Learn how to Set Up Automated Electronic mail Advertising Workflows (+ Examples)

With out e-mail advertising automation, your advertising staff misses out on main alternatives to nurture and have interaction your audience and contacts.

On this article, we’ll evaluate frequent kinds of e-mail advertising automation, the instruments that can assist you set up and preserve an e-mail advertising automation technique, and totally different automation triggers it’s possible you’ll implement at your organization. However first, let’s start by answering essentially the most essential query: what’s e-mail automation?

Electronic mail Automation

Electronic mail automation helps convert leads into clients, delight present clients, and encourage actions like better product adoption, upsells, evangelism, and extra purchases.

Prime 7 Electronic mail Advertising Instruments To Automate Emails & Get Clicks!

Why must you do automated e-mail advertising?

Electronic mail advertising automation eliminates time-consuming duties, corresponding to making ready e-mail lists, sending generic messages, or scheduling occasions manually. This provides entrepreneurs and salespeople extra time to work on tasks that require their consideration (or can’t be absolutely automated).

Electronic mail advertising automation is centered round workflows, a predetermined, triggered set of actions you are directing your automation software program to take for you.

Now let’s take a look at how this course of truly works.

Professional tip: Whilst you work by way of the next steps, maintain the teachings from this video on e-mail advertising in thoughts — lots of the matters coated under are additionally touched on within the video and vice versa — in spite of everything, your e-mail advertising automation is a part of your e-mail advertising technique.

1. Choose e-mail automation software program.

There are a number of e-mail automation software program available on the market at this time — the secret’s choosing the best choice for your corporation and targets.

For the sake of this text, we will work by way of the next steps on this part by taking a look at HubSpot’s Advertising Automation software.

However listed below are a number of extra instruments to your consideration with their predominant options and advantages to provide you an concept of what these instruments are able to.

Electronic mail Advertising Automation Instruments

• HubSpot Advertising Automation: Greatest e-mail advertising automation software program for automating and personalizing e-mail campaigns with CRM integration.

Worth: Free, $45/mo (Starter), $800/ mo (Skilled), $3,200/ mo (Enterprise)

With HubSpot’s Advertising Automation Software program, you possibly can automate your e-mail drip campaigns with none code. Choose triggers, circumstances, and actions, so your emails are despatched to the best viewers members on the proper time.

Pair your e-mail marketing campaign workflows with targets to trace and analyze their success. And talking of workflows, you possibly can visualize, customise, and personalize them that can assist you goal each particular person in your contact database.

(You too can use HubSpot to automate many different duties in addition to e-mail, corresponding to lead scoring, lead rotating, webhooks, and so on.)

Professional Tip: Use HubSpot’s Advertising Automation software program to automate and personalize e-mail campaigns to maneuver prospects by way of the advertising flywheel and generate certified leads.

• Versium Attain: Greatest e-mail advertising automation software program to visualise and phase clients.

Worth: Contact for pricing

Versium Attain permits you to create goal audiences that you should utilize throughout numerous advertising platforms (like HubSpot) and channels that can assist you successfully goal and attain these teams by way of your e-mail (and different digital) campaigns.

Versium Attain helps you visualize and phase your clients so you possibly can tailor your e-mail campaigns to them irrespective of which stage of the customer’s journey.

The software additionally helps you preserve a cheap lead era technique — Versium permits you to experiment with a single information supply for better-performing buyer segments.

• Mailchimp: Greatest e-mail advertising automation software program for connecting ecommerce and e-mail platforms.

Worth: Free Fundamental Plan, Necessities Plan; $11/month, Normal Plan; $17/month, Premium Plan; $299/month

Mailchimp makes it straightforward to ship customized and related messages and buy paths to people primarily based on their contact data and the way they work together along with your firm. Ship-time optimization then schedules your emails to be despatched when your clients are more than likely to interact with them.

Mailchimp presents many ecommerce integrations (e.g. WooCommerce, Shopify) so you possibly can join your on-line retailer to the e-mail software — this manner, you possibly can goal clients primarily based on their purchases.

Mailchimp presents six predominant kinds of e-mail automation to make your staff extra productive and environment friendly — buyer journey automation, habits automation, transactional e-mail automation, postcard automation, date-based automation, and RSS-to-email automation.

• Moosend: Greatest e-mail advertising automation software program for managing a number of e-mail campaigns and mailing lists.

Worth: Contact for pricing

Picture Supply

Moosesend is an e-mail advertising platform for managing a number of e-mail campaigns and mailing lists. Design and A/B take a look at responsive emails and newsletters to make sure they successfully goal your viewers.

Personalize your emails by creating situation mixtures to phase your viewers primarily based on the particular behaviors you care about in your emails and your web site.

Perceive the success of your e-mail advertising campaigns with Moosend’s analytics dashboard — monitor e-mail opens, clicks, social shares, unsubscribed, and extra.

2. Determine who you are sharing your e-mail campaigns with.

Decide who you need to ship your emails to. For instance, you would possibly use lifecycle levels to group your e-mail recipients — for an upsell marketing campaign, you ship emails to present clients who haven’t bought a selected product but.

Your e-mail advertising software ought to have the opportunity that can assist you effectively phase your clients forward of your marketing campaign utilizing the factors you’ve got determined upon. Once more, your contact information in your CRM ought to assist with this — as an example, in HubSpot, phase your e-mail recipients by lifecycle stage.

3. Decide your e-mail marketing campaign’s aim.

Your e-mail advertising is just nearly as good as your technique — so guarantee you realize precisely why you are contacting these people. Would you like them to purchase one thing? Be taught one thing? Do one thing?

When you reply this query, you possibly can work out the messaging you have to take them from the place contacts are at present to the place you need them to go.

You additionally must plan for what occurs once you succeed.

For instance, think about a 10-email collection to get prospects to request a session. Prospect A converts throughout the first e-mail. If Prospect A continues to obtain emails telling them to do what they’ve already accomplished, they will get pissed off.

In HubSpot, when you outline your aim, it can unenroll any contacts who meet the aim.

4. Set enrollment standards.

Enrollment standards check with the {qualifications} that have to be met for a contract to be entered right into a workflow.

Suppose you are utilizing HubSpot Workflows. You may create customized, automated e-mail workflows that may get triggered in numerous alternative ways. This could appear to be a contact added to an inventory, submitting a type in your web site, clicking a hyperlink in an e-mail, viewing a web page in your weblog, clicking on considered one of your adverts, or changing into a advertising certified lead.

You too can arrange e-mail workflows primarily based on any data you have got concerning the contacts in your advertising database, corresponding to web page views, e-mail or social media clicks, content material downloads, contact properties, or any mixture of those and extra.

5. Decide which processes you need to automate with Workflows.

For those who have been manually emailing these contacts, what would you do? Consider your e-mail advertising workflows as blueprints that define every motion your software will take for you.

As an example, specify which actions you need the software program to absorb HubSpot. Examples of automatable actions are:

• Sending an e-mail.
• Scheduling an e-mail (and/or delaying it).
• If/ then e-mail branching.
• Updating and syncing all e-mail and phone information to your CRM.

6. Create your e-mail marketing campaign property.

By this level, you understand how many emails you need to ship, the final messaging you may embrace within the emails, and which teams of shoppers the emails are going to.

Now it’s time to make sure your entire e-mail marketing campaign property are created and obtainable in your e-mail automation software program so you possibly can add them to campaigns.

7. Examine your e-mail automation setup and run a take a look at, if potential.

Some issues to contemplate implementing into your workflow publishing course of are:

• Taking a look at your listing of enrolled contacts for errors.
• Guaranteeing the variety of enrolled contacts is what you’d count on.
• Contemplating your workflow chart and use instances.
• Checking your “Ship” settings.

In HubSpot, you possibly can take a look at your workflow to make sure the automation you intend to set reside is working as meant.

8. Make our e-mail automation workflow reside and monitor its progress.

When you’re pleased with the workflow, set it reside.

Errors can occur, so monitor for anomalies. Do not be afraid to regulate as wanted to resolve points or enhance the efficiency of your e-mail automation workflow — much like your different advertising methods, that is additionally an iterative course of.

Moreover, you possibly can regularly broaden upon your workflows to help different enterprise targets. Use them to automate different actions corresponding to setting or clearing a contact property worth, updating a contact’s lifecycle stage, including/eradicating a contact from an inventory, and different administrative duties that permit for extra focused, efficient advertising to your prospects and clients.

Electronic mail Advertising Automation Examples

Now let’s stroll by way of some examples of automated e-mail workflows you possibly can set as much as begin getting extra out of your contacts database and advertising automation software program.

1. Subject Workflows

Major triggers: Web page views or content material provide downloads.

Create a workflow for every of the industry-related matters you create content material about.

Think about you are a unicorn breeder whose predominant content material matters embrace unicorn diets, unicorn gear, and unicorn boarding. Then you could possibly bucket your content material advertising presents (e.g. ebooks, webinars, kits, and so on.) and weblog posts by these matters. You might additionally create an e-mail workflow for every matter after which set off the suitable workflow when considered one of your contacts views a web page or downloads a suggestion centered round that matter.

Set off a content material obtain workflow primarily based on a type submission from a software conversion software like HubSpot’s Free Advertising & Lead Era Software program. To set off an automatic workflow in HubSpot, you should utilize the “Lead Circulate Submission” choice because the beginning situation.

So if a contact downloaded your book referred to as 10 Ideas for a Balanced Unicorn Food regimen, your “unicorn weight loss plan” workflow could be triggered, sending that contact extra useful content material, corresponding to weblog posts describing unicorn dietary suggestions.

2. Weblog Subscriber Welcome Workflow

Major set off: Subscription to your weblog.

Give your model new weblog subscribers a pleasant, heat welcome with a weblog welcome e-mail. Use this e-mail to thank contacts for subscribing, remind them what they will get from studying your weblog, evaluate their subscription settings (and permit them to make changes), and promote your weblog’s best-performing articles or different presents.

(Get suggestions for making a profitable weblog welcome e-mail right here, and be taught extra about optimizing welcome emails right here.)

3. New Buyer Welcome/ Coaching Workflow

Major set off: Lifecycle stage.

Whereas we’re as regards to heat welcomes, take into account establishing a collection of welcome emails when a contact converts right into a paying buyer, which you’ll be able to set off when a contact’s lifecycle stage will get up to date to “buyer.”

Not solely is that this an effective way to kick off your new buyer relationship on a optimistic be aware, however it will possibly additionally maintain your clients engaged after they purchase. And in case your services or products requires a bit of coaching in your clients’ half, use this workflow as a possibility to introduce useful coaching supplies on an incremental foundation.

4. Engaged Contact/ Evangelist Workflow

Major triggers: Visits, clicks, or type submissions.

Create a wise/dynamic listing that robotically updates to incorporate contacts that you’ve got actually engaged.

To create this listing, use set off standards corresponding to a excessive threshold of visits to your web site, clicks in your emails or social media posts, or type submissions. Then create an e-mail workflow to leverage this listing to encourage evangelism of your high content material on social media.

As a result of these contacts are extremely engaged with you already, they’re extra prone to share your high content material. You too can take into account including listing standards to drag in contacts with a sure variety of Twitter followers to leverage the facility of these social media influencers in your database.

5. Lead Nurturing Workflow

Major set off: A number of starting stage conversion occasions.

If a contact has downloaded a number of of your starting stage advertising presents like ebooks and webinars, it is perhaps an indication that they are prepared for a bit extra. Arrange workflows that assist advance these contacts additional by way of the flywheel.

If the contact is a lead, ship them emails containing extra content material that may improve them to a advertising certified lead (MQL) or a possibility in your gross sales course of.

This workflow might embrace content material and internet pages you’ve got recognized from an attribution report evaluation as influential in changing leads into clients — maybe content material like buyer success tales/case research, free trial presents, or product demos.

6. Inside Gross sales Rep Notification Workflow

Major triggers: Late stage web page views/conversion occasions.

On any given web site, there are particular web page visits and conversion occasions that point out extra product curiosity than others.

First, determine these pages and conversion occasions utilizing an attribution reporting software like HubSpot. You’ll discover that, most of the time, the pages you unearth will likely be your pricing web page, product pages, and so on. — the pages that your contacts view after they’re actually contemplating your services or products.

Use workflows right here to set off an inside e-mail notification to your gross sales rep to tell them of those high-value actions. Utilizing personalization, give the rep all the data they want concerning the lead in query, together with related mid- and late stage content material that they’ll ship to the lead of their outreach e-mail. This lets you join gross sales reps with the very best leads on the proper time.

7. Re-engagement Workflow

Major set off: Inactive contacts.

Reawaken inactive contacts with a re-engagement workflow, enrolling contacts as soon as they’ve met sure listing standards.

For instance, you could possibly set circumstances such because the size of time since their final type submission, web site go to, or e-mail click on, triggering the e-mail as soon as it has been some time since a contact final engaged with you.

In your workflow, strive sending them an unique provide or coupon to get them enthusiastic about your organization once more. For extra tips on launching an efficient e-mail re-engagement marketing campaign, take a look at this put up.

8. Occasion Workflow

Major set off: Registration or attendance.

Internet hosting a reside, in-person, or digital occasion? Use e-mail workflows to automate your communication to occasion registrants and attendees earlier than, throughout, and after the occasion.

For instance, create a workflow that delivers necessary data registrants ought to know main as much as the occasion, corresponding to resort lodging and agenda data for reside occasions, or webinar log-in data for on-line occasions.

When the occasion ends, arrange a workflow that offers attendees on-line entry to session slides and continues to nurture them with further content material or promotion for future occasions.

9. Deserted Procuring Cart Workflow

Major set off: Procuring cart abandonment.

For those who’re an ecommerce enterprise, you may possible profit from an deserted buying cart workflow.

The idea right here is easy: When somebody provides an merchandise to their on-line buying cart however leaves your web site with out finishing the acquisition, you possibly can set off an e-mail workflow that reminds them of their forgotten buy. By providing a particular low cost code or incentive to purchase, you inspire the person to return to your web site to finish the transaction.

10. Upsell Workflow

Major set off: Previous purchases.

Communication along with your clients should not cease after they make a purchase order. That is very true when you promote numerous merchandise and/or providers. Use workflows that can assist you upsell or cross-sell present clients.

Create dynamically updating lists of contacts who buy a sure product — or mixture of merchandise — and create workflows geared toward recommending different merchandise/ providers or encouraging upsells or add-ons.

11. Buyer Happiness Workflow

Major set off: Excessive or low NPS scores.

For those who administer common Web Promoter surveys of your buyer base, you should utilize clients’ Web Promoter Scores as a property to set off workflows.

Merely decide what your excellent buyer happiness rating is, and use that as the edge to your dynamic listing of comfortable clients. Then set off a workflow for purchasers with “comfortable” scores and reward them with unique content material, presents, or reductions.

Set off a unique workflow to your “sad” clients that features content material/presents geared toward serving to to enhance their happiness.

You may even phase sad clients by the particular causes they’re feeling unhappy — then ship them much more focused workflows to deal with their points.

12. Buyer Success/ Engagement Workflow

Major triggers: Success metrics or product utilization.

For those who maintain monitor of buyer success metrics, you have got a major workflow alternative in your arms.

For instance, when you’re making an attempt to construct up your arsenal of buyer case research, robotically set off an e-mail that asks clients in the event that they’d be involved in being featured as a hit story as soon as sure buyer success metrics have been met.

Moreover, suppose you monitor clients’ product adoption or characteristic utilization. In that case, you could possibly set off a workflow for customers exhibiting low product engagement, offering sources that educate and practice them on utilizing the product options they don’t seem to be benefiting from.

13. Upcoming Buy Reminder Workflow

Major set off: Purchases made on a cycle.

Does your contacts database embrace clients who sometimes buy on a cycle? Enter these individuals right into a workflow that will get triggered after they make a purchase order.

As an example, you promote eye care merchandise, and a buyer purchases a six-month provide of prescription contacts. Enroll that buyer right into a workflow that sends them an automatic e-mail 5 months later as a reminder that their six-month provide is about to expire, and it is perhaps time to order a brand new batch of contacts.

14. Buyer Service or Ticket Workflow

Major Set off: A buyer or prospect contacts customer support by way of e-mail or a web based type.

Your clients or prospects might need bother utilizing your free or paid software program. When this occurs, fielding a bunch of customer support emails and messages can take tons of invaluable time out of your schedule.

One approach to keep away from that is to create a workflow that turns buyer considerations into tickets that may be categorized, labeled, and assigned to customer support reps in your staff. These tickets also can show you how to monitor ongoing issues and when points with a buyer or prospect are resolved.

15. Deal-Primarily based Workflows

Major Set off: When somebody e-signs a quote or contract.

Sealing the deal is essential to profitable advertising and gross sales. Automating small elements of this course of, like emails somebody would possibly get after signing a contract or quote web page with you, permits your gross sales reps extra time to nurture the shopper over the cellphone, throughout demos, or by way of different messages.

With a deal-based workflow, you possibly can set off affirmation emails when a prospect turns into a shopper or certified lead by signing a quote or contract. With techniques like HubSpot, you can too set the workflow to vary the contact’s standing to point out the place they’re within the lifecycle.

Automate Your Electronic mail Advertising Campaigns

Electronic mail advertising automation will increase effectivity and provides your staff again invaluable time that may be spent on clients and different work that requires their consideration. Moreover, the method helps optimize your e-mail advertising technique and personalize e-mail content material to extend its effectiveness amongst your audience and clients.

Determine your excellent e-mail advertising automation software and start establishing the workflows your staff wants.

Editor’s Word: This put up was initially printed in September 2012 and has been up to date for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.