It’s not like email marketing automation is a new concept—the first email service providers have been around since the dawn of the world wide web in the early ‘90s.
But in that time, a lot has changed, so we thought we’d share what excites us most about email marketing automation and where it’s headed in the future.
You already know the importance of deploying a welcome campaign or triggering abandoned cart emails, but here are three modern benefits of email marketing automation you can take advantage of today.
1. Individualize the Welcome Email
Oftentimes, personalization starts long after the initial welcome email. Brands don’t know the customers this early on and, without that history, it’s hard to create individualized campaigns based on customer data. Not all hope is lost, however. By using the data that is available, brands can still send unique welcome emails to each and every user—automatically.
A+E Networks has a variety of channels under their brand—each appealing to different audiences. It’s important that marketing messages are relevant and resonate with each individual recipient. But how does A+E Networks know which customer prefers which channels if they’re new users? Well, each channel has a different website where users can opt-in to emails. A+E Networks uses this initial data to create automated welcome emails based on the site they signed up through.
A+E Networks automatically sends welcome emails based on where they signed up.
Not only that, but because A+E Networks can also see where users are signing up from, they can use that information to send automated personalized emails after signup. For example, if a user signs up for the HISTORY® Channel in New York, they may get a “This Day in History” email featuring facts about NYC. All of this content is created ahead of time and dynamically populated based on the initial user data.
2. Personalize Magical Moments Based on Brand Love
How much more effective would our marketing be if we knew precisely how a customer felt about us in that very moment?
For greeting-card maker Lovepop, loyalty is at the heart of their mission to create “1 billion magical moments.” With Iterable’s AI-driven Brand AffinityTM, the Lovepop team can not only individualize messaging based on acquisition source and product interests, but also on customer sentiment (loyal, neutral, negative, etc.).
Higher-affinity customers are communicated to more frequently, while lower-affinity customers can be suppressed from certain campaigns, which reduces unsubscribes and maximizes revenue capture. Again, this usability of Iterable’s segmentation and email marketing automation saves Lovepop at least two hours per week—getting them that much closer to achieving their mission faster.
3. Bring the Browsing Experience to the Inbox
Data feeds are often the common denominator in email marketing automation—meaning the more integrated your tech stack, the more seamless your customer experience will become.
Leading, members-only travel site Secret Escapes used to be limited to only showing discounts based on the destination searched, but data points like date parameters (when you’re going) and trip type (why you’re traveling) were just as crucial.
With Iterable’s built-in data feeds, these criteria are imported into email templates, automatically and in real time, so the messages that members receive match their unique search results.
For as dynamic an industry as travel booking, where availability and pricing is constantly in flux, this innovation was a game changer. The Secret Escapes team achieved a 45% open rate and 8.3% click-through rate with their timely, personalized keyword search emails—allowing them to build long-term brand value at a global scale.
Email Marketing Automation Made Easy
Despite its more than thirty-year history, email marketing automation continues to become more technologically advanced and intuitive to customer behavior. And we’re excited to lead the charge into the next generation of automation tools.
Just this spring we launched our expanded AI Suite, which includes these cutting-edge innovations:
- Next Best Action to automatically recommend audience segments and set up campaigns
- Copy Assist to generate copy ideas and iterate on messaging quickly
- Frequency Optimization to optimize communication cadence to each individual user
All of these solutions weren’t available a decade ago, so we are thrilled to see where email marketing automation takes us in the years to come.
Want to get your hands on the latest email marketing automation technology? Watch our Product Showcase from Activate Summit to learn about the features above and more.
