Summary
Emailing is a powerful tool in digital marketing, but let’s be honest: sending each email manually would be a huge waste of time. That’s where email automation comes in. With it, you can automatically send personalized messages to the right people at the right time, without manual intervention.
What is email automation?
Email marketing automation is the automatic sending of emails based on what the user does (registration, purchase, inactivity, etc.).
Instead of sending a message to all your contacts, automation allows you to send targeted emails at strategic times, according to pre-established scenarios called workflows.
Definition and principle of email automation
A workflow email is the implementation of a sequence of emails sent according to user behavior. For example:
A welcome email
immediately after registration
A abandoned basket revival
after 24 hours without a purchase
A special offer
after several months of inactivity
This approach allows for the sending of highly personalized messages, thus increasing the engagement rate while reducing campaign management time.
What are the advantages of email automation?
Email automation is the ideal solution for sending targeted messages at the ideal time, without any manual intervention. It optimizes engagement, improves deliverability and saves valuable time while reducing human error. It is the essential strategy for maximizing the impact of your email campaigns!
Automation saves you a considerable amount of time. No more need to type messages yourself, you can focus on what’s important: boosting your performance and fine-tuning your campaigns.
Improved deliverability and impact on the email opening rate
An email sent at the right time, with the right target audience and relevant content, has a greater chance of being opened.
But beware: if poorly configured, email automation can affect deliverability and cause your messages to end up in spam. At MailSoar, we help our clients optimize their infrastructure so that their emails actually reach the inbox.
How do I set up an email automation strategy?
Good automation is not just about scheduling mailings. It must be strategically designed to send the right message, at the right time, to the right people. This requires precise targeting, tailored scenarios and continuous optimization to maximize email engagement and deliverability.
There are a multitude of email automation platforms, and choosing the right tool depends on several criteria: segmentation, personalization, deliverability and reporting.
- Mailchimp is a popular option for small businesses thanks to its intuitive interface and basic segmentation features.
- Brevo is an affordable alternative that offers effective campaign management and good email personalization.
- HubSpot is an all-in-one solution integrating CRM and automation, perfect for global strategies with in-depth monitoring of customer interactions.
The right tool must be able to adapt to your sending volume and your need for personalization and, above all, guarantee excellent deliverability. A bad platform can impact the success of your campaigns, especially if it does not properly manage email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
Building effective email workflows
A good email workflow must be well thought out to avoid sending too many (or too few) messages. The objective is to follow the contact’s life cycle by sending him the right emails at the right time.
A nurturing workflow aims to transform a prospect into a customer by sending him relevant and progressive emails.
Day 1: Welcome email
Introduce your company and its values. Show the added value of your emails to encourage the user to open the following ones.
Day 3: Educational content
Send an article, case study or video that is useful for engaging the subscriber without a direct commercial approach.
Day 7: Offer a free trial or a special deal
Encourage action with a clear CTA.
Also discover the 3 essential email sequences in e-commerce.
Best practices for optimizing the deliverability of automated emails
Authenticate your emails to improve deliverability
Email services (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) filter emails to avoid spam. To be recognized as a trusted sender, you must configure SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication) authentications.
Without these authentications, your emails are highly likely to be blocked or sent as spam.
Analyze and adjust your campaigns to maximize engagement
To ensure that your emails reach their destination, you must not only configure them correctly, but also make sure that your recipients are interested in them.
If few people open or click on them, this can give a bad image of you to the email services and you risk no longer receiving them in their inbox. To avoid this, you need to analyze your campaigns and adjust your strategy.
The key indicators to monitor:
- Open rate: ideally above 25%
- Click-through rate: a good target is to exceed 3-5%
- Unsubscription and complaint rates: keep these as low as possible
Low engagement can be linked to unimpressive email subjects, poorly optimized segmentation or an unsuitable sending frequency. To go further and understand how these KPIs impact your deliverability, check out our guide dedicated to key indicators of email deliverability.
Automation of emails and GDPR
To send emails, you must comply with the GDPR. This means that you must have the users’ permission and allow them to opt out of receiving marketing or promotional emails.
You must also allow users to access, modify or delete their information. You must be transparent about the use of the data, explaining how you collect and process it. If you want to optimize your email strategy, you must always play by the rules. Poor data management can damage your reputation and result in your emails no longer being received by the right people.
Email automation is a powerful tool for improving customer relations and boosting conversions. But for it to work, you need to respect three pillars:
- Good targeting and well-thought-out workflows
- Optimized deliverability with a solid infrastructure
- An approach that complies with current regulations
