By: Gloria Kopp
If you’ve got a substantial email list, there’s no sense in just sitting on it, and letting it stagnate. Make the most of each and every contact on that list, through your targeted email campaigns in order to see the best results. Segmenting and automating your email marketing is essential if you want to attain new customers and maintain existing ones.
There are endless ways to target your email marketing automation. Here are 11 of the most effective automated emails you need to start using so you can utilize your contacts to their fullest potential.
New Customer
Not all of your visitors will become customers, but when they do, make sure you recognize that transition with a warm welcoming message. You’ll get a positive start to your relationship while staying engaged with them and increasing your chances of turning them into repeat customers.
If the product or service they’ve purchased requires some information or training for them to properly use it, this is the perfect opportunity to provide them with that information. It’s also a great way to nip problems in the bud before they even happen. For instance, if you’ve noticed a number of customers all calling with the same concerns, you can provide new customers with information ahead of time, so they don’t run into those same problems.
Blog Subscriber
If someone is interested in reading your blog, it’s safe to assume they are fairly interested in the topic you’re discussing. So, they will likely be receptive to receiving a welcome message and information from you when they subscribe to your blog. In your welcome message, you can give them a quick introduction to who you are, and an overview of your blog. Let them know about all of the great benefits they’ll now have access to, now that they’ve subscribed, and give them a heads up on great offers you’re promoting. Always remember that, when sending out automated emails, you’ll want to keep them short and to the point. You can use tools like Easy Word Count to keep count of how long your messages are running, so you aren’t overwhelming recipients with long, drawn-out messages. Keep in mind that your clients are just as busy as you are when crafting your messaging.
Topical
Depending on what your customers and website visitors are demonstrating an interest in, you can target and trigger specific email messages to be sent out to them. If you’re an office supplies wholesaler, you sell a variety of products. If your customers are buying a computer, you could trigger an automated email to send them helpful messages about successfully setting up their new machine. For those looking through your selection of tablets, you could send them information on how tablets can improve productivity or helpful reviews about the available selection. These emails could be triggered by engagement such as specific web pages being viewed or if a downloadable offer, such as a free ebook, is claimed.
Engaged Contact
Individuals who are continually accessing your information have demonstrated a high level of interest in what you’ve got to offer. Leverage this interest by targeting an email to those contacts who are highly engaged. These are the individuals—whether they’re customers or not—who are most likely to share the information you’re providing them with since they’ve already shown how much they are interested in it.
Lead Nurturing
Sometimes it can take a little bit of time for a prospective customer to become a paying customer. They may want to read through information, download ebooks and watch videosbefore they’re ready to commit to their purchase. Nurture emails help you lead your customer toward conversion. If you’re selling a cloud-based customer service platform and you’ve got someone who has downloaded your ebook on authenticity in automated messages and watched related videos on your website, you can trigger a middle-of-the-funnel email. Perhaps they aren’t ready to go fully and completely through the purchase stage of the funnel quite yet, but they may be ready to schedule a call with one of your sales reps to ask questions or view an exclusive webinar on customer service.
Re-Engagement
It can be easy to be out of mind, once you’re out of a customer’s sight. You can set an email series to trigger once your customers have been inactive for a specified length of time. Remind them that you haven’t forgotten about them, that you appreciated their past business and hope they’ll continue to use your services. An exclusive offer is a great way to get past customers excited to purchase again. Get your past customers re-engaged with the help of your chosen engagement platform by using templates and other helpful resources to assemble and deliver a highly relevant, effective campaign.
Event
If you’re hosting a live event, whether it’s in person or online, you’ll want to target those who are registered with a specific email campaign. Sometimes you’ll want registrants to prepare in some way before the event takes place, or you may just want to give them an introduction to the event or a schedule of what will be taking place. After the event, a follow-up with supplementary information or even a request for feedback shows that, even though the event has ended, you are still interested in keeping them informed, providing them with useful information and hearing what they have to say.
Abandoned Shopping Cart
It often happens that a customer will add items to their shopping cart, then abandon the cartbefore finalizing their purchase. Sometimes they are unsure and hesitant about committing to the purchase, sometimes they are simply distracted by something else. Either way, a reminder that they’ve started shopping but haven’t finished is a helpful way to get them to open that shopping cart back up again. Sometimes it’s quite effective to offer a special discount in order for them to complete the transaction.
Upsell
It’s always recommended that you stay in contact with your customers so you can convert them into repeat and regular purchasers. If you offer a variety of products or services, you have the opportunity to offer and get them to try out different things. Can they add professional service to their platform purchase that will help them reduce the time to value/ROI? Is there an opportunity to make your customer’s job easier? If a solution exists within your product line for a customer’s problem, it’s a great opportunity to send an upsell email.
Customer Success
Those customers who are highly satisfied with what they’ve received from you are generally all too happy to share that information with others. Customer success metrics can give you details about those who could potentially be interested in providing you with information you can use as a success story. Alternately, for those customers who have not fully utilized the product or service they purchased could benefit from a triggered email that provides them with more details about how to get the most from their purchase.
Upcoming Purchase Reminder
If you’re in the business of selling a perishable product that needs to be regularly replenished, or a product that has a renewal contract, it’s a good idea to send out a reminder email to customers before they’re due to restock their supply or renew. A customer who has purchased a three-month supply of paper may want a reminder that it’s time to reorder so they’ll have their next order in their hands before their supply runs out.
Don’t let your contact database just sit there unused. Make the most of this incredible resource at your fingertips by created targeted email campaigns and using marketing automation to create new and interested customers, stay in touch with past purchasers and upsell satisfied clients. There are endless ways to creatively segment and target your customer database, but the most important factor is that you are actively engaged in this practice.
How do you organize campaigns within your automation platform? What other campaigns do you incorporate?