How To: Automation vs. Campaigns In Email Marketing. Part 1

What is the role of automation in email marketing, and how (or if) should you use campaigns to reach out to our email audience? On this article, we discuss the uses of email marketing automation for an e-commerce business and how it can be complemented by weekly or monthly campaigns.

What is email automation and why should you use it?
The promise of automation in email marketing is 'free money.' By setting up a series of automations that catch your influx of customers as they come into your online store, you can, in theory, provide enough points of contact via email automation to manage the customer journey from 0 purchases to 2 or more purchases. Automations, as the name implies, are triggered when a subscriber meets a specific condition and is added to a pre-designed series of emails.

Pre-Purchase Automated Flows
The automations you can use to manage the customer journey usually are described below. These flows work together to turn customer interest into customer purchases. These are Pre-Purchase flows.

1. Welcome Flow: This is the flow that runs automatically when someone first signs up to receive marketing emails from the brand (a.k.a. a subscriber). Usually, it introduces a discount for a first purchase, talks about the brand to reinforce the special nature of the items in the store, and highlights a particular product as an example of how the principles behind the brand are applied.
2. Browse Abandonment: This flow runs if a subscriber looks through the products at the store but does not put anything in the cart or proceed to checkout. Usually, this is simply a reminder for a subscriber that a further action needs to be done.
3. Added To Cart: This flow activates if a subscriber places an item in the shopping cart but does not proceed to the checkout. This is a reminder that they found something of interest and that they need to act on it.
4. Abandoned Cart Flow: This flow activates if a subscriber places something in the cart and begins the process of checkout, but does not complete it. This is usually an invitation to take advantage of an offer (free shipping is the best tool for this), reminders of time-constraints for a purchase (taking advantage of an expiring offer, or the fact that popular items may go out of stock at any moment), and encouragement to take that last step.
   
   

Post Purchase Automation Flows
The flows described below tend to the relationship with the customer after a purchase. They are Post-Purchase flows.

1. Thank You Flow (First Purchaser Branch): This flow activates after the purchase is fulfilled. It thanks a first time purchaser, provides an incentive to return, and tries to make them feel special in some way (this is where branded graphics and copy play a part in delivering the promise of your brand by providing a context for the purchase). 
   
   Thank You Flow (Second time Purchaser Branch): You can take this opportunity to talk to someone who is on the brink of becoming a regular purchaser. What can you tell them about your store that will entice them to pay attention to your messages in the future? A lot of merchants simply add another discount as they do for the first time purchaser, but this may not give you a good chance to express your brand in what your email says and what it means to the customer.
   
   Both branches of the Thank You flow involve two messages: one that delivers the branded message and incentive, when needed, and another that asks about the subscriber's experience with the product. This is done as a quality control measure and should be focused on the customer's experience, not on the brand's need to find out whether they would like to buy more or not, or whether they found you via social media, or if they would be interested in buying some new product the brand is thinking about offering, or if they want to participate in a contest.
   
   The message of the Thank You Flow emails should focus on trying to understand the experience of the customer and nothing more. You can, however, use that interaction to request a review of the product, since that would allow the customer to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction. If the email is set properly, the customer will be directed to customer service if there is a problem, or redirected to a review-placement location if there is no issue.
2. Product-Specific Winback Flow: Say your company sells a 'star product'. When someone purchases a unit or more of the 'star product', this flow can activate and deliver a message that is specific to the use of the product. For example: how to use the product, how to take care of it, how other people use it (this is a good place for social proof). You can also encourage them to think that, because they bought one of your 'star products', they are now in a different category of customer: VIP, or Connoisseur, for example. The name of the customer category will be relevant to the type of product you sell and its function. Usually, this means they get some 'perks' that other customers do not receive.
   
   Your store can have many of these 'product specific' flows. However, you may find that it may lead to chaos in terms of managing them or keeping track of them. It is better, in our opinion, to have at most 3 of these flows, depending on the number of SKUs in your store. If you start with one and work with it, the results will guide you on how to add others if needed.
3. General Winback Flow: This is the flow for trying to bring back to the store those who have shown an interest in your emails and your website, but have not made a purchase at all, or have not made a purchase in a specific number of days (you can usually learn the average interval between purchases from your data - depending on what you sell and how long you've been in business). This is considered the 'last resort' flow in an automation setup.

The 7 flows outlined above would, in theory, take care of customers who are brought into the store via external advertising, SEO, word of mouth, social media, etc. To make the automation successful, the brand has to constantly provide a flow of new names into the system. Since the automations only work when someone becomes a subscriber, either via a purchase or via newsletter, the more emails are added to the system, consistently, the better chance of getting regular conversions from the collection of flows.

Naturally, there are standard automations like shipping and order confirmation emails, but those are assumed to exist separate from these 7.

Adding Campaigns To The Mix (for the win)
Once you have setup, and tested, your automations for an online store, you should be good to go. The next question is: what do you do with all the names that are accumulating in your database once they have gone through your automations? The automated flows can only activate if the customer does a specific action. Once they are used up, you will end up with profiles in your database that could be doing nothing if left on their own.

Targeted email campaigns are designed to solve this problem. They bring individuals from your database into action so they can be managed by the flows again, in the case of a purchase, or the Winback, in case they have fallen out with the brand.

What are good ideas for targeted campaigns? That depends on the number of SKUs in your store. If you sell 4 items, then constantly reminding your list to buy one or all of the four could be annoying. If you can realistically expect them to purchase more than once, then a monthly newsletter with anything new about the items, or selected social media driven stories about the use of the items, might make people purchase again.

If you have a large store with hundreds of SKUs, the newsletter's task is to offer a selection of SKUs to the people who are most likely to purchase them. Segmentation is the tools for selecting who is likely to purchase the items again. The success of these campaigns is heavily dependent on the correct assessment of how your customer views the product. If you sell items that are really meant to be purchased only once, then constantly asking people to buy them again will not work.

Repeat purchases are the result of need or desire on the part of customers, and using email campaigns to generate them and bring people back to the flows is one of the best uses of email campaigns that complements the 'free money' generated by the automated flows.