Email marketing is a popular means of retaining existing customers, making offers or simply providing information. This form of online marketing is gaining in importance and has become indispensable for most companies. This usually involves an enormous amount of time; email newsletters or mailings have to be planned, prepared and sent to the relevant target groups. They are often sent out at regular, predetermined intervals and to a wide range of customers.
At the same time, personalization in marketing is an important tool to address your customers personally and to stand out from your competitors. Non-specific email newsletters usually do not meet this requirement, as they send the same information to a multitude of customers with completely different needs, interests and buying behavior.
In this blog post, we have already discussed how you can use email automation and personalization for the success of your business. In the following, we would like to take a closer look at how you can use email automation to support the five phases of the customer journey and thus combine personalization with modern email marketing.
Why automated emails at all? You may already be doing email marketing very successfully and getting great feedback on your email newsletters. Here are just three of 21 statistics that speak for email automation:
Through newsletters or free trials, customers usually give out their email address before they make their first purchase. This is where you can link to the first automated email to target your leads. You can ask about their individual interests or offer your help in answering questions that arise. The answers you will receive will give you detailed information on how to approach and win over these customers in the future.
Examples, such as email notifications after a shopping cart abandonment, show that these initial contacts can be extremely effective and successfully start the customer journey.
During onboarding, a welcome email is already standard for many businesses. This can take the form of a successful registration, successful order acceptance or order confirmation - depending on what products or services you offer. Such mailings offer the possibility of personal appreciation, for example through a signature of the CEO or a personally assigned contact person. Helpful links and tutorials can also be included in this email and create examples of use for your customers.
Of course, this phase is highly dependent on the complexity of your products. If you need to implement and roll out your product for a longer period of time, timed emails can support and train your customers over a longer period of time. If your customers have not accepted any of this assistance, you can offer individual help through customer support after a certain period of time.
If more of your customers' data is needed to drive customer onboarding, email reminders can help you pick up your customers.
Further information such as training offers, videos or community tips can be shared during this phase, offering your customers an optimal user experience and laying the foundation for long-term cooperation.
Most importantly, during this phase you should reduce the frequency of your mailings so that your customers do not perceive them as spam.
Nevertheless, the longest phase of the customer journey also offers potential for automated emails: a simple example is birthday greetings. It is important here that the mailings are not sent weekly or monthly, but depending on clearly defined triggers. Here, for example, we have shown how quality management was automated for our client.
Here, too, what is feasible depends very much on the products and services you offer. Reductions of products from the customer's wish list or sales in preferred product groups of your buyers are just two ideas at this point.
Automated emails can also be used during this phase to prevent your customers from churning. Remind your customers why they bought your product or that they should use it again. To be effective, it is important to know your data: What are your customers' intentions to churn? Are there any recurring patterns that can help you recognize this phase? Based on this, you can then write emails reminding your customers why your product meets their needs.
Complementary products or services, reminders to renew your membership or an offer to upgrade your expiring trial - you know best what opportunities are available to you during this phase of the customer journey. Use them!
Timing is everything - for this you need to know and understand your customers and their needs in the first step. It may also be necessary to optimize your processes. The chances of success are promising.
Covid19 has shown how much is still ahead of us in terms of digitalization and automation, but also how much is still possible. Be one of the first and use automation to make your company more efficient and crisis-proof. Together we will find individual solutions that are flexible and scalable.
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