Using Email Automation Sequences to re-engage your list & make more sales
Even in the age of social media and artificial intelligence, you shouldn’t dismiss the power of emails for cultivating leads and converting them into closed business. When done well, email automation can be an extremely cost-effective method of maximising your marketing budget and ensuring you don’t lose any leads.
This is NOT just your company newsletter
Where many businesses go wrong with email marketing is they mistake ‘newsletters’ for ‘marketing’. You’ve probably received several emails this week from businesses giving you the latest news from their company. Heck, you may have one waiting for you in your inbox right now. That’s not marketing. Not really.
While there’s nothing wrong with sending out a newsletter, and we have one at Engage Web that is sent out every week, that should not be confused with email marketing. Email marketing, when set up properly, is a constant source of reinvigorated leads into your business, and it doesn’t permit leads you’ve worked hard to build from going cold, and disappearing.
Some different types of email automation:
Email Introduction Sequences / Warm-Up Sequences
Perhaps the most well-known email marketing automation is the introductory sequence, or welcome sequence, a new subscriber receives when they first subscribe to your newsletter. This starts with the first ‘welcome email’ thanking them for subscribing, and laying out the benefits of being a subscriber. However, it should not end there – as many businesses often believe. A good welcome sequence could be five, six, seven emails or even run for dozens of emails. Each would be set to send after a delayed period following the previous email. Each may focus on different parts of your business, the services you offer or the problems you solve. Each should have a call to action, requesting the recipient click on a link, or take some other action.
eCommerce dropped basket emails
You’ve more than likely received some of these before, from websites such as Amazon. When you add a product to your basket, but don’t complete the transaction, the website sends you a reminder email and sometimes offers an incentive to return and purchase, such as a small discount. These emails can also be triggered based on which products you view, and they’re extremely powerful in increasing sales for your eCommerce website.
Re-Engaging Emails / Re-Activation Sequences
When you have a large list of emails, in the thousands, it can actually be harmful to send out emails to everyone on your list, as many won’t actually open the emails. Email providers such as Google’s Gmail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail, can restrict the deliverability of your emails if they see huge volumes of your emails being deleted without being opened.
Therefore, you only want to send your emails to people who are likely to open them. This is why really successful email marketers will fully segment their lists, so only those people who are engaged will receive emails. They then use ‘re-engagement’ emails which are sent out to people who do not open their emails, and are designed specifically to make them open the email. These may contain powerful subject lines such as “Are we breaking up?” or “Woops! I didn’t mean to send this”. Once someone is re-engaged, they’re added back to the main list so they start receiving your other emails again.
All of this is done automatically, so it takes none of your time and keeps your list updated, and delivered to as many people as possible.
We’d love to speak with you about your business, and how email automation can help you grow your list and convert your subscribers into clients and customers.
