Congratulations! You’ve invested the time and money to set up and manage your email marketing campaigns, and have been seeking out and adding new subscribers like crazy. Now it’s time to automate your email marketing process. Why? Imagine you have a great email marketing campaign going, such as signing up for a monthly newsletter, entering a contest, or sharing your marketing email with a friend.
You probably want to thank that person or confirm you’ve received their information, and so you send them a nice email in response. Now imagine you had to manually send out an email to every person every time they follow through on one of your calls to action. All that additional—and unnecessary—work would grow old quickly. If you automate your email process, every time a client or prospective client takes such an action, your pre-set email will go out automatically.
The Most Popular and Typical Types of Automated Emails
- Thank you and welcome – to thank individuals for joining your email marketing list and welcome them as a new subscriber. This serves a dual purpose of confirming the person’s intent to join.
- New subscriber enticement – Provide new subscribers with a coupon or discount code after they’ve submitted their email address.
- Reminders – Send this email when an individual has left an item in their online shopping cart, to query if they’re going to complete their order.
- Auto-reply email – When a visitor to your website submits an inquiry for additional information or for help, to let them know you’ll respond to their inquiry in X hours.
- Surveys – To obtain customer feedback, for example, after a call to your helpline or after purchasing a product.
- Birthday wishes to loyal customers – These often include a coupon for a discount or free item that is valid the entire month of the recipient’s birthday, such as a free dessert at a restaurant.
- Reach out and touch – If it’s been a while since you’ve heard from a customer, send this email to check in, touch base, say hello, rekindle the fire that connected you in the first place.
- To promote events and sales – Let your email subscribers be the first to hear about upcoming events and sales; tout them as “members only.”
- Appointment reminders – Popular with doctors, dentists, and chiropractors—when a patient is due for their next visit or to schedule their next appointment—but serve other types of businesses well, especially those that provide services on a recurring basis, such as annual carpet cleaning, bi-weekly housecleaning, summer lawn care, winter snow plowing – you get the idea.
Email automation makes sense for virtually any type of businesses. Find a marketing specialist who can help you put your automated process together, and ensure you get the right message out at just the right time.
