The Top 7 Email Marketing Automation Lifecycle Triggers Every Blogger Should Implement.

By ProBlogger Marketing Expert Alita Harvey-Rodriguez

You might have read my post on ProBlogger about how automation could be hurting your blog. It was a negative, thinker of a title on purpose, for the result of a positive outcome… and it worked! It got readers thinking about how automation can make the day of the life of a blogger easier and make your readers happier, and most importantly feeling like they have a deeper relationship with you.

In today’s post, I want to go into more detail about marketing automation’s most profitable channel: email.

Time and time again when I talk about Email Marketing Automation, I get this comment: “I don’t want to bombard my list.” To this, I say: Don’t stress! There are some nightmare examples out there. You’ve probably signed up to some in the past, I know I have. These tactics are outdated and impersonal. Marketing automation in 2016 is all about personalisation, and if it’s done right will be the best thing you do in marketing for the rest of your career.

Perhaps you already have some of these lifecycle campaigns in place or maybe you’re looking to get started? Regardless, In this post you’ll learn:

• 4 Key Areas of your customer lifecycle
• 7 Automated Customer Lifecycle Emails you should implement
• 4 Key Areas of your customer lifecycle

Your customer’s journey is the most important thing for you to understand before you start refining or even implementing any marketing automation. In a simplified version, there are four parts your customer journey.

1. Acquisition – This is about getting new followers’ attention

2. Nurture – Now that you have their attention, you need to move them into consideration and become a subscriber

3. Conversion – Becoming the customer, your sales (note: conversion metrics happen all over your marketing strategy – i.e. subscriber opt-ins, etc. For the purpose of today, this is your sales only)

4. Retention – These guys are your quickest wins, your loyal followers, your advocates (this can also be treated as retaining a subscriber, but this about getting trusted referrals and repeat customers)

It’s important to think about your marketing and automation like the above, in four simple parts. You shouldn’t treat a first time visitor like your customers, and you can’t treat non-customers like they are customers.

Now that you know how to break down your customer journey you’ll need to fill the gaps… automatically! Here are the top 7 Email Marketing Automation Lifecycle Triggers every blogger should implement.

1. Welcome/Nurture 

Chances are you’re reading this and thinking… yeah lady, I’ve got one of those, they are pretty standard. Thanks for nothing! But if you read my last blog, you may have picked up my advice about the benefits of building out a minimum of 4-5 emails of a series of 30 days.

In fact, a study done by genius.com indicated that 66% of buyers say that consistent and relevant communication provided by businesses is a key influence in choosing a solution or brand. Get off on the right foot and don’t let leads slip through the cracks with an automated lead nurturing campaign.

This is one of the most valuable modules of our Email Marketing Automation Short Course which I’ll be running live at PBEvent this year. Here is more about this workshop, you won’t want to miss it!

2. Activate 

You might have a free membership of a limited time offer for new subscribers. This automated email is all about getting people to take action on a critical point to strengthen your relationship. For example, DropBox knows that if you haven’t installed them onto your machine the chances of you using the service are low, and their chances of upsell are minimum. So they send you a critical reminder emails until they have identified you’ve installed DropBox onto your machine.

3. Anniversary

According to Experian, birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate than promotional emails. Treat you subscribers to a special something when a special day arrives in your history with them.

4. Helpful Features/Products

“Oh haven’t you checked out our amazing one of a kind flying Japanese skateboard? Well because we know you love skateboards, here is a demo with Tony Hawk we shot last week.”

Okay, so it doesn’t have to be so extreme, but maybe you have a tool or download your fans rave about? Or you know they’d love? Why not educate them about some other things they might like to help build your relationship?

5. Post Purchase

Imagine sharing in your new customer’s excitement – reinforce that they’ve made a great decision, and leaving them with confidence to buy from you again? Behavioral studies suggest that these emails are open 50% higher than standard mailings. Don’t miss this opportunity.

6. Cart Abandonment

Do you know how many people abandon your carts or opt-ins? Baymard Institute, a web research company in the UK recorded an astonishing 68.63% abandonment rate at checkout. If you ask me, if you don’t install this email and your ecommerce solution can support it, you’re just leaving happy customers on the table.

If you’re building your business blogging and using ecommerce to sell products, e-products or workshops, you should invest in getting this email set-up.

7. Reactivation

You won’t believe this but sometimes people don’t open your emails. I know, how rude – you send great emails, right?

This is an essential automated email to check your subscribers are alive! Some brands do this on a 12-weekly basis, and what this means is, if they identify a subscriber hasn’t opened any of the past 12 campaigns (weekly emails) then they send them an automated email saying “Hey! Are you still there?” to try and spark some new life into the subscriber. 

In summary, these are some highly effective email strategies and they will work to keep you blog traffic and sales up. Now it’s over to you, have you tried these emails? If you decide to give these a try, please report back with your results! When these emails are done right, they are incredibly useful.

Happy automating!

Alita Harvey-Rodriguez is known as one of Australia’s leading Digital Marketing Futurist and the brains behind Milk it Academy, a training platform to advance marketers skills into new school digital leadership roles. Alita is a regular contributor to Womens Agenda, SEMRush, internetretailer.com.au, 2015 ORIA Judge (Online Retailer Industry Awards) and the leading lecturer at the Digital Marketing Institute for Email Marketing and Marketing Automation.