The welcome program

Every brand should have a welcome program, because it’s your opportunity to create an outstanding first impression. Get it right and you’ll set the wheels of a long-lasting customer relationship in motion. Get it wrong with a halfbaked message and you could turn people off when they’re at their most receptive.

Welcome emails can be triggered as soon as a subscriber joins your mailing list, and you can set your automation program to deliver the rest of the series at the most appropriate times. For example, you might want to set delays and decisions based on how your contacts engage with the emails.

What should I include?

The information included in your program and the number of emails there are in the series will vary from business to business. Here are some things to consider:

• First and foremost, thank them for signing up and set the expectations of what they’ve signed up to receive. Get them excited.
• Write down all the compelling things about your brand and prioritize your key USPs. Remember, you can’t be everything to everyone.
• If you genuinely think you have enough interesting things to say, map out a two- or three-part series which hooks them in from the off and gets them hungry for more. Don’t forget to tell them what’s to come in the next email if you decide to send one
• Think about incentives, the opportunity to cross-promote your other marketing channels, answering any FAQs and, of course, collecting more data.

Paperchase

For more than 40 years, Paperchase has been delighting its customers with stylish stationery, unique greeting cards and distinctive gifts, as well as quality art and craft materials.

The company has opted for a simple yet effective welcome email that hits all the right spots.

We’re thanked for signing up and Paperchase takes the time to let us know what we’re going to receive now we’re on the mailing list. They’ve highlighted some great benefits, such as free delivery upgrades.

Paperchase has jumped right in with an incentive to turn prospects into paying customers, which will enable the brand to collect more data on its contacts.

We’re encouraged to stay up to date with Paperchase on other channels, too, with promotion of its social networks.

Avero

Avero provides a sophisticated analytics platform especially for restaurants. The management software is designed to improve both profitability and the guest experience, and, as such, can appear quite complex to those who are new to the product.

The company has created a nine-part welcome series to overcome the sophisticated nature of its software, from initial sign-up right through to a feedback request form. Users who sign up for a trial are entered into this program and we’ve selected five emails from the series to give you a flavor:

• Email 1: A simple welcome email with a four-step process that enables trialists to get set up and enjoy the full benefits from the start.
• Email 3: Provides more information on how to track sales performance drivers using Avero’s Sales module.
• Email 5: Highlights how Avero’s Service Team module can optimize the guest experience and improve profitability.
• Email 6: Demonstrates how the platform can help businesses prevent fraud and deter theft.
• Email 7: Helps users understand how they can identify key performance metrics using Group Reporting.
• Email 9: Indicates that it’s the end of the welcome series, driving users towards the site and to complete a feedback survey.

Replenishment and reminder programs

If you sell a product that’s consumable, renewable or comes with an expiry date, you’re in an ideal position to score repeat purchases

Of course, that can be difficult and costly if you don’t have a mechanism that enables you to reach out to your customers at the times they should consider repurchasing or renewing. That’s where email marketing automation comes in, because it provides you with the ability to do this at scale.

There are a range of programs you can set up, depending on what works for your business. These range from simple communications that reflect a product’s natural lifecycle to complex campaigns that utilize live data to trigger emails at the precise moment they’ll resonate with the customer.

Here are some instances that justify an email marketing automation program:

Policy renewal reminders

These work well for insurance companies wanting to remind customers that their policy is soon to expire and to encourage them to request a new quote. Connecting your email service provider to your CRM would enable you to set up an automation program that uses purchase date data to trigger reminders at the appropriate times. This method is much more cost-effective than postal renewal letters and you can also add channel extensions like SMS notifications, which can improve the chances of engagement.

Replenishment reminders

From contact lenses and pet food to vitamins and toothbrush heads, these kinds of products will either run out or need replacing at some point. Working out the typical lifecycle of these products will enable you to send repurchasing reminders when it’s likely that your customer will need to replenish their stocks. Like the renewal reminder example, automation programs can draw upon customers’ purchase date data – or even usage data if it’s a wearable – to send these notifications at the right times.

Expiry reminders

Whether you’re a currency card provider or an ecommerce company that offers a points-based loyalty program, you can use customers’ data with your ESP to automate expiry reminders. The program can include a series of emails in the run-up to the date that the card or points are about to expire. Another great way to try and get the customer to repurchase from you.

HoMedics

HoMedics is a world leader in personal wellness, manufacturing some of the world’s best-known and innovative brands in personal health, wellness and electronics

The company sells electronic microdermabrasion skin treatment products which, if used, require new filters to work effectively. The company has found that customers generally need to replace the filters after two months, so it automatically sends a replenishment reminder 60 days after the last purchase date.

FAIRFX

FAIRFX specializes in providing currency cards to British travelers. The company issues a Prepaid MasterCard to each customer which, like any credit or debit card, will expire.

FAIRFX used expiry dates to contact cardholders in the weeks before their plastic was about to become invalid, in a bid to encourage the customer to repurchase. The emails utilized dynamic content to pull in cardholders’ personal details, including address.

Event programs

Anyone who works in events management will understand the sheer amount of organization there is to do before, during and after. Anything that can lighten the load is always welcome, and automation programs can do just that.

Here are just a few of the types of event emails you can automate:

• ‘Thank you for your interest’ messages to new registrants, or ‘Thank you for your purchase’ to customers who’ve purchased tickets.
• RSVP confirmations or declines, when an event is fully subscribed.
• Logistical emails confirming specifics like locations, timings and dress code.
• Pre-event emails with content to build excitement or outline the agenda
• Pre-event emails with content to build excitement or outline the agenda
• ‘Thanks for attending’ or ‘Sorry you couldn’t make it’ follow-up messages.
• After-event content follow-ups, with the option to download slides/videos/ recorded audio.

You can use personalization tools, like dotmailer’s dynamic content module, to pull in people’s names, so your emails will always address the recipient personally. You can also set up autoresponders that send different messages based on someone’s response – for example, if you send an automated reminder email to those who registered and a delegate declines, you can set the program to deliver an email to confirm that they’re no longer on the guest list.

There’s also the opportunity to set up decisions, such as if a guest does or doesn’t attend. In this case you’ll want to send a different follow-up email to those who came versus those who didn’t. Check out this email automation program for one of our own dotlive events. It’s set up to send the content to those who did and didn’t attend, with different messages respectively.

Ministry of Sound Club

Ministry of Sound is a club in London that draws world-renowned DJs from across the globe. It puts on a number of weekly events at its venue in Elephant & Castle and uses email marketing automation to deliver a great customer experience. These three emails were triggered after purchasing a ticket for The Gallery, which takes place at the club every Friday.

• Email 1: The first message was a followup to the event, thanking us for attending and offering a discounted ticket for a similar DJ playing soon after.
• Email 2: The second email we receive provides us value-add content, including more information about the night, an exclusive interview with the headline DJ and some top tracks to listen to.
• Email 3: The third and final email in the program thanks us for buying a ticket, offers an incentive to bring a friend and encourages us to upgrade to a VIP.

Macmillan Cancer Support

Macmillan Cancer Support is one of the largest British charities and provides specialist health care, information and financial support to people affected by cancer. The charity runs many fundraising campaigns throughout the year so it can continue its valuable work, and a key requirement is to do this in the most cost-effective way possible. One of Macmillan Cancer Support’s main fundraising events is called ‘Brave the Shave’, which encourages people to collect donations in return for shaving off their hair.

In 2016 the charity signed up more than 23,000 brave shavers, raising a total of £3,804,202.04. Macmillan Cancer Support used email as a way to communicate with participants throughout their journey, providing them with inspiration, checklists, fundraising totals and explaining how to pay the donations raised.

Unengaged contacts and customers

Reactivation email programs are designed to turn dormant contacts into engaged contacts. There are many strategies that you can implement to try and rekindle the love with lost subscribers and, of course, what works for one company may not be right for another.

Using segmentation and automation, you can group unengaged contacts and enter them into a program that sends one or more emails in a last-ditch attempt to win them back. Whatever your email re-engagement strategy, it all starts with the subject line – so here are a few things to consider:

• Consider wording that generates curiosity.
• Tease your audience by suggesting you have something very special, but they have to click through to the email to find out what it is. Using an information gap is a psychological trigger and can compel people to click.
• Think carefully about the words you are using, and avoid terms that every other competitor is saying to help you achieve in the inbox. Instead, choose more striking alternatives
• Also, consider adding a sense of urgency and mention time-based offers in the subject line to make people feel they need to read the email right away

What re-engagement approaches could I take?

Simple

You can go simple by sending an email that doesn’t use any of your contacts’ behavioral or order data. The emphasis here should be on amazing copy that captivates your subscriber, with a good reason to engage. It might mean going off brand and being really bold, but that might be the price you pay if you see value in those who’ve lapsed. Think about what’s changed since you were last in contact? Remind them of why they signed up to you in the first place – perhaps you just slipped through the net – or try something funny that they can’t forget. Above all, be honest about how the relationship has broken down and that you want to fix it.

Intermediate

Understanding what piques your customers’ interest is the key to winning back their attention and custom. You can do this by combining some of the tactics above with some more advanced techniques that are designed to collect more data (after all, it’s probably been a while since you’ve gathered insightful information on these contacts). That might mean serving up a preference center so they can opt into the content they’d be interested in receiving from your brand (and perhaps the frequency in which they receive it). Or it could be offering a free piece of content or an attractive offer if they buy something from you. And if you can’t engage them, give them another option like following you on Facebook or Twitter instead.

Advanced

This is when you pull out all the stops and personalize the email re-engagement experience. Data is your best friend here and the more you have, and the more up to date it is, the better. If you’re able to determine when a customer last used your product or service, you can develop a communications strategy around how to encourage them to start using it again. What are their motivations? What are the benefits of using your product or service, and how can you tailor these advantages to the customer based on past data? Automated decisions and delays can really work in your favor here, map out your program with content that’s appropriate to the length of time it’s been since the last engagement.

Mankind

Mankind is the destination for men’s grooming products, with free standard delivery offered worldwide. The company uses a simple ‘We miss you’ message and two different incentives to try and hook us back in.

We’re offered 20% off our next purchase, which is a pretty decent offer. Mankind is also using a specific voucher code so it can track the campaign’s success.

Mankind has also offered a free gift if we spend £50 or more – a great way to try and increase AOV.

Slendertone

Slendertone is a world leader in providing products that improve muscle tone and body shape. It was the first company to produce an Electro-Muscle Stimulation toning belt cleared for market by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The brand wanted to find a way to inspire customers to continue using its products after buying them. Slendertone sought to solve the problem by making the most of the explosion in wearable devices, and developed its app-driven Connect Abs product to help increase motivation levels. Connect Abs lets users control the product through their smart phone or tablet, as well as enabling them to track progress, goals and activity levels to recommend toning programs.

On average, people who use Slendertone’s toning belts hit a wall with their motivation at around three to four weeks, but it usually takes four to six weeks to start seeing results with the products. By the introduction of dotmailer and Magento, the company was able to use data gathered via the Connect Abs product to send emails with inspirational content based on users’ individual progress.

Post-sale

You want your customers to buy from you again, right? After all, you spent time, money and effort attracting them in the first place. Today, it’s not enough to take someone’s money and that be the end of it – and that’s where automated email programs can help out.

Post-sale – or post-purchase – campaigns are more than just ‘Thanks for your order’. They can take many forms and once set up, will drive advocacy and deliver an experience that puts you above your competitors. What types of post-sale emails could I send?

Feedback or NPS surveys

Follow-up surveys that request a customer’s thoughts on the recent purchase or service can be very useful. You can use order data in conjunction with your automation program so it triggers emails to the right people at the right times, and you can use delays to help with this. For example, if you sell women’s fashion you’ll want to send a feedback email soon after the sale, whereas you’d want to delay the email for a few weeks if you’d just sold teeth-whitening gel.

How-to guides

Depending on the type of product or service you offer, a how-to guide could be a great way to help new customers get the most out of it. Videos, downloadable guides, blog posts or anything that adds value to the customer’s purchase could be a win. Again, you’d want to consider the timing of your email in relation to your product or service, and also whether you include one or more emails in the program. Like the Slendertone re-engagement example earlier, if you’ve access to customers’ usage data you can set up rules that let your customers move through automation programs at their pace, based on how they engage with you

Cross-sell content

Using customers’ past order data, you can use a recommendations tool (such as Nosto) to pull in related products into emails. Featuring complementary products that can enhance the experience of something they’ve just purchased could bag you yet another sale.

Econsultancy/h1>

Econsultancy was founded in 1999 and today produces more than 100 research papers each year, as well as offering training and holding roundtable events.

The company delivers a busy paid-for training schedule throughout the year and uses email marketing automation to follow up with delegates. The email asks attendees to provide feedback on the course, with an incentive in return.

ELEMIS

ELEMIS has been looking after people’s skin since 1989, with different products and spa therapies designed around the customer. Now, with over 6.5 million customers around the globe, ELEMIS still has a big focus on personalization.

The skincare company follows up on transactions with helpful content to help customers see results from the product they’ve just purchased. These emails have seen great results, achieving a 50% higher open rate compared to the brand’s general newsletters.

The first step of our post-purchase program is to find out if the customer enjoyed the product. As a second step, we’ll ask them to make a review. Finally we’ll use transactional data from Magento on their purchase history to look at what products they might be interested in that we know will go well with that product they’ve purchased.

Jonny Stewart, Head of Ecommerce, ELEMIS

Conclusion

Whether your business is big or small, we hope this guide has helped you to see that automation programs can refine processes and increase the output and relevancy of your marketing communications.

Once you’ve decided what fits and you’ve begun sending, it’s wise to monitor the performance during the early stages. No matter who you are, what you sell and how sure you are that your programs are right, you’ll only ever know if you review, test and optimize.

Like everything in dotmailer, all of these automations are easy to set up using the drag-and-drop Program Builder. If you’re a dotmailer customer, your Account Manager can give you tips on how to kickstart your campaigns. If you’re not a dotmailer customer, a demo is the best way to experience the full depth and breadth of the platform.