The Complete Guide to Email Automation / Email Flows and How it Can Help You Grow Your Business

What is Email Automation?

Email marketing automation refers to the use of email software to automate repetitive tasks related to email marketing. Email automation, also known as email flows, automates the process of sending and receiving emails for you based on a set of triggers and flows. It allows you to send out emails in bulk, track who opens them and who clicks on links, and more. Have you ever shopped online and not finished your purchase and the next day received an email with a discount code? That’s email automation at work. Check out the guide below on the best email automation tools and the top email flows for your business.

Why is Email Marketing Important?

For online retailers, and many businesses alike, email marketing automation is a powerful way to keep customers coming back for more. It’s difficult to know which automated email campaigns are worth testing and prioritizing and the best method is to deploy a few different email flows, and monitor and optimise your automations over time.

Adopting email marketing has a lot of benefits and it has the highest return on investment (ROI) of the most common digital channels. Email marketing and automations also help your business be less reliant on a steady stream of new customers if you use email to encourage repeat purchases. Email marketing also aids in the development of a company’s brand and the acquisition of more loyal, high-value customers. Almost every online business can benefit from implementing automated email campaigns. Just remember, recent data shows that more than half of people open email on their smartphones, so it’s critical to make your emails mobile-friendly. In order to ensure a positive and consistent user experience across all devices, many email service providers perform this testing automatically. When you design your emails, you also have the option to view the mobile-friendly design to ensure that your email efforts are effective.

Email Automation Tools & Services

We all know that a good email can be a powerful tool for any company. It’s a way to connect with your customers and prospects, and it can help you establish yourself as an expert in your field.

However, if you’re like most people, you probably don’t have the time to send out personalized emails to every customer or prospect. Fortunately, there are many email automation tools and services available that can help you create automated emails with just a little bit of effort on your part. Whilst MailChimp is a well-known email marketing platform, there are other user-friendly platforms with better functionality and features such as Omnisend, or our recommended platform Klaviyo. Klaviyo has a free pricing structure for small businesses with up to 250 contacts, but even if you’re an eCommerce business paying up to $300 or $400 a month – this platform makes that money back and then some. As an example, one of Pink Lemonade Social’s client who pays $350 a month for 18,000 email contacts, generates on average $26,000 from email automation and flows A MONTH – that’s without the additional revenue from sending normal campaign emails.

How to Use Email Automation for Your Business & Best Practices

Email automation is a powerful tool for business owners to use in their customer relations, marketing, and sales strategies. It can be used to automate simple email tasks, like sending out newsletters or promotional messages, even SMS campaigns. The goal of email automation is to make your company’s tasks easier and more efficient.

There are many best practices for email automation including:
– Send emails at the right time and frequency: Make sure your emails are not sent too early in the morning, as people might still be asleep and this could result in the recipient deleting it without reading it. Similarly, do not send them too late at night as this might result in an increased chance of being marked as spam. Avoid days where people are less likely to convert, and avoid sending emails too frequently, this will result in higher spam or unsubscribe rates.
– Keep your messages short and concise: Emails with long paragraphs are more likely to be deleted before being read. Try to keep them under 100 words so you have a higher chance of getting read
– Use visuals to capture, engage and entice your audience
– incorporate personalization (customer’s name etc.) for greater open and click rates

Tips to Create Effective Email Marketing Campaigns with Email Automation

The first step in creating an effective email marketing campaign is deciding what your goal is. Do you want more sales? More leads? More engagement on social media? Once you have decided on a goal, it’s time to create your email marketing automation campaign. Email flows are broken up by three parts: triggers, time delays and your email. Your emails are usually broken up into three parts: subject line, body copy/design, and call-to-action. The subject line should grab the reader’s attention and entice them to click to open and read on. The body copy should provide information about the product or service being offered and include a call-to-action.

5 Best Email Automation Flows Your Business Should Have

Managing email marketing for a wide range of clients across vast industries the 5 must-have email flows your business should have are a Welcome Series, Abandon Cart series, Post-purchase flow, Win-back/Re-engagement series, and a VIP or Upsell/Cross-sell series. We’ll go into these flows in more detail below.

Welcome Flow

One of the most important email flows in your business’ email marketing efforts should be the one that greets visitors. Welcome emails have a 45 percent open rate on average, while promotional emails only have an 18 percent open rate, according to Omnisend data from 2016. It’s a great opportunity for businesses because customers are paying attention to and responding to these messages. In addition, a series of emails is 13 percent more likely to generate revenue than a single welcome email.

A welcome flow series is basically a welcome email to new subscribers when they sign up for your mailing list via your website (without making a purchase). As a result, give your welcome flow, its content, offers, and design careful consideration. An effective welcome email has a number of objectives, and can include:

Welcoming new subscribers
Introduction to your business and offering
Promote what sets you apart from the competition
Give subscribers a reason or incentive to purchase
Allow your subscribers to connect with you on social media or other channels
If offering a discount, make a clear call to action that directs customers to your website, where they can redeem the coupon/code.
Let subscribers know what to expect from future emails
Mention of brick-and-mortar stores or contact information

Abandon Cart / Browse Abandon Flow

Cart abandonment is a major source of revenue loss for many online retailers, and setting up abandon cart flows is one of the easiest sources of revenue. 80% of people abandon their shopping carts before they make a purchase, according to a wide range of studies. There are times when they just need a little push in order to make a purchase. Once set up, an abandoned cart flow is automatically triggered when a customer doesn’t complete their purchase.

To get the most bang for your buck, send out a series of automated emails rather than just one. Long after you’ve launched a campaign, the benefits of a series of emails can continue to accrue. They receive the first email to remind them that they’ve left items int heir shopping carts. For those who are still undecided about purchasing, a second email could offer a discount (or if you want a short flow offer the discount in the first email). A larger discount and/or free shipping might be offered in a subsequent email. Even if you don’t keep everyone who abandons their cart, this flow can help you recoup a lot of money.

When building your abandon cart flow, keep in mind:

Sending abandoned cart emails at the right time is critical.
Send first email 24 hours after cart is abandoned, and emails 2 and 48 and 72 hours later respectively.
Analyze abandon cart flow performance to make adjustments and optimizations
Some people and savvy shoppers abandon carts just to see if you’ll give them a discount. You’re potentially throwing away profit margins if offers are your go-to strategy in the first email, hence save a discount for the second email.
Highlight benefits, link to FAQs or contact information to encourage customers to address doubts
A picture of the product and a clear link to the shopping cart should be included whenever possible, so customers can complete their purchase.

Kalviyo has another great feature, the ability to create a Browse Abandonment flow. Typically abandon cart flows require people to add products to cart, proceed to checkout and enter their details before abandoning. Browse abandonment utilizes Klaviyo tracking to track people who view products, and send emails in the same method.

Post-Purchase Flow

Apparently, sending a follow-up email within minutes of a customer’s purchase is quite effective. Whether you choose to alter your receipt email or create a separate email altogether, after a sale, thank your customer for their business and be ready to answer any questions they may have. A customer who has just made a purchase on your site is likely to be more receptive to additional purchases if you can make them feel like they’re getting good value for their money. It’s possible to include a thank you email, a discount, a request for a review, links to social media and an email with a future discount code in your post-purchase email chain.

Win-back/Re-Engagement Flow

Subscribers may stop opening or clicking your emails after a while if you don’t do anything about it. Using an automated email campaign to re-engage, or “win-back,” customers can rekindle their passions. Nearly half of users who receive these emails open and interact with subsequent ones, according recent data. Win-back flows also demonstrate to Google and other email service providers that your emails are in demand and not spam. A lot of unengaged subscribers means that your emails are more likely to end up in the Promotions or Spam folders, respectively. Win-back flows are also useful methods to filter out an unengaged audience to clean from your database, thereby lowering your monthly costs for email software, and ensuring you don’t leave unengaged customers with a negative sentiment.

There are a few important factors to keep in mind when implementing a re-engagement or win-back automated email campaign:

Remember what you have learned from other campaigns and flows results, content and user-interactions
Make an incredible deal to pique their interest
Notify your subscribers that they will be deleted or removed from your list soon
Inactive subscribers should have their subscriptions terminated

VIP or Upsell/Cross-Sell Flow

Creating a VIP flow is a way to show your most loyal customers how much you appreciate them. In addition to boosting sales, personalised emails and recognition can turn your most engaged customers into brand advocates. VIP customers can be identified in a variety of ways, including by the number of orders they’ve placed over time, their average order value, their lifetime revenue, and the amount of money they’ve spent with your company. Offering special deals and promotions to your VIP customers is a great way to show them how much you value their business. As part of this process, you should also send out referral emails in order to secure referrals from your ideal customers.

According to data on customer loyalty, repeat customers account for nearly a quarter of revenue despite only constituting 11% of the total customer base. It is much easier to create an automated email campaign aimed at keeping your current customers happy than it is to find new ones.

Upselling and cross-selling your products and services via automated flows can increase the amount of money your customers spend with you. The goal of upselling and cross-selling is to get your customers to buy more expensive products or new products to complement recent purchases. Through automation and triggers, you can increase the relevance of your offer. Upselling and cross-selling are best done immediately after a purchase or when a customer reaches an important milestone.

Start Using Email Automation Today and Get More Leads & Sales

As more and more businesses are using email automation to increase their sales, there are some who still hesitate to try it out. The fear is that they will not be able to follow up with the customers or that the customers will unsubscribe from their emails.

But email automation is not about sending out automated messages without any human contact. It is about automating some of your tasks so you can spend more time on other important things like campaign emails, customer service and sales.

If you need more advice on email automation or email marketing, get in touch today and we can help to answer any questions you have!

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