Sending Automated Emails: A Complete Guide for Beginners
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? Check your email. What about the last thing you do before going to sleep? You probably check your email.
The average person checks their email 15 times per day. If you’re a business trying to market to new and existing customers and you’re not sending automated emails, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to engage people.
So, how do you get started on email marketing? What even are automated emails?
Keep reading for a complete guide on sending automated emails to your customer base.
What Is Automated Email Marketing?
Before you think about creating an email marketing campaign, you need to understand what automated email marketing is so you can create the best strategy for your business.
Email marketing is when your business sends out automated emails to your subscribers based on a pre-determined trigger or schedule. For example, you’ll send an automated welcome email to anyone who signs up for your email list.
The goal of email marketing is to (a) drive traffic to your site and (b) turn that traffic into sales.
Types of Automated Emails
There are two types of automated emails you should be sending your subscribers.
The first type is drip-feed emails, or emails sent based on a specified schedule. An example of this would be sending an email to inform subscribers about a sale that’s happening next week. You would then send scheduled follow-up emails every day or two leading up to the sale.
The second type is trigger emails, or emails that are sent when an action is completed. For example, when your business posts a blog, a trigger email will be sent to your subscribers. Or, when a subscriber adds something to their cart but doesn’t complete the order, you can send an automated email with a coupon.
Does It Work?
Email marketing might seem like an old trick, but the reality is that it’s still extremely effective and a much cheaper strategy than a lot of other digital marketing tactics.
Automated emails provide a great ROI of 42 to 1, meaning every dollar spent leads to 42 dollars in profit. And when you automate your emails, the manpower drastically decreases and you’ll have an even higher ROI.
How to Send Automated Emails
Now that you have a basic understanding of what email marketing is and how it can help your business, it’s time to talk about how to actually send automated emails. Here are the five steps you need to follow.
Step 1: Determine Your Goal
Before putting together your email marketing campaign, you should first identify the goals of your campaign. Do you simply want to increase sales? Or do you want to inform subscribers and build a stronger customer relationship?
By determining your priorities, you can move forward knowing what type of emails to send your subscribers. For example, if you simply want to share useful content with subscribers, you could send emails whenever you post new blogs.
If you want to increase sales, you can send emails that contain purchase incentives or coupons.
Step 2: Map Your Email Campaign
If you’re using automated emails, you need to map out when these emails will be sent out.
For trigger emails, you should be sending out emails when a subscriber takes a specific action or a milestone hits. Some common trigger emails to send include:
- Welcome email
- Getting started with a new product or service
- Abandoned cart email
- Milestone emails (birthdays, subscription anniversaries, Black Friday)
- Refer-a-friend coupons after completed orders
For drip-feed emails, you should pre-determine a timeline of emails to be sent out to subscribers. These emails typically start sending out to subscribers after an event, such as joining the email list or launching a webinar. Here are some examples:
- Onboarding emails
- Newsletters
- Blog posts
- Webinars and courses
- Monthly deals
Once you’ve mapped out when automated emails will be sent to subscribers, you can move on to the next step!
Step 3: Make Your Emails Count
Knowing when to send automated emails is only half the battle. It won’t matter how perfectly-timed your emails are if they fall flat an end up in your subscriber’s trash cans—or worse, lead them to unsubscribe.
You need to make your emails count and make them feel personal. You’re sending automated emails, but your subscribers don’t want to feel like they’re automated. You can start out emails with your subscriber’s name or even include it in the subject line to catch their attention.
Also, make sure your emails aren’t too stuffed with information. Include a variety of content, such as written content, infographics, and pictures to keep people interested.
Step 4: Grow Your Email Base
The more people you can send your emails to, the more traffic you’ll drive to your site. So you need to find ways to grow your email base with new subscribers.
The easiest way is to ask people who are making a purchase if they want to be added to your email list for coupons and special deals. Another way is to send refer-a-friend emails to your existing contacts so they get others to sign up for your email list.
Step 5: Analyze the Results and Make Adjustments
You won’t know if your emails are working unless you analyze your strategy. Measure the performance of landing pages and how they’ve changed since launching your email campaign. If engagement is dropping off at a certain point, make adjustments to increase engagement.
If emails are falling flat, try changing the content of your emails or using a new approach. Also, consider working with a digital marketing company that can help improve your strategy where it may be lacking.
Get Started on Your Automated Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to increase sales and bring in new customers. With this basic guide on sending automated emails, you’re all set to get started on your marketing strategy.
Ready to take the next step? Contact us today to learn more about our automated marketing services and how we can help you create the ultimate email marketing campaign.