Electronic mail Automation: Advantages, Software program, and FAQs

Emails are quick and cheap, making them nice for companies. The difficulty is sending the correct emails to the correct folks on the proper time. Electronic mail automation makes that half simpler.

However e mail automation can appear sophisticated and mysterious in case you haven’t labored straight with it. Nevertheless, once you perceive it, e mail automation is an extremely highly effective instrument that amplifies and simplifies your advertising efforts. Certainly, when surveyed in 2020, international entrepreneurs reported a tie between advertising automation and content material advertising as the 2 handiest digital advertising methods.

On this article, we’ll cowl what e mail automation is and the way it works, adopted by its advantages for your corporation. We’ll additionally cowl a couple of widespread examples of e mail automation. Lastly, we’ll have a look at 5 of the highest e mail automation instruments that can assist you get began.

Desk of contents

What’s e mail automation? 

Electronic mail automation is once you automate the method of sending particular person emails or a sequence of emails to your subscribers. It may be so simple as mechanically emailing a coupon after somebody submits their e mail in your web site or as complicated as incorporating habits monitoring throughout channels for a months-long e mail nurture program.

Electronic mail automation programs sometimes use “if-then” logic to find out when to mechanically ship a message. For instance, if a buyer makes a purchase order, the e-mail automation platform sends them an order affirmation. Easy automations like this enable small groups and even one-person retailers to maintain up with their transactional emails and run fundamental drip campaigns.

Automation workflows often begin with a set off, the occasion that alerts to your automation platform that workflow ought to begin. The set off is the “if” a part of “if-then.” What the system does in response known as an motion. This may very well be sending a one-off e mail, shifting a contact from one phase to a different, or some other email-related motion. 

However typically, you want guardrails to make sure the motion is acceptable. That’s the place situations and time controls are available. Situations allow you to get extra particular (“if this and this occur, then…”). 

For instance, you can create a set off to ship a cross-sell e mail to clients after they make a purchase order and add a situation to ship it provided that they spend $50 or extra.

Time controls can help you ship automated emails on the proper time. Fairly than ship a cross-sell e mail instantly, you can add a time management that sends it 24 hours after buy. 

Not each e mail automation will want situations and time controls, however they’re very important for manufacturers with subtle e mail advertising methods. 

Why is e mail automation necessary?

Electronic mail is without doubt one of the most necessary channels for digital advertising. 

Greater than 91% of Web customers are additionally e mail customers. For folks ages 25-44, the quantity jumps to 95%. The income from e mail advertising is anticipated to achieve $10.89 billion in 2023.

The advantages are fairly convincing in case you’re questioning why e mail is the hottest advertising channel for automation. Let’s have a look.

Saves time, effort, and cash

Think about having to personally hit “ship” for the hundreds of emails your corporation sends. Or in case you needed to copy and paste a subscriber’s identify into each e mail. These are the time-consuming duties that e mail automation frees you from.

Electronic mail automation can prevent the difficulty of manually including subscribers to your e mail listing, segmenting e mail contacts, scheduling time-based sends one after the other and extra. Creating guidelines and programs on your mailing listing frees you for extra inventive and necessary work.

Scales and amplifies your work

Even in case you devoted all of your time to sending emails, guide e mail advertising merely can’t sustain with a rising enterprise. With e mail automation, you may create your e mail property and inform the system when to ship them. 

Electronic mail automation permits a one-person advertising staff to ship lots of and even hundreds of emails each day and simply create segmented e mail sequences for various lead phases. 

Delivers a greater buyer expertise

Clients don’t like to attend, and automation ensures they obtain the suitable emails shortly. Electronic mail automation platforms enable clients on the opposite aspect of the world to get messages in minutes, even when your staff is off the clock. 

Clients obtain extra personalised content material via automated buyer segmentation, lead scoring, and e mail nurturing. Electronic mail advertising instruments like ActiveCampaign allow you to ship automated emails and personalize their content material.

You should use previous purchases or extra superior habits monitoring to find out a buyer’s curiosity and ship them e mail communications with probably the most related content material.

Electronic mail automation examples 

There are infinite varieties of automations for advertising emails: deserted cart emails, transactional emails, newsletters, RSS feeds, upsells and cross-sells, nurture campaigns, birthday messages, occasion reminders, and so forth.

Let’s stroll via a few of these examples to point out how e mail automations work.

Deserted cart emails

Nearly 70% of ecommerce carts are deserted. 

For each one that completes a purchase order in your web site, 2 different folks began purchasing however walked away earlier than finishing their buy. Deserted cart emails are a easy and simple strategy to get better a few of these misplaced gross sales.

An deserted cart e mail is triggered when a contact locations a number of merchandise of their purchasing cart after which leaves the web site with out finishing the acquisition. 

For those who’re utilizing ActiveCampaign, the direct integration with Shopify acknowledges that set off and begins the automation workflow. Utilizing time controls, you may ship an preliminary deserted cart e mail an hour later and observe up with a number of extra reminders.

This can be a easy automation, however cart abandonment e mail open charges are persistently greater than 40%, and the click-through fee was 8.76% in 2021. You possibly can arrange an automation for deserted carts in a couple of minutes and watch the gross sales roll in.

Welcome e mail sequence

A welcome e mail or a welcome e mail sequence is a standard strategy to construct buyer relationships or heat up new leads. Welcome emails are sometimes despatched shortly after a contact subscribes and have a median open fee of 30%.

They will present beneficial data and present customers what to anticipate from you. Meditation app Headspace, as an illustration, invitations e mail recipients to begin meditating with their attribute model imagery.

For an automatic welcome e mail, you’ll set turning into an e mail subscriber because the set off, and that may start a workflow that both sends a single welcome message or begins a sequence of welcome emails.

Re-engagement marketing campaign

Automated emails are an effective way to welcome new contacts simply, however they may also be a beneficial instrument to win again disengaged subscribers. 

Manufacturers ship re-engagement emails to customers who aren’t opening (or clicking on) emails or previous clients who’ve stopped shopping for. This is only one instance of an automation the place the set off is the lack of an occasion. 

Relying in your services or products, your e mail is likely to be a nudge to the recipient to examine their account. You too can spotlight new options or merchandise the subscriber has been lacking.

To create an automatic re-engagement e mail, you’ll create a set off based mostly both on an period of time or a sure variety of tried engagements. 

As with welcome emails, chances are you’ll ship a one-off re-engagement e mail or create a sequence of emails tempting the person to have interaction. As an illustration, you can mechanically ship a message when a contact hasn’t bought in additional than 6 months. You may additionally set off a re-engagement sequence if a subscriber hasn’t opened or engaged with 25 emails. 

Reengagement emails are a beneficial automation as a result of it’s straightforward for disengaged contacts to fly below the radar. With e mail automation, your e mail system identifies the contacts and reaches out with no further effort from you. 

5 greatest e mail automation instruments

Your e mail automation instrument could make an enormous distinction in how a lot work is required of you and the way efficient your advertising shall be. These are 5 of the highest e mail automation platforms to think about.

1. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a complete advertising automation suite permitting you to automate superior advertising campaigns incorporating e mail, SMS/textual content messages, gross sales outreach, and lead scoring within the built-in buyer relationship administration (CRM) system. It’s a strong instrument with a spread of plans for companies of all sizes.

Electronic mail automation in ActiveCampaign:

• Cross-channel automation: With ActiveCampaign, you may create multi-channel and even omnichannel automated advertising campaigns, connecting e mail, ecommerce, social media, and SMS for the very best buyer expertise.
• 800+ automation recipes: Customers have entry to lots of of pre-built e mail workflows and different automations.
• Transactional emails: ActiveCampaign integrates with main ecommerce platforms to mechanically ship confirmations and different transactional emails.
• Automated lead scoring: Together with e mail advertising campaigns, ActiveCampaign lets you automate lead scoring and different gross sales and advertising duties.

2. GetResponse

GetResponse is a advertising software program specializing in inbound advertising. It helps engagement throughout a number of channels, together with e mail, SMS, and chat. It provides touchdown pages and a few content material creation instruments as properly. 

Electronic mail automation in GetResponse:

• Electronic mail advertising automation: GetResponse supplies fundamental e mail automation options for cart abandonment and different widespread conditions.
• Electronic mail creation: GetResponse provides e mail templates and a drag-and-drop e mail builder. Customers additionally acquire entry to a library of free pictures and GIFs.
• Engagement scoring: GetResponse provides a CRM with fundamental contact administration and engagement scoring, which lets you tailor automations based mostly on every prospect’s shopping for stage within the gross sales funnel.

3. Sendinblue

Sendinblue promotes itself as an all-in-one advertising platform for small companies. They provide e mail advertising and automation, SMS advertising, sign-up types, touchdown pages, and a fundamental gross sales CRM.

Electronic mail automation in Sendinblue:

• Customized e mail workflows: Inside Sendinblue, you may create easy and superior e mail automation workflows. The interface isn’t probably the most intuitive, however you may incorporate lead scoring and different complicated particulars
• Automation A/B Testing: To enhance and optimize your e mail workflows, you may cut up your viewers for A/B assessments.
• Transactional emails: Sendinblue provides an e mail API to attach with the remainder of your tech stack and mechanically ship affirmation emails and different transactional messages.

4. Salesforce Advertising and marketing Cloud

Salesforce is among the many greatest names within the software-as-service (SaaS) trade. The corporate is greatest recognized for its highly effective enterprise CMS, however in addition they have Advertising and marketing Cloud, their digital advertising platform. For those who’re already utilizing Salesforce’s CMS, Advertising and marketing Cloud is likely to be the best path to implementing e mail automation.

Electronic mail automation in Salesforce Advertising and marketing Cloud:

• Cross-channel automation: As a result of Advertising and marketing Cloud clients usually use different Salesforce merchandise, you may create complicated automation incorporating e mail, net, and cellular interactions.
• Electronic mail studio: Inside Advertising and marketing Cloud, you may construct mobile-responsive emails or begin with certainly one of their templates. 
• Previews and permissions: If in case you have a bigger advertising staff, the power to set person permissions can forestall errors and false begins. Entrepreneurs can safely preview emails and automations. 

5. Adobe Marketo Have interaction

Adobe is one other main participant within the software program world, and Marketo Have interaction is the model’s advertising automation platform. Standard with enterprise and mid-market companies, Marketo Have interaction provides e mail advertising, account-based advertising, and lead administration.

Electronic mail automation in Adobe Marketo Have interaction:

• AI viewers constructing: With their give attention to bigger firms, Marketo Have interaction lets you use synthetic intelligence to parse via massive e mail lists and mechanically create segments.
• Cross-channel personalization: Together with mechanically personalizing emails, Marketo Have interaction helps web site, SMS, and touchdown web page personalization. 
• Habits monitoring: With Marketo Have interaction’s habits monitoring, the system is at all times studying about what particular person clients and viewers segments are all in favour of. That is one other beneficial instrument for bigger companies.

Often requested questions 

Right here we cowl a number of the most typical questions on e mail automation.

What are e mail automations? 

Electronic mail automations are when your e mail advertising and automation platform sends emails with out you having to personally press “ship.” They use “if-then” logic to ship acceptable e mail messages based mostly on occasions or buyer habits. 

Welcome emails are one widespread e mail automation. Sometimes, when a person fills out an e mail subscription type, that motion triggers the e-mail automation system to ship a welcome e mail. 

You too can create extra complicated e mail automations to ship single emails or e mail sequences over weeks and months. By setting situations and time controls, you create “guardrails” to keep away from sending them inappropriate or poorly-timed emails.

Can I automate e mail in Gmail?

Trendy e mail automation instruments combine with main e mail service suppliers, permitting you to implement automated emails on Gmail, Outlook, and different e mail platforms. Inside Gmail, you may schedule particular person emails, however this requires guide motion in your half.

How do I arrange e mail automation?

The way you arrange e mail automation is dependent upon what e mail advertising platform you utilize. Some supply pre-built automations, however most can help you construct e mail automation workflows from scratch. An e mail automation workflow requires a “set off” (resembling a purchase order) to set off the “motion” (sending an e mail).

ActiveCampaign has an intuitive visible workflow builder from which you’ll be able to construct automations, nevertheless it additionally contains over 800 automation recipes for widespread workflows, like cart abandonment emails, occasion reminders, and extra.

How a lot does automated emails price?

The price of automated emails is dependent upon which e mail automation software program you utilize and what number of contacts or e mail sends you may have. Most e mail automation programs have a number of plans which are charged month-to-month, starting from $9 monthly to hundreds of {dollars}.

Faucet into the ability of e mail automation 

Between transactional emails, newsletters, promotions, and new product bulletins, the quantity, and number of emails even a small enterprise sends can really feel overwhelming. Electronic mail automations enable entrepreneurs to maintain up with their emails and supply far more personalised, well timed, and related content material to clients.

Whenever you perceive how e mail automation works, you simply want the correct e mail automation instrument that can assist you get began. Naturally, you desire a platform that makes it straightforward to design lovely, responsive emails, however look intently at how highly effective and intuitive the automation course of is. 

With lots of of pre-built automation recipes and an easy-to-use responsive e mail designer, ActiveCampaign empowers entrepreneurs to take their e mail technique to the subsequent stage. 
Begin your free trial as we speak to see how ActiveCampaign provides you the ability of straightforward and efficient e mail automation.