EMAIL AUTOMATION SERVICES

Email automation enables you to send specific email campaigns to your customers (and prospective customers) when they take specific actions.

These specific actions can include:

• Welcoming new and potential customers
• Following up on website activity
• Putting purchase data to good use
• Event Emails

Let’s elaborate on these different areas below.

1. Welcoming new and potential customers

Say someone has visited your website for the first time. What do they see? A discount code in exchange for their email? A whitepaper to download in exchange for an email? Or perhaps, the only place to input their email address is when they checkout.

We’ve set up email automation tracks for each of these different types of customers. These tracks range from a single email showcasing your services to a series of several emails that onboard customers as to what your company is all about.

2. Follow up on website activity

Remember our automation story at the beginning of this page? That’s an example of a follow up on website activity. A customer makes a purchase, and an automated email (that looks personalized) goes out to see if they’re happy.

We’re also able to send emails based on other pieces of activity, like what webpage they signed up for emails, if they opened any of the automated emails, and if they made a purchase.

3. Putting purchase data to good use

This is where automation gets fun.

You’ve got repeat customers who have spent thousands with you. You’ve got one time customers who tried your service nine months ago. Not all customers are created equal, and this is an area where we can really put data to work.

An example.

One automation campaign we’ve set up is based on the knowledge that if a customer doesn’t purchase again within 45 days, they’re 86% less likely to purchase from our client again. Yikes.

Those first 45 days are crucial to sending customers things like product care instructions and product recommendations based on their previous purchases. If they slip beyond that 45 day window, they’re automatically put into a separate “recovery mode” track that gives customers incentives to purchase again.

If you have purchase data, we can dissect it and put it’s power to use.

4. Event Emails

You host webinars, you put on events, you have sales. These special event emails all deserve an automation track – starting from when the customer signs up, leading up to the event, and post event.

Setting up an event email automation marketing series once led our client to close 5 times the amount of business they were from when they didn’t have the automation in place.

It’s a “gotta have.”

Next Steps

If you’d like to us to provide you with email marketing automation services (which we would love to…it’s one of things we get really nerdy about), just contact us. We’ll perform these services:

• Define when your emails go out
• Set up triggers to send emails based on criteria you chose
• Set time delays between emails in an automation series
• Set triggers within the automation track (so certain emails send to subscribers who’ve opened or clicked)
• Monitor and manage your email marketing automation
• Track your performance and report on the results
• Integrate with services like Salesforce, Shopify and Magento

Shopify and MailChimp are our two favorite platforms to work with for email automation sequences. The integration between the two platforms is seamless, and is the easiest to work with.

We also have experience in setting up email automation sequences with WooCommerce (WordPress), BigCommerce, Magento, lots of different CRMs.

However, there are several uses for email automation between Shopify and MailChimp, including:

• 1. Welcome automations for new customers
• 2. Win-back automations for customers at-risk of not being repeat customers
• 3. Nurture automations for prospective customers
• 4. Abandoned cart automations
• 5. Repeat customer automations
• 6. Ecommerce receipt automations
• 7. Birthday automations

Typically, the most common email automation for Shopify customers is the welcome series for prospective customers. This email automation sequence gives companies the highest return on investment.

Nah. We need to put together a portfolio of a complete MailChimp automation example, but we haven’t had the time yet. Maybe one day.

In the meantime, here are examples of the types of email automation campaigns we’ve built.

• 1. Welcome automations for new customers
• 2. Win-back automations for customers at-risk of not being repeat customers
• 3. Nurture automations for prospective customers
• 4. Abandoned cart automations
• 5. Repeat customer automations
• 6. Ecommerce receipt automations

And, here are some examples of individual email campaigns we’ve sent:

• Example 1: http://eepurl.com/b9zJLj
• Example 2: http://eepurl.com/bplXtD
• Example 3: http://eepurl.com/bzbTsr
• Example 4: http://eepurl.com/b_Pzwf

MailChimp automation triggers analyze subscriber data and automatically send an email when specific criteria is met.

For example, a birthday email automation campaign will analyze the birthdays of all subscribers, and when a subscriber birthday matches the automation trigger, MailChimp will automatically send a birthday email to that subscriber.

Automation triggers are the most difficult aspect of email automation. It’s where a lot of DIY’ers get caught up, because the MailChimp automation triggers don’t work, or even worse, they trigger on the wrong criteria (and everyone on the list gets a “welcome” email).

If you’re going to do email automation, you’ve got to understand the sequences of how triggers interact with each other, so that subscribers receive the right message in a timely manner.

We charge $250 per email in your automation sequence.

For example, if you have 4 emails in your automation sequence – a welcome email, a reminder email, another reminder email, and a final email – then we would charge $1,000 for the project.

This cost includes the strategy, build, and implementation of the automation campaign.

We’re not the cheapest. But, we’re MailChimp Experts, and you’ll know that the project will get done right.

Step 1: We look at the 7 common email automation sequences – Welcome, Nurture, Abandoned Cart, Win-Back, Birthday, Receipts, and Repeat Customer – and figure out what sequence is missing from your strategy.

Step 2: We analyze all the data for subscribers in your list to see what automation triggers we could potentially use in the sequence.

Step 3: We’ll clean your lists. Sometimes we’ll come across “decentralized lists” – where a MailChimp customer is using multiple lists to manage subscribers. This approach runs the risk of sending multiple automation campaigns to the same subscriber. We centralize the list so all the data about a subscriber is being fed to one place.

Step 4: Template Development. We’ll see what templates have performed the best for previous campaigns, and let those designs influence our designs in the email automations.

Step 5: We’ll develop the actual email campaign sequences in a spreadsheet, with subject lines, synopsis, triggers, call to action, and length of time between sends.

Step 6: Get the strategy approved by you, and begin the build out!

Here’s a list of CRMs that integrate well with MailChimp.

Here are the CRMs we’ve worked with to set up email automation campaigns within MailChimp:

• Salesforce
• SugarCRM
• OnePageCRM
• Zoho
• Insightly
• Pipedrive
• ProsperWorks
• Custom developed CRMs

It’s funny, because the most common line we hear from customers is, “We use a CRM called ‘_________’ – have you heard of it?”

Even though we’ve never heard of the CRM you’re using, chances are that we can make it work with MailChimp. When in doubt, contact us.

Here are the eCommerce platforms we’ve worked with to set up email automation campaigns within MailChimp:

• Shopify
• Magento
• WooCommerce
• BigCommerce
• X-Cart
• Custom developed eCommerce platforms

If you use one of the eCommerce platforms above, we can probably help you.

We believe email marketing automation is for everyone.

Why?

Because email automations enable you to:

• 1. Save time
• 2. Send more effective campaigns
• 3. Increase profit

Isn’t that what it’s all about?