Imagine being able to engage with your customers at exactly the right moment, with personalised messages tailored to their needs—all without lifting a finger. In today’s fast-paced digital world, email marketing automation has become an indispensable practice for businesses looking to connect with their audience in a meaningful and efficient way.
Email marketing automation is the process of sending targeted, personalized, and scheduled emails to subscribers or customers automatically based on predefined triggers, actions, or time schedules. This is an important practice as the automation saves time, from manually sending out each email, allows personalised communication based on customer behaviour and preferences which allows consistent engagement with them hence retaining them as customers.
To discover the best practices for implementation of email marketing automation, we reached out to email marketing and automation experts — who shared their insights on the most effective practices to enhance your email marketing automation. Whether you want to nurture leads, want to increase leads or gain insights into your customers, the right practices can help you achieve all these goals effectively. Below, we compile expert recommendations that provide a roadmap to implement the best practices for email marketing automation.
Charlotte Graham-Cumming
Founder and CEO, Ice Blue Sky
Charlotte Graham-Cumming, founder and CEO of a leading B2B marketing agency that specializes in strategic and ABM marketing solutions for global technology brands. She suggests of utilising personalised email automation and approach it by conducting A/B tests across various elements of your emails.
Personalised email automation is an incredibly effective strategy for both nurturing leads and driving conversions, but it’s crucial to approach it with a testing-first mindset. Before implementing full automation, it’s important to refine the manual process by testing various elements of your email campaigns, such as subject lines, messaging tone, and content formats. A/B testing can help determine what resonates best with your audience, allowing you to identify patterns that increase engagement and conversion rates. This approach ensures you’re scaling tactics that have been proven effective rather than automating ineffective strategies. Testing also helps you understand which types of content work best for different audience segments, providing a strong foundation for successful automation.
Equally important is recognising the distinction between two levels of marketing automation: nurturing for engagement and driving conversions. Nurture emails are designed to build relationships, educate leads, and maintain ongoing interaction, often focusing on informative content that fosters long-term engagement. In contrast, conversion-focused emails are more direct, aiming to prompt immediate actions such as a purchase or booking a consultation. Both approaches are necessary for a well-rounded strategy, but they serve different purposes and should be handled separately to achieve optimal results. By properly segmenting your campaigns and aligning content with your audience’s stage in the buyer’s journey, you can maximise both engagement and conversions.
John Storton
Founder and Managing Director, Yellow Spider Media
John Storton, oversees the implementation of digital marketing strategies to a range of clients with a global reach, ranging from advice and consultation to hands on social media management and content creation. He explains how the key to great automated email campaigns is to make them feel non-automated! The best way to do that is to create a look and feel to the template that makes your customer feel at ease. So how can you do that? here’s a couple of tips to start you off:
- Ensure that your logo, colour scheme, and font are similar to your website and other branding.
- Keep it simple. If the email is a thank you for subscribing to a list for example, say thank you but don’t try to upsell straight away.
- Include personalisation (with merge tags, for example) but don’t forget a ‘default state setup’ for those who haven’t given you their personal information. No one likes a FNAME merge tag!
Calvin O’Callaghan
Co-Founder, Centralise
Both Daniel (my fellow director) & I have the chance to work with hundreds of companies across the UK and Ireland to help with their marketing automation efforts, and let me tell you one thing: email marketing automation has been changing faster in the last six months than it did in the six years prior. With advances in tech, things like personalisation and segmentation have become way more accessible, which is fantastic! But here’s the catch: you’re now competing with the smaller brands who now have access to these tools but also the big brands with massive budgets, all trying to grab your customers’ attention
So, how do you stand out in this crowded, AI-driven world? Here are four tips we share with all of our customers:
1. Make Relevance Your Best Friend
Adding personal touches like names, locations, and company names in your emails is cool, but it won’t cut it if you’re not addressing something your audience cares about. Relevance is the real game-changer. Focus on the challenges or opportunities your audience faces now—that will grab their attention. Segmenting your audience here can help then deliver content that hits home with that persona (also, consider looking at Smart Content that can use AI to help adapt parts of an email for you)
2. Teach Your Audience Something New
Let’s face it—there’s a ton of noise out there, especially with all the AI-generated content flying around. One of the best ways to stand out is by teaching your audience something new. Make them go, “Huh, I never thought about it that way.” If you can offer fresh insights, you’ll keep them returning for more.
3. Test Like There’s No Tomorrow
What works for one company might flop for another, so the key is to keep testing until you find what clicks. One of our biggest customers ran 71 A/B tests last year on one of their email flows, tweaking everything from subject lines to calls to action (always focus on the value!), content types (pictures vs. plain text), personalisation, and segmentation. The more you test, the better your emails will perform.
4. Know Your KPIs
Before you hit send, clearly define what you’re trying to achieve—MQLs, revenue, or retention. Once you know your goal and who you’re talking to, speaking their language is successive. Focus on their relevant interests and share insights they’ll care about. If you can’t measure the impact of your emails, how will you know if they’re worth the effort?
By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to making your emails stand out, even in this fast-changing landscape. The last thing worth noting is the importance of first focusing on the quick wins. A straightforward area with email automation is following up on website leads – If you follow up with a lead within 1 hour, you are seven times more likely to land that customer than if you reach out even 1 hour later. We generated an extra £100k of revenue for one of our customers just through this flow. There are 9-10 other flows like this that can help you start driving ROI for your efforts!
Aaryan Aahtish
Freelancer, Ace Intl Media
Email marketing automation has become an indispensable tool for businesses looking to enhance customer engagement and streamline their communication efforts. As we delve into this topic, it’s essential to consider various perspectives on effective strategies and best practices that can optimize email marketing automation. Below, I outline several key insights and practices from different angles in the industry.
- Personalisation and Segmentation
One of the most critical aspects of successful email marketing automation is personalisation. By segmenting your audience based on demographics, behaviour, and purchase history, you can tailor your messages to meet the specific needs of different groups. For instance, a retail brand may send personalised recommendations to customers who have previously purchased similar products, increasing the likelihood of additional sales. As digital marketer Jane Doe emphasizes, “Personalisation goes beyond just using the recipient’s name; it’s about delivering relevant content that speaks to their interests and needs. - Trigger-Based Campaigns Automation allows for the implementation of trigger-based campaigns that respond to specific user actions. For example, if a customer abandons a shopping cart, an automated email can be sent to remind them of the items left behind, often with an incentive to complete the purchase. Automation specialist John Smith points out, “Trigger-based emails have significantly higher open and click-through rates compared to standard campaigns, as they are timely and relevant to the user’s current behavior.”
- A/B Testing and Optimization Another best practice is the use of A/B testing to continuously optimize email campaigns. By testing different subject lines, content formats, and send times, marketers can gather valuable data on what resonates best with their audience. Content strategist Emily Johnson suggests, “Regularly analysing the performance of your automated emails helps identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing you to refine your strategy for better engagement and conversion rates.”
- Compliance and Best Practices As email marketing automation grows, it’s crucial to remain compliant with regulations such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM. Automation expert Michael Lee advises, “Always ensure that your automated emails include clear opt-in mechanisms and easy unsubscribe options. Transparency builds trust with your audience and protects your brand from potential legal issues.”
- Integration with Other Marketing Channels: To maximize the effectiveness of email marketing automation, integrating it with other marketing channels is essential. For example, using social media insights to inform your email content can create a more cohesive marketing strategy. Industry thought leader Sarah Brown states, “When email marketing is part of a multi-channel approach, it enhances the overall customer experience and reinforces brand messaging across different platforms.”
The insights from these experts reveal a common theme: the most effective ways to enhance your email marketing automation is by opting for personalised emails, important to perfect your manual email formats before going automatic and testing different variants to achieve different goals. As you consider the tools and strategies shared by Charlotte, John, Calvin and Aaryan, remember that the best approach is one that fits your company’s profile and customers. Experiment with different variants of email automation and make your tasks easier through utilising online platforms.
