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Making your email marketing personal is one thing, but as your lists grow, so it’s harder to give your subscribers the one on one attention they deserve. That’s where automation comes in. With automations, you can set up and send out customised, relevant and personalised communication to the right subscribers at the right time. And with our new visual journey designer, setting up your automations just got a whole lot easier
What is email automation?
Automated emails are different from regular email campaigns. With a regular campaign, you set it up and send it to a whole database in one go. With automations, you set up a workflow of emails that will automatically target and send to individuals when a person (or people) meet certain criteria or triggers.
So, instead of having to sit and manually make and send a welcome email to every person that joins your list, an automated welcome email would be set up once. Then, whenever the criteria of “just joined the list” is met, your welcome email is automatically sent. How simple is that?
Why is email automation important?
Making yourself stand out in your subscribers’ crowded inboxes is key, but how do you do that? By staying relevant. Generic emails just don’t cut it anymore. The best way to gain that relevance is by personalising your emails based on your subscribers’ interactions with you, which is exactly what automations will do.
The proof is in the pudding though. According to a study done by MarketingSherpa, automated emails have some of the highest engagement rates of all. So let’s see what kinds of automations you can set up, and how they are going to work for you.
What kinds of automations can I set up?
Welcome
This kind of email (or series of emails, if you prefer) are great for onboarding new customers. Send your thanks to them for signing up, and offer some discounts or incentives while you’re top of mind. Here’s how to make your welcome emails work for you.
Specific Date
Using dates, you can set up and send customised reminders for your customers for, or leading up to, a specific date. This is a great way to get in touch with your customers about things like upcoming membership renewals, or an upcoming event.
Date Anniversary
Send your customers some love on their special day. Whether it’s a birthday or an annual event, you can get in touch with your customers on the anniversary of a date.
Content Updates
You can push an email update to your customers every time you post a blog or an update on your website, or you can collate all your updates and send them once a day, week, or month. Whichever you’d prefer, it’s flexible like that.
How should I plan my automations?
While setting up your automations is super simple, we recommend that you get your ducks in a row before you dive in. Here’s how to set it up your automations in four simple steps:
Plan your Strategy
As we’ve previously mentioned, having a proper strategy in place is the only way to make sure your email marketing actually accomplishes what you want it to. So before you jump in, put pencil to paper and do some planning.
First off, ask yourself, what do you want from these automation emails? Are you trying rewarding customers, incentivising them, educating them or moving them through a sales cycle? Are you only going to send one email, or a series of emails? If it’s a series, how often are you going to send?
These are the kinds of questions that need answering before you begin. Once you’ve got what you need, draw a map of the automation emails you’ll be sending. You can always add more as you go, but in the beginning, simple is best.
Get the Right Data
Once you know what you’re sending to your customers, and why, you’ll need to make sure you get enough information about your subscribers to support your emails. If you are going to use certain customer details (like birthdays) or certain customer activities or interests, you have to make sure you capture those details when people sign up.
Luckily, TouchBasePro makes it very simple to get new subscribers with 5 different types of integrations you can use to get people signing up. Whatever extra information you want, have them set up as custom fields on your database. It’s that simple.
Set up your Journey
Now that you’ve got your strategy in place, and the customer data to support it, go ahead and set up your new automation journey. Log in to your account (if you don’t have one yet, sign up for free today) and head to the Automations tab. From there, follow the steps in our simple visual journey designer to make your automation series. You can use our prebuilt email templates, make a design in our fraga-and-drop editor, or import your own.
Track your success
As nice as it is to set up automations and just let them run, don’t forget about them! Check in on your reports regularly to make sure that your hard work is paying off, and pick up any issues before they get too series. If you’re seeing a drop off in open or click through rates, you know it might be time to tweak your content or sending frequency.
Getting your message across
Email automations are often overlooked, but they can be a powerful tool for marketers who want to make sure they’re getting the right messages across at the right time. Build relationships, drive business and increase engagements, all with a couple of clicks.
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