Any business with a growing email list is wise to factor email automation into their marketing collateral. You may have run a couple of email marketing campaigns and enjoyed a small boost in conversions as a result. But did you know email marketing automation can significantly increase your conversion rates?
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By automating certain types of emails when a new customer signs up for your services or purchases a product, you can send relevant, personalized messages that will increase the chances of them doing business with you and repeating that business in the future.
We look in more detail at why you need email marketing automation and three types that your business should be using right now.
Why you need email automation
Selling products and services online is extremely competitive, so you need to be sure you’re doing everything you can to secure your niche in the marketplace.
One way of doing this is to use email automation. Email automation technology has made it easier for marketers and business owners to send dynamic and personalized emails, thereby increasing the chances of an email message being opened and landing page links clicked on.
You don’t need to be a big business with a large marketing budget either. Small businesses do very well with email automation, because it’s cost-effective, easy to set up and works in the background, allowing owners to focus on more important tasks.
So what types of email marketing automation are essential? Try these three for starters.
- Cart abandonment email
The cart abandonment stats aren’t pretty. This collation of 40 companies by Baymard Institute shows an average of 69.89% for shopping cart abandonment by customers. The reasons people abandon are many and varied, but the institute found that over half of US online shoppers (58.6%) abandon their carts because they are ‘just browsing’ or ‘not ready to buy’. 
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Wouldn’t it be great if you could message these people at a later date to check if they are ready to buy? With email automation you can do just that. Sending an automatic cart abandonment email to customers who have clicked away from your site serves as a soft nudge that the product is still for sale, and adding a ‘buy now’ button at the bottom makes it even for them to purchase it.
- Onboarding emails
Having a customer sign up for your product or service is all very well, but once they’ve handed over their email address do you follow up with them? Onboarding, or lead nurturing, as it is also called, helps to transition a lead into being a customer. This is something that many businesses forget about because they’re more focused on getting leads than improving the quality of the ones they already have.  
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With email automation you can send out an onboarding message to:
- thank them for signing up,
- introduce them your business and your brand,
- answer typical questions about the service you provide, or
- give them instructions on how best to use it.
But you have to strike while the iron’s hot, within the first 10 days is recommended for making contact with customers, as this is when they’re most likely to make a purchase.
- Post-purchase follow-up
Post-purchase is another often overlooked email automation and a golden opportunity to connect with your customers and encourage repeat business. Pretty much all customers who buy a product online expect a confirmation email as proof of purchase or receipt, along with details of what it is they’ve purchased. Many businesses will also include shipping date, estimated arrival time, tracking information and an email address to contact if things go wrong. All quite standard.
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But with email automation it’s possible to reach out post-purchase to ask customers how they liked the product and ask for a minute of their time to get feedback while it’s still fresh in their mind. This makes customers feel that you care about their experience with your product. Their feedback will also help you to correct any flaws in the purchasing process.
With further post-purchase emails you could encourage them to share your brand with friends and family, invite them to a referral program or let them know about new stock or vacation discounts.
Final thoughts
With email automation it’s important to remember that what you send out needs to be personalized, relevant and authentic. Take the time to set up these three types of email automations when running a campaign and you can expect increased engagement and brand loyalty, as well as more leads and conversions, without any major daily input from you.
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Author Name: Matt Ramage
Author Bio: 
Matt Ramage has been marketing websites for over 20 years. He loves helping businesses improve their user experience and searchability on the Internet. Matt now heads Emarketed which is located in Los Angeles, California. They specialize in SEO, social media marketing and web development.
