up. According to Experian, “real-time welcome emails see more than 10x the transaction rates and revenue per email over batched welcome mailings.”
When done right even a simple welcome email can help you build a long-term relationship with your subscribers and increase the ROI for your business.
Browse Abandonment Campaign
Most people browse a website and leave without making a purchase or adding anything to the cart. By triggering a browse abandonment campaign automatically, you can drive this traffic back to your website.
Since these campaigns are triggered based on the browsing behavior of your recipients, they’re much more relevant and targeted and by automating them they’ll be delivered at the right time.
Sending these emails is a good way to nurture interested shoppers and start a conversation with them.
Wish List Campaign
If you are an e-commerce business, and you allow subscribers to add items to your wish list, you can use this as an opportunity to increase your sales. When any item in their wish list goes on sale or is about to go out of stock, you can trigger an email workflow to remind them of the items they intended to purchase.
Wish list campaigns can increase your ROI because they're a good way to re-engage your subscribers and convince them to make a purchase without looking sales-y.
Abandon Cart Email Campaign
You might already be sending cart recovery emails, but did you know that timing plays a crucial role in a cart recovery campaign? As per "SaleCycle" research, emails sent within 20 minutes achieved on average a 5.2% conversion rate. Emails sent within an hour achieved on average a 4.5% conversion rate. Emails sent over 24 hours after a shopping cart was abandoned achieved on average a 2.6% conversion rate.
By automating these campaigns, you can deliver them at the right time and encourage your customers to complete their purchase before they move on to your competitor. You can further personalize your cart emails by targeting them based on segments, and consider adding DMARC alignment for increased security.
Back in Stock Campaign
Back in stock emails are opportunities for you to reach out to subscribers about a particular item when they're back in stock. These emails provide an opportunity to deepen your relationship with customers and give them a reason to re-visit your site.
By automating your back-in-stock campaign, you can ensure that when a customer likes an item but couldn't quite get their hands on it, you can set up a workflow that will engage them as soon as the item is back in stock.
Birthday and Anniversary Campaigns
Birthday emails can lift conversion rates by 60% over non-birthday emails with the same offer (ClickZ). If you have the birthday or anniversary details of your subscribers, you can use this as an opportunity to deepen customer loyalty and boost your revenue.
By setting up an autoresponder based on these special dates for every customer, you can deliver highly personalized messaging and at the right time.
Set these campaigns once and let them drive revenue all by itself. Don't forget to A/B test and optimize them.
Also, check out our guide on how to increase your email collection rate to boost lead generation.
