Are you thinking of automating your email campaigns but don’t know which ones should you build?
Then you need to pay heed to the eCommerce marketing automation that can revolutionize your business and skyrocket your profits.
Automating some of your most prominent email campaigns can allow you to provide a seamless customer experience and save time that you can instead invest in building your business empire.
In this article, we will cover 11 email marketing campaigns that you should run on autopilot if you want to outperform your competitors and win at every step of your marketing campaigns.
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Your awesome product or service can rake in dollars now and then, but automated email marketing campaigns ensure it keeps happening consistently.
But in 2022, your business needs to stand out from the crowd when there are around 12 million to 24 million eCommerce stores globally.
According to a survey released by Accenture, over the last year, businesses have lost approximately $756 billion due to poor eCommerce personalization.
Automating some of the most prominent email campaigns can solve these problems for you.
Email automation can enhance your lead nurturing method, seamlessly convert them into customers, and timely engage with them after the sale to provide a wholesome eCommerce personalization.
We will use FunnelKit Automations - the most powerful WordPress marketing automation engine - to build these email marketing campaigns.
At the time of writing this post, we’re getting ready to introduce its next-gen automation builder.
With a minimalist canvas interface for building workflows, a library of useful pre-built recipes, nifty features for creating delays, adding actions, goals to automation, and more.
FunnelKit Automations is going to be quite a game-changer!
What is cart abandonment?
Cart abandonment is when a prospective customer browses your store, adds their favorite items to the cart, fills in their name and email address, and then…
Just leaves the checkout page without completing the payment.
So to bring back these wandering prospects and complete the pending purchases, a series of emails are sent to the abandoned cart users.
These emails are called Abandoned Cart Email Sequences.
Why should you automate this campaign?
According to the Baymard Institute, 7 out of 10 customers abandon their carts. So, if you really want to run a profitable business, it is crucial that you convince more of your customers to buy.
After all, who wants to lose 70% of their profits?
And thus, the abandoned cart email sequence is one of the most important eCommerce marketing automation you need to implement.
Some marketers send only ONE email to bring back the user, but according to Experian Cross-Channel Marketing’s Q3 2016 Email Benchmark Report, multiple cart abandonment emails saw 2.4X more conversions.
Also, you can incentivize the purchase by offering a discount coupon. It is one of the most common and effective ways to bring the abandoned user back.
What is a welcome email?
Welcome emails are sent when a new user subscribes to your email list or buys your product for the first time.
You can send welcome emails to your users to greet them and familiarize them with your brand or store.
You can share some of your product stories, recommend them your best sellers, share your best-reviewed products, and more.
By recommending products right from the start, your welcome email can get people shopping again.
Instead of just congratulating new subscribers on joining the email list, you can welcome your new audience by sending them right back to the store with a compelling reason.
Why should you automate this campaign?
According to Omnisend’s eCommerce Statistics Report 2020, welcome emails have one of the highest open rates (31%), one of the highest click-through rates (5X more), and one of the highest conversion rates (52%).
If these reasons are not enough to convince you to start designing your welcome emails, this might: 7 out of 10 new subscribers expect to receive a welcome email from you.
A well-crafted welcome email can set the stage for your relationship with your new subscriber. This is where the perceived value of your brand will begin to take shape in your new customer’s mind.
And you need to make sure it is a good one.
This is why welcome emails are considered one of the pillars of a strong email marketing campaign.
Send an excellent welcome email, and the customer will continuously engage with your future emails, send a bad one, and they will unsubscribe right away.
What are post-purchase upsells emails?
Post-purchase emails are sent after a user buys something from your store with the intention to urge them to buy more.
For example, Chris buys a shirt from your store. Now you can shoot them a post-purchase email after 10 minutes to urge them to buy shoes or trousers to go along with that shirt.
These emails can definitely help you boost your average order value per customer.
Why should you automate this campaign?
Kettle & Fire - a bone broth brand - used post-purchase emails to urge their customers to buy more than one flavor.
And the results were phenomenal!
They roped in more repeat customers and saw a 140% rise in checkout conversions, as well as a staggering 41% increase in average revenue per customer.
Post-purchase emails primarily focus on upsells, but they can even be simple follow-up emails to thank your customer for their purchase.
You can even combine both elements: reinforce your buyer’s decision by thanking them for the purchase and recommend complementary products beneath the thank you note.
Whenever somebody buys from your store, it is not convenient to manually shoot an email to these customers.
If done correctly, your post-purchase upsell emails can increase your profits by 10 times or even more.
You can also use these emails as a downselling strategy.
What are post-purchase emails triggered by specific products?
Let’s say you sell products related to men’s lifestyles.
A customer buys Volmatrix hair gel from your store.
Now, this particular hair gel is made for men who need to add volume to their hair.
Hence, you know what exactly this particular customer is looking for, i.e., adding volume to their hair.
Now, you can set up an eCommerce marketing automation campaign where somebody buys this particular product, and a sequence of personalized emails should go out.
The emails could include:
Why should you automate this campaign?
Sending relevant and personalized emails is one of the sureshot ways to get more opens and clicks.
People are tired of businesses spamming their inboxes every single day with irrelevant products.
This is where personalized emails can help you stand out from the crowd.
This post-purchase email sequence is not a generic one as discussed above, but this sequence will be triggered according to a specific product.
The follow-up emails will talk about related things to that particular product.
These emails will not only strengthen your brand image but also lead to more purchases from your customers.
With FunnelKit Automations, you can do this very easily.
What are post-purchase review emails?
If you’ve ever bought something from Amazon, you must be familiar with an email that drops into your inbox a couple of days after the delivery.
This email entices you to talk about your experience with the bought product. Positive or negative, doesn’t matter, just drop your review.
This email is called the post-purchase review email.
The main intention of this email is to persuade you to give a rating and write about your experience with the product. These ratings and reviews are collectively mentioned below the product for prospective buyers to see.
Why should you automate this campaign?
According to an article published by Inc., 91% of people say that they read reviews before making a purchase decision, and 84% of people said they trust online reviews as much as friends.
Thus, it becomes crucial that collecting reviews can be beneficial for your sales.
Automating this campaign will allow you to engage with your customers. With this email, your customers can tell you what they like and what they dislike about your products.
This will help you make changes to your products.
Or, maybe the product is all-good, but the shipping service sucks, your customer can let you know with their reviews, and you can have a word with your shipping company.
With an effective post-purchase review campaign, you can amend all the defects in your products or process.
What are customer winback campaigns?
As per the KPMG research, 30% of people are likely to buy from a website they’ve bought from previously. It’s because there’s know, like, and trust factor with them.
That's why you must have a proper plan in place to rekindle your relationship with existing customers, in case they become inactive.
And there isn't a better way than a winback campaign to give your lapsed customers a nudge and pull them in.
Why should you automate this campaign?
Customer winback campaigns are one of the most important eCommerce marketing automation you need to implement today.
This campaign will mainly target customers who have been inactive for a while. Inactivity could mean:
Repeat customers generate 5 to 7 times revenue per visit compared to the average shoppers.
Hence, it is crucial that we target these inactive customers and prompt them to buy from you again.
A customer winback campaign will also give you data about customers who are not interacting with your emails. Most of these users are NOT interested in your products.
You need to stop sending them emails, or else these unopened emails will affect your delivery rates and eventually get you banned by the ISPs.
This automation allows you to maintain your email list efficiently and churn out customers who are not at all interested in your products.
What are occasion emails?
This one is quite self-explanatory.
With this eCommerce marketing automation, you greet your customers on special occasions such as first purchase anniversaries, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and more.
These emails are mainly intended to greet your customers on their special occasions and build a better bond.
In order to execute this campaign, you need to have these special dates recorded in your database. For this, you need a form that collects this information, i.e., birth date, anniversary date, etc.
With FunnelKit Automations, you can easily integrate your forms with your email automation and run this campaign smoothly.
Why should you automate this campaign?
Building customer bonding helps you generate a sense of loyalty, boost revenues, and, most importantly, retain customers.
Automating this campaign will ensure that you never miss your customers’ birthdays, purchase anniversaries, and other important milestones.
These emails show your customers that you don’t see them as just buyers but as an actual human being that likes to be greeted.
You can take it a notch up by offering special discounts for these customers.
Just imagine how good it will make your customer feel when they see:
“Hey [first_name], A Very Happy, Happy Birthday from [company_name].
Looking forward to binge-shop on your birthday? Let us add more fun to your special day.
Buy anything today from our store, and get 25% OFF!! Offer valid till tonight at 12 am.
Here’s your EXCLUSIVE discount coupon code.”
What are out-of-stock/back-in-stock email campaigns?
One of the most annoying shopping experiences is out-of-stock items aka stockouts.
With stockouts, you not only lose revenue and sales but also opportunities to engage with your customers. If the shoppers see constant stockouts in your stores, it can damage your business’ reputation.
That’s why you need to set a campaign to know which items are you running out of. This email campaign will notify you that you need to re-stock a particular item.
This email can be sent directly to the warehouse manager to save time.
Why should you automate this campaign?
It is estimated that stockouts cost retailers approximately $1 trillion every year.
That is a startling figure.
However, what is more startling is that 30% of shoppers feel stockouts affect their shopping experience negatively.
The same study also claims that 70% of shoppers will choose a different brand if they encounter three stockouts in a particular store.
This is why you need to have an eCommerce marketing automation that is triggered when a particular item runs below a certain threshold.
You can quickly let your store manager know and re-stock the item before it goes out of stock.
This can help in boosting revenues and sales and also encourage proper inventory management.
What are membership autorenewal/expiry email campaigns?
If you run a subscription-based business, you need to remind your customers when their subscription ends.
Or maybe you need to notify them that their subscription is set to auto-renew next week.
Handpicking such customers can be frustrating and inconvenient; hence, you need to build automation where the customers whose subscriptions are due for autorenewal or are about to expire will be notified without manual work.
Why should you automate this campaign?
Subscription-based businesses have a tricky business model. You need to focus more on existing customers than chase new customers now and then.
Studies have shown that acquiring a new customer is 5X more expensive than retaining an existing one.
An eCommerce marketing automation that reminds your customers about their subscription’s expiration date or autorenewal can not only save you time but also help you scale your business multifold.
Autorenewal emails encourage your existing customers to continue using your products/services and give you a chance to provide exclusive offers and build brand loyalty.
You can use this email campaign to retain your customers and drive long-term value for your business.
What are dunning email campaigns?
Dunning emails are transactional emails that remind your customers if the payment via their credit card fails.
Neither any business nor any customer wants to be in a “payment failed” situation, simply because it is frustrating.
This is a common scenario in small/mid-sized businesses and one of the most effective methods to tackle this situation is a dunning email campaign.
Why should you automate this campaign?
Credit cards do expire and one always fails to update them at places where they have their accounts.
This might lead to failures in payments and autorenewals.
It takes a lot of effort to collect customer data, categorize them, and then shoot them a dunning email to inform them about the payment failure.
If left unattended, payment failures can lead to increased churn rates.
If you want to keep this under control, you need to set up a dunning email campaign.
Suppose you have the credit card information of your 100 subscribers, and 10 of them are about to expire in the next two months.
You can set a trigger for your automation, for example, one month before the expiry month.
So, now, one month before the expiration of the concerned credit card, the owner will be sent an email notifying them that they need to update their credit card information.
One challenge that every marketer faces with dunning emails is to convey the right tone. You want the recipient to update their payment information while reminding them about the product benefits.
What are discount emails?
Who doesn’t like discounts?
In fact, 92% of US shoppers used discount coupons last year when buying something.
Discounts are loved by all customers, but most marketers use discount coupons as an attraction. Instead, you can use this strategy as a reward as well.
In this email campaign, you send exclusive discount coupons to your repeat customers and thank them for their loyalty to your brand.
Why should you automate this campaign?
Let’s say you have a customer who has ordered 5 times from your store in the last 6 months, this shows that they like your products and trust your brand.
So, you do need to reward these loyal customers.
And what’s better than an exclusive discount coupon? A study by Bizrate Insights claims that younger customers perceive discounts as Very Important, and they admit it does influence their buying decisions.
If you constantly reward your customers they will not only feel valued but also advertise your brand for you.
Now that we have laid out the 11 eCommerce marketing automation campaigns that you SHOULD prioritize in your business, we would like to recommend you a tool that will allow you to do ALL of these things right from your WordPress dashboard.
FunnelKit Automations - the most powerful WordPress marketing automation engine that can handle all of your CRM needs.
FunnelKit Automations’s clean and minimalistic Canvas mode will help you visualize your workflow as you build it.
The simple form integration will let you capture and nurture your leads more effectively.
Create coupon codes and shoot automated emails right from your WordPress dashboard.
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