You’ve got a solid email marketing strategy for your regularly cadenced email, and now you’re ready to take the next step to improve your results. It’s time to add email marketing automation

With email automation, you’ll save time by communicating relevant information to subscribers at the right time, based on their actions and interests.

You’ll know exactly who to email, what to email them, and when the best time to send that email is.

What is email marketing automation?

Email marketing automation or sometimes called email workflow, is an email or a sequence of emails that are sent after a subscriber takes a specific action like signing up to an email list, making a purchase, or clicking a link. 

For example, when you sign up for Constant Contact, this triggers a welcome email. This email introduces you to our business, asks you to verify your email address, and tells you how to set up your account.

Is email marketing automation the right choice for me?

As your business grows and more customers start flooding in, it becomes even more challenging for you to offer incredible experiences to everyone who interacts with your business.

With marketing automation, you can deliver the same great experience for your first email subscriber and your 10,000th. It saves you time and creates a better customer experience.

You choose the order, frequency, and targeted content of the message. Once the email workflow sequence is set up, the emails send automatically.

Are there challenges or downsides to email automation?

The only challenge with email marketing automation is it often requires a little work and planning upfront. Planning is easier when you have an idea of what you want the end result to look like, so to help you get started, we’ve listed some specific examples of automated email campaigns below that are great for beginners.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand some practical and specific examples of email automation, and we’ll even show you a video of how to create your first automated email series in about three minutes, so read on!

Email automation examples

Here are four of our top examples of automated email campaigns to set up when you’re just getting started with email automation.

1. Automated welcome emails

In a competitive market, first impressions are everything. If someone signs up for your email list, it’s up to you to delight them right away with interesting, helpful email content and enticing offers.

The easiest way to do this is with an engaging automated welcome email series that should do three things.

  1. Welcome new subscribers and thank them for signing up
  2. Invite them to connect further (by following your social media, visiting your website, coming to your brick-and-mortar location, etc.)
  3. Get to know your subscribers further, so you can continue sending them emails that are relevant to their interests

Automated welcome emails reach new subscribers the second they sign up — at a moment when they’re new to your list and want to hear from you. Without automation, you might not get around to manually sending a welcome email for hours or even days later, when your new subscribers have already shifted their focus elsewhere. Automation helps you reach them when it’s most impactful.

A welcome email is a great way to start nurturing leads through the customer journey. However, it’s just the beginning. 

More automated email series

Why not go a step further with more email series? Perhaps instead of a welcome series, create a campaign that consists of a series of educational emails or a series of emails based on actions that can help turn one-time customers into loyal repeat buyers. With Constant Contact’s Automation Path Builder, you can create custom paths tailored to your specific needs and goals — the possibilities are almost endless.

2. Birthdays and anniversary emails

Everybody likes to get something special for their birthday or anniversary. With email automation, it is easy to treat your customers on their important days. You can keep your customers engaged and let them know they’re valued.

Start collecting birthday information whenever a new subscriber joins your list so your birthday email will send on the appropriate day. 

Constant Contact has several templates like this available for birthday and anniversary emails.

No matter how much someone cares about your business, it’s natural for them to lose some interest after they’ve been on your email list for a while. This is a great opportunity to thank them for their continued support and offer them a special birthday gift — whether it’s a small freebie or a helpful guide.

Want more information? Check out our article on How to Send an Automated Happy Birthday Email.

3. Newsletters and blog updates

If you’ve been updating your company blog regularly, you may have a lot of great, timeless content out there that doesn’t get the views it once did. Consider repurposing this content in automated email drip campaigns for newer customers who haven’t seen this content yet.

Some ideas to keep in mind:

  • Go through and make sure your posts are still relevant and up-to-date
  • Make sure the sequence builds upon ideas and that there’s enough variety to be as engaging as possible.

Remember, this information can be very valuable to new contacts who haven’t seen the information before.

A modern newsletter email template, like this one from Constant Contact, can help you present your content professionally, even if you’re short on time.

4. Promote events and webinars

Email marketing campaigns are perfect for promoting events, meet-ups, or webinars that your business is running.

After all, your subscribers should already be interested in what you have to say, and a succession of emails is an ideal strategy for getting people excited as your event draws nearer (and making sure they don’t forget about it!).

Whenever a person signs up for one of our webinars here, we send them the below email thanking them for registering, giving a little detail on what to expect from the webinar and how to join the webinar.

automated webinar registration confirmation from Constant Contact
Here’s an example of an automated webinar promotion email.

Closer to the actual date, we send out another couple of reminder emails, encouraging customers to block off their calendars and spread the word. Then, after the webinar has concluded, they automatically get sent a link to the on-demand version of the webinar, along with some resources that are relevant to the webinar’s topic.

Given that many marketers host webinars and events, sending automated emails like these can help grow your business by ensuring the maximum number of people either attend the event live or see the recording, so you get the highest possible return on the time you’ve invested.

Even more automated email ideas

Looking for more examples? We’ve compiled these automated email ideas you can incorporate into your email marketing strategy that will help grow your business. These email marketing ideas can help you to build trust and credibility with your audience, improve your customer engagement, and more.

Get New & Repeat Business on Autopilot 

With email automation, you can do more and save time by communicating timely, relevant information to your subscribers based on their interests and their actions. 

In this video, you’ll learn how you can use automation to:

  • Welcome new subscribers and start building relationships
  • Create different types of email series that map to your goals
  • Use data to further optimize and automate more timely and relevant emails
Click on the image above to watch the video on the Constant Contact YouTube Channel.

Now you know why email marketing automation is so important to your marketing strategy

In addition to the four examples mentioned above, there are a host of automated emails you could send to your customers. It’s completely all right if you don’t wish to go all out right at the start. You could start small – maybe a three-part automated email series to welcome new customers to your email list.

As a small business that is growing quickly, you are likely to have more and more things competing for your time and attention.

However, out of all the opportunities available to grow your business, email marketing is one of the most impactful and simple. Setting up automated lead nurturing campaigns can help you drive traffic to your website and increase online sales without having to spend too much time and effort in recreating them for every new customer you add to your growing subscriber list.

Combine AI with automation to sell smarter, not harder.