Automation is the next step in effective marketing strategies. Connecting with your customers with behavior based emails and intelligence driven personalization helps them to move further in the sales funnel and hence retains them. Here are 3 types of effective B2C email marketing automations that your business must have in place.

1. Welcome series for New customers

2. Keeping new/existing customers engaged

3. Winning back lost customers

1.Welcome Series

Welcome email includes a short message welcoming the new lead/subscriber (Registered) into your list. It can include some goodies or links to your best content as a welcoming gift. It can also include some white papers and e -research documents like ebooks. A drip marketing campaign can also be created for welcome series.

2. Keeping New / Existing customers engaged (Transactional emails)

Retaining the existing customers is more important than acquiring the new ones. What can be better than keeping them engaged through transactional email?

Here are some transactional emails that you can set up:

• Reminder Emails
• Renewal Emails
• Abandoned Transaction emails
• Product emails
• Purchase Emails
• Offer Emails
• Behavioural emails
• Educative emails
• Order Tracking emails
• Drip Marketing

Here are the 5 points that you should remember while setting up an automation.

1. Distinguish your target group

Segment your email list according to the behavior or recent activity of your subscriber. Below are some examples:

• Blog Subs
• Newsletter Sub
• Registered Users
• App Downloaders
• Existing clients
• Trial users

Segmenting your email list helps you to target your customers/subscribers based on more personalized information and content.

2. Decide on your campaign’s objective

A campaign without an objective is a failed campaign. Make sure you decide the type of campaign that you want:

• Customer Upsell/cross-sell
• Lead nurturing
• Increase Conversions
• Create Effective Sales Pitch
• Improve Customer Experience

3. Set up Triggers

Create personalized and automated email drip campaigns that can get triggered when a contact:

• Gets added to a list
• Submits a form on your website
• Clicks a link in an email/ open email
• Visits a specific website page

4. Create your emails

Create an Email cycle based on:

• Yes/No analogy
• Wait time analogy

Make sure you do not send more than 2 emails in 24 hrs

5. Monitor performance and optimize it

This is the most important step to improve your future campaigns. Analyze the emails with good opens and click-throughs to know what worked for your business.

To improve the performance of your future campaigns, tweak the content, subject line, design based on your reports. Try A/B Testing your campaigns to get good performance. Evaluate your campaigns every week and improvise.

Below are some effective Drip Email Campaigns

• Welcome customers with an automated drip campaign
• Upgrade from Free Trial to Paid Account
• Bring back your revenue with card abandonment drip email sequence
• Promote special offer with email drip campaigns
• Build a sales pitch with an email drip campaign
• Communicate upcoming events with drip email campaigns
• Send tailored messages to your potential customer

Sector-wise Drip Marketing Campaigns

1. For Retail Sector:

• Welcome series
• Abandonment Shopping Cart (within 2 to 3 hours)
• Restart Membership Campaign (WebTv/DTH)
• Shopping behavioural Campaigns
• Order Tracking series

2. For BFSI

• Introduction of New Products
• Renewal Campaigns
• Upselling / Cross-Selling Campaigns
• Autoresponder & auto-follow-up emailing campaigns

3. For Real Estate

• Area wise Real estate listing
• New Home Buyer Offer
• Appointment Schedule Automation
• Easy Home Finance Emailer
• Testimonial email cycle
• Payment followup emails

3. Winning back lost customers (Winback Email Campaigns)

Winback Campaigns are designed to make inactive customers active through interactive campaigns

Refer to the workflow below:

• Reminder ( 2-3 months of your customer being inactive)
• Incentive ( within 4 days )
• Last chance with an enhanced incentive ( within 7 day )
• GoodBye Email

USPs of winback email campaigns:

• Attractive Subject line
• Personalised generous emails
• Request a Feedback
• Create urgency
• Simple and visible call to action

Example of Winback Campaigns

• Restart Membership Campaign (WebTv/DTH)
• Campaign reminding customers of benefits
• Incentive Campaigns