5 emails your business needs to send out on an automated basis

An average person receives a lot of emails every day. Facebook notifications, newsletters, promotional offers – a countless number of companies utilize emails to reach their prospects and customers. Even though the marketing focus has been shifting toward social media these days, the email marketing is still on the top.

Why use emails?

Some businesses are often reluctant to use this strategy because of popular opinion that a lot of people hate emails. Of course, would you love to get your inbox filled with a hundred Facebook notifications? This is what happens most of the times.

People hate pointless emails like notifications and don’t hate those they want to read. Just listen to the stats: 44 percent of email recipients purchased at least one product last year because of a promotional email. The average return on investment of email marketing is $44.25 for every $1 spent. Not bad, huh?

To achieve these numbers, you don’t have to send every email manually but automate the process. Email automation ensures that every recipient gets a personalized message at a specific time to engage them effectively.

The following list presents emails that your business needs to send on an automated basis to increase open rates of your promotional emails.

1. Emails that welcome new subscribers

Most of the people who sign up on your website are not looking to buy something from you immediately. In many cases, they don’t buy anything at all. It was recently estimated that more than 90 percent of subscribers are not ready to buy.

That’s why you need to establish some contact right away. When a potential customer subscribes, you should send them a welcome email that informs about the ways to get in touch and invites the recipient to engage with the company on social media.

That’s it. No offers, no hard sell messaging.

The following email from a food company Holland & Barrett perfectly illustrates the point. It delivers the main message about creating an account and shows the ways to engage. Also, it features the menu from the website with the products but it’s all displayed in a non-promotional way. Good job, Holland & Barrett!

2. Post-purchase follow up

Congratulations, one of your subscribers just purchased their first product with you! Oh, wait, you should not be getting all congratulations now, you customer should! As an owner of an online business, you know that following up on a purchase is an essential method to let the customer know that you care about their satisfaction.

Below, find a follow up email from Thirty-One, a women’s fashion brand. It performs a number of critical functions, including:

• Thanking the customers for the purchase
• Providing information about product care
• Providing personal information of the consultant

3. Abandoned cart reminders

Many people add products to shopping cart and then leave the site. As the result, the product remains in cart, just a few clicks away from being sold. For businesses, this is a huge problem because the customers stop half of the way and they certainly like the idea of purchasing.

“Since the reasons why people leave the site may be different, it is worth to send a friendly reminder about an abandoned cart,” says Gregg Mitchell, a senior marketer from Assignment Helper. Below is a great example from UGG Australia. It delivers a clear message, has a clean layout, and the “Return to Your Cart” button stands out.

Moreover, it creates the sense of urgency by saying that the quantities of the selected product are limited.

Here are some ways in which you can increase the effectiveness of your abandoned cart reminders:

• Include a positive customer review
• Promote a sense of urgency by adding a line like “only 2 items left in stock!”
• Offer discounts

4. New inventory email

The main purpose of sending this email is to let your customers know that new items arrived at your store. In addition to updating them, you also encouraging to visit the store and check out these new items. New inventory emails do not need a lot of text to be included because they focus the attention to a great picture of the product. Here’s how Nike updates its customers on new arrivals:

Just a few words and the customers get the point. This email has an excellent picture of the product and feature minimum elements, thus redirecting the attention to it. Let’s go over the main points once again:

• Keep it short! At this point, you don’t need to describe all features of the new product. The main goal here is to let the customers know you have it, let them visit the store to know more!
• Take a good picture. The picture of the product is the main element, so it should be able to attract attention.
• Send these emails immediately after a new product arrives at your store. By doing this, you show that you want to provide your customers with the latest items. They love that.

5. Re-engagement prompts

If you have low open rates, your audience needs to be re-engaged. The people might just be busy or distracted by other brands but the most important thing is that they are familiar with your products because they subscribed to your store.

To re-engage the audience, the following emails are used. They typically have some amazing offers, discounts, a chance to win free items, and even free products.

Let’s take a look at the example from Kyjen, a company that sells pet toys. It features a favoring line (“We Miss You!”) to remind the recipient they haven’t visited a store in a while and a great incentive: 10% off and a free shipping.

Tips for re-engagement prompts:

• Use incentives such as discounts, free products, free shipping, anything too-good-to-pass-up.
• Use a customer’s shopping history to provide relevant offer
• Use favoring lines

Wrapping up

It’s critically important for your business to stay in touch with the prospects and customers, and email marketing is a perfect way to accomplish that. Personalization of content using the purchase history and good deals make emails very compelling as well as show that you have a lot to offer.