How to Enhance Your Email Marketing Strategy with Automated Email Sequences

Email marketing offers an affordable way to reach out to your target audience, increase conversion rates, and maximize your return on investment. The benefits of a well-thought email campaign are known to and taken advantage of by people who are experienced with email marketing. Still, the effectiveness of using automated email sequences through the prospect’s journey outweighs the impact of delivering a single email broadcast.

Email sequences are useful for a variety of businesses, helping to increase revenue and retain customers. They enable you to send customized messages to clients by utilizing various targeting techniques.

What is an Automated Email Sequence?

A series of carefully targeted marketing emails sent to your audience at predetermined intervals is known as an email sequence. Email sequences are sometimes referred to as email marketing automation or lifecycle emails. Depending on your business, you can target clients or prospects with these marketing sequence emails. 

They are helpful in keeping your brand in front of potential clients’ minds and influencing their decision to choose your goods and services, whether they are joining your list or engaging with you on a regular basis.

Automated Email Sequence Types

It is possible to differentiate the two types of automated email sequences:

• Trigger-based email sequence: it’s automatically sent to a subscriber after they take the specific action on the website or in the email. A welcome email or an on-boarding sequence may serve as examples of this type of email sequence.
  
• Time-based email sequence: it’s automatically sent to a subscriber after a defined period of time has passed. The examples of this type of email sequences could be re-engagement or abandoned cart email sequences.

Automated Email Sequence vs Drip Campaign

Since both email sequences and drip campaigns seek to increase client engagement and interaction rates, they are often considered to be synonyms. Indeed, these two types of email communications have common characteristics, but still they are not the same. 

Static emails that are sent out in accordance with preset guidelines make up drip email campaigns. For example, as part of a drip campaign, people may receive a generic welcome email after subscribing to a newsletter. These emails are sent out on a predetermined timetable and are started by things like filling up a form on a website.

Unlike drip campaigns, automated email sequences send messages where content changes according to what the user does on the website. Given that it happens right after a person takes an action, it is possible to see the above-mentioned welcome email as an example of an automated email sequence.

The main difference is that an email sequence consists of multiple emails, whereas a drip campaign usually consists of one email that is sent in response to a user’s action.

Additionally, since an audience segmentation is usually not necessary for drip campaigns, they are generally easier to set up – you define the trigger action and email content. On the other hand, segmentation helps email sequences since it allows tailored communications that are meant to increase conversions.

Advantages of Using Automated Email Sequences

Email sequences have a proven benefit for businesses: they help improve consumer engagement and retention, and increase sales. Re-engagement, loyalty, and post-purchase sequences are effective ways to draw users back to your site. If you customize your emails according to the tastes of your target audience, you will have more opportunity to interact with them. 

Email sequences also have exceptional scalability, which streamlines the process by task automation. Your marketing automation software does all of the work – you just need to configure it once and manage the campaign – instead of having to manually send out each email.

Automated Email Sequence Examples

Now that you have a better understanding of an automated email sequence concept, you can start thinking about how it fits into your email marketing plan. To get you started with implementation, consider these ideas:

#1. Welcome Email Sequence.

This initial email correspondence gives a chance to present your company and its products. A welcome email should not be long in order to not detract the subscriber from the overall enjoyable experience. A welcome email could provide details about what needs to be done next or just say “hello” to the new member of your list.

In order to increase the appeal of joining your community, businesses may think about providing a discount in return for subscribers’ personal information that will help you with list segmentation in the future.

#2. Customer Onboarding Email Sequence.

Onboarding email sequences reinforce the impression made by a welcome email and improve the subscriber’s experience by presenting more in-depth information about your company and its products.

Once a customer gives their personal information, an onboarding email sequence usually starts with a greeting. It then dives into the next steps, which could include setting up an account, providing useful resources or tutorials to get started with the product, and future communication strategies.

Emails in the series that follow elaborate on the next steps the customer should take depending on what they’ve already done. It is possible to include testimonials at the end of the series to encourage an action, for example, a purchase.

#3. Lead Nurturing Email Sequence.

With the help of a lead nurturing email sequence, you can effectively target your audience based on where they are in the customer journey and provide them with a customized conversion path.

These email sequences make it easier for subscribers to become paying clients. Usually starting with a welcome email that includes generic business information, the nurturing process gets more customized over time as you learn more about the preferences of specific customers.

Lead nurturing email sequences are especially helpful for business-to-business companies that want to build connections with prospective customers prior to obtaining a purchase commitment. Email automation guarantees that prospects receive relevant messages at the best intervals, saving on sales calls.

#4. Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Email Sequence.

You can target the clients who made recent purchases for up-sell and cross-sell opportunities by using email sequences.

Instead of being openly promotional, you may use these email sequences to suggest products based on previous purchases and promote complimentary high-value products that may make the customer’s experience with your company even more enjoyable. 

#5. Abandoned Cart Email Sequence.

Because the abandoned cart email sequence can increase sales, businesses use it extensively. Customers may be enthusiastic about buying products from your store at first, but things may change.

People frequently add products to their carts and then forget about them or give up on the checkout process for a variety of reasons. Whatever the reason is, it’s vital to gently remind them of the deals that are waiting to be closed. 

Typically, an abandoned cart email sequence consists of several emails. The first email is a polite reminder of the things that need to be bought. In order to encourage the consumer to come back, a follow-up email can include a discount if they don’t respond within a specified amount of time.

These emails usually list the products that have been abandoned, their prices, and any discounts that may be applied if the checkout is finished within a certain amount of time. A countdown timer in the email can instill a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to take immediate action and greatly increasing purchases.

#6. Re-engagement Email Sequence.

Re-engagement email sequences are a great way to get people interested in your products again.

For example, sending an email serves as a gentle reminder of your outstanding product and service offers if there has been a delay in communication or if clients haven’t made any recent purchases.

Re-engagement email sequences are advantageous in any industry, including B2B and e-commerce. An online retailer, for example, might send out a re-engagement email with a discount to clients who haven’t bought in a while.

In a similar way, a business-to-business company might target potential customers who haven’t viewed or replied to their sales emails in a while.

#7. Feedback Email Sequence.

An email sequence asking for a customer’s feedback can help you collect customer reviews and insights that can be used to improve your business in a number of areas, such as product offerings, marketing tactics, and customer service.

As not every client could be willing to participate in the feedback process, it should be easy, quick, and straightforward to encourage more actions.

Two or more emails asking for feedback on the company’s overall experience, customer service, products, or services make up a well-designed feedback email sequence. 

Customer response can be facilitated by streamlining the procedure, for example by enabling direct email responses or putting a rating system in place.

If customers don’t reply to the first email, you might send them a follow-up email a few days later with incentives or exclusive offers in exchange for their ratings. 

If clients don’t respond, it’s a good idea to refrain from sending out too many follow-up emails in order to avoid unsubscribes. On the other hand, sending an email of appreciation after getting feedback and including the promised incentive promises good customer relations in the future.

7 Automated Email Sequence Implementation Tips

An email series makes it easier to communicate with the prospects who have expressed interest in your goods and services. By implementing this with a well-thought strategy, you can effectively nurture new leads, retain existing clients, and increase sales. 

The following are some best practices for an email sequencing to assist you with the  implementation:

#1. Decide on Sequences

Based on your email marketing needs, resources, and user’s actions you are able to track, decide on what automated email sequences you want to implement. This understanding will help you outline the goals, sequence content, and the number of emails that each sequence will consist of. 

#2. Define Goals and Triggers

An email sequence ought to have a clear goal that determines the content of emails in the sequence. For instance, an email sequence aimed to re-engage customers with your website strives to do so differently than an abandoned cart email sequence, which tries to increase sales. Thus, you should set the goal and the sequence trigger in advance and keep this in mind when working on the email messages that will make up the sequence.

#3. Set Sequence Duration

Once the desired email sequences and their triggers have been identified, go ahead and figure out how many emails are needed for each sequence. The number of emails in a sequence may vary depending on your goals; some sequences can need more communications than others. For example, onboarding and re-engagement email sequences may be a bit longer than an abandoned cart sequence.

#4. Write Captivating Subject Lines

Creating a compelling email subject line can be difficult since you have to grab the recipient’s attention among hundreds of emails sent by other companies. 

Examine the email tracking statistics for your most recent email campaigns to gauge how engaged your subscribers are and see which Subject lines resulted in greater open rates. 

#5. Create Relevant Content

Creating different versions of the same email message is not necessary to diversify your email sequence. The goal of automated email sequences is to provide clients with a tailored experience while streamlining operations.

As such, the information in your automated emails should be timeless and relevant to every receiver. However, it is appropriate and recommended to use customization in the emails.

For example, it’s crucial to include the customer’s name and information about the abandoned product, including the product name, price, and characteristics, when creating an abandoned cart sequence.

#6. Add “Call to Action”

Whichever email sequence you use, it’s imperative to include a clear call to action (CTA) to help your audience understand what to do next if they want to interact.

For example, using a CTA like “continue shopping” in an email sequence for abandoned carts makes it simple for shoppers to come back to your website. If a call to action is omitted from this sequence, recipients may choose to ignore the email and click away.

By adding a button, you’ve expedited the procedure and given clear instructions on what to do next, which increases the chance that someone will actually take action.

#7. Test Deliverability

Testing should be an integral part of an email sequence implementation. It’s crucial to deliver your email sequence emails to the recipient’s inbox to make the most out of the sequence. You should apply the testing strategy to every message of your email sequence. Testing will help you measure the impact of things like Subject lines, CTAs, email body copy, and design aspects on email placement. Through testing, you will be able to find the optimal email copy, which will ultimately boost user interaction.
Additionally, a regular deliverability testing will allow you to ensure every email in your sequence drops in the Inbox rather than the Spam folder, thus increasing the probability of the prospect to see and open it.

Take Your Email Marketing to a Higher Level with Automated Email Sequences

Email marketing has changed dramatically over the years, giving marketers the opportunity to use marketing automation to deliver campaigns more efficiently and reach out to consumers on time.

Email sequences are powerful tools that help businesses grow by attracting, converting, and re-engaging customers. Modern email service providers have automated marketing tools that you can take advantage of to set up email sequences tailored to your audience. 

After they are set up, the sequences run smoothly and only need to be reviewed once in a while to guarantee Inbox deliverability and peak performance. Through regular testing, you can increase conversions and build strong relationships, which will help your company stand out in a crowded market.