What is Email Marketing Automation?

Chapter 01: The Definition of Email Marketing Automation

Email marketing automation helps companies automate their strategic marketing campaigns to make them more efficient, freeing up time and resources to focus on growing the business.

Email marketing automation software like Keap helps:

• Send welcome emails or a series of automated emails that bring your prospects to top of funnel
• Expand your contact list, send specific messages to your target audience and include strong calls-to-action (CTAs) to add more value by encouraging leads to subscribe or buy
• Ensure you’re sending the most compelling message to the right people at the appropriate time via email marketing automation

Keep reading to learn more about what email marketing automation is or jump ahead:

1. Benefits of Using Email Automation
2. Other Ways to Automate Emails
3. Automated Email Campaign Examples for Easier Marketing

Learn more about how marketing automation works.

Chapter 02: Benefits of Using Email Automation

75% of respondents to an Adestra survey agreed that saving time was the biggest benefit of marketing automation tools. Email marketing automation platforms in particular are a major contributor to those valuable time savings.

In fact, other automated email marketing software benefits include:

1. More personalization

Crafting personalized and highly-targeted email campaigns takes a lot of time and effort. That’s where email marketing automation comes in. These systems can track customer engagement across your content, build a campaign based on their observed preferences and provide content in which they would have already demonstrated interest, thus ensuring higher conversions and fewer unsubscribes.

2. Save time

Automated email marketing systems allow you to integrate their functionality with your current project management and CRM software, consolidating data in real time, which can then be used to send automated emails based on triggering events.

Email automation triggers include:

• Purchase is made
• Form is submitted
• Appointment is scheduled or cancelled
• Tag is added to a contact
• Invoice is sent or paid
• Quote is sent or accepted

Explore more email triggers with Keap’s Easy Automations.

3. Grow at scale

When your business’ capacity increases, an automated system can accommodate your growing needs without needing to hire new marketers to help pick up the slack.

4. Target customers

By using automated email follow up software, you have the ability to automatically segment your leads based on their interactions with your website and content at different times.

5. Stay in touch

Most email platforms support drip campaigns, another benefit of email automation which are essentially a series of emails that are automatically sent to recipients over a series of days or weeks. Creating a drip campaign can be an extremely efficient way to nurture leads and consistently remind them of the value you offer.

6. Create customer loyalty

Measure loyalty by tracking touchpoints and gaining feedback from customers on how they feel about your product/services throughout their journey. Use automation to determine who your brand advocates are and offer incentives to encourage referrals.

The best email marketing automation tools help you be consistent as you engage with your leads across many channels in real time. Sales email automation software can also help you stay top of mind for prospects, those who are most likely to purchase.

Chapter 03: Other Ways to Automate Emails

Using an email automation software is the simplest and most robust way to configure and send email campaigns for your business 24/7, even while you’re sleeping. Platforms like Keap also make it easier to follow email automation best practices, so you can spend less time setting up opt-ins, personalizing emails, or worrying about deliverability.

There are a few ways you can automate emails for the more tech savvy that are willing to put in the extra leg work. Because these methods are more limited in functionality, you may have to use a combination to achieve close to the same as designated software that integrates with a CRM.

• Schedule emails for a later date with Python
• Automate organization and forwarding with Gmail
• Use plug-ins with Outlook
• Standalone email marketing software without the bells and whistles of a CRM

Chapter 04: 8 Automated Email Campaign Examples for Easier Marketing

With Keap’s Easy Automations and customizable advanced automations, setting up email campaigns takes just a few clicks.

Some examples of email marketing automation tool applications include:

1. Contact forms

Rather than making your customers wait for a response to their inquiry, you can leverage email marketing automation by generating responses to go out as soon as a customer completes a contact form.

How this automated email campaign works:

When: (Contact) form is submitted
Then: Send (Make an Appointment) email template

2. Repetitive requests

Sales email automation software handles emails that you find yourself typing over and over again. Instead, create a sequence of emails that automatically go out that cover specific information that may be important to customers.

How this automated email campaign works:

When: (Onboarding) tag is added
Then: Send (Getting Started Instructions) email template

3. Event workflows

You can use an automated email series to handle event registrations and attendee communication before, during and after an event. For example, you could set up emails to remind customers to attend the webinar and then send them the recording after the webinar.

How this automated email campaign works:

When: (Event Attendee) tag is added
Then: Send (Thank You for Registering) email template
...and: Send (Event Schedule) email template on DATE
...and: Send (Event Recap) email template on DATE

4. Abandoned shopping carts

When someone adds a product to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, you can trigger an email to remind them of their forgotten item. This email could even include a special coupon code to incentivize the customer to finish their transaction with free shipping, for example.

How this automated email campaign works:

When: (Abandoned Cart) tag is added
Then: Send (Forgot Something?) email template

5. Purchase reminders

For those businesses whose customers make purchases on a predictable cycle, like paying once a year on pet insurance, for example, enter past customers into an automated email series to remind them to renew their subscription on the anniversary of their initial purchase.

How this automated email campaign works:

Add a “subscription date” field to each contact.
When: One week before contact’s next (subscription date)
Then: Send (Subscription Renewal Reminder) email template

6. Promotional emails

Promotional emails get the word out about a new promotion, service, or product to your current customers, new leads, or email subscribers. They are great for sharing limited time offers and new product launches.

How this automated email campaign works:

Schedule a 3-part automated email series to send to a contact list segment.
When: On a specific date
Then: Send (Promo #1) email template (repeat for next two emails)

7. Transactional emails

These pragmatic emails confirm specific interactions with a brand, and the recipient expects to receive them. These include receipts of purchase, notice of shipment, welcome emails, password resets, account alerts, etc.

Because there are so many possible use cases for transactional emails, email marketing triggers for this example will vary.

8. Welcome emails

A welcome email, the message sent after someone signs up for your email list, reaches subscribers at the time they’re most interested in hearing from your company and can [capitalize on an opportunity ](https://keap.com/resources/email-marketing)when they're most interested in hearing from you. Automate email replies to any new contact easily by setting a form submission as the trigger.

How this automated email campaign works:

When: (Newsletter Sign Up) form is submitted
Then: Send (Welcome Aboard) email template

Chapter 05: Summing up

And, to take it to the next level, when you pair email marketing automation with CRM (customer relationship management), your marketing becomes more sophisticated and you'll be able to generate leads, follow up with them, and watch the revenue come in.Want to know more? Read about all of Keap's marketing automation tools to take a peek at what our email marketing automation tools have to offer.