1. Welcome Series
The first impression is often the most lasting. A personalized welcome email or sequence introduces your brand’s story, values, and key offerings while keeping in touch with the user for the next few days or weeks. The duration and number of emails here will depend on the length of your sales cycle, but as a general rule it should span the length of time it takes an average user to make a purchase decision. Effective welcome series automation often includes:
- Intro promos: exclusive discounts or incentives to encourage immediate action.
- Introduction to brand values: share your brand’s unique value proposition and what sets you apart.
- An easy overview of product categories or best sellers: highlight your offering or top performers in a grid format or similar, so that the user can quickly understand the range of options.
2. Abandoned Cart / Abandoned Checkout Series
This basic automation triggers a series of emails, texts or notifications that remind customers of the items left behind and encourage them to complete their purchase. Commonly called “abandoned cart”, often times these series actually trigger on abandoned checkouts, but it is possible to concurrently run abandoned cart and abandoned checkout automations, as long as there are good exclusions in place to avoid over-emailing. Key elements of abandoned cart/checkout automations include:
- Reminder emails: send a series of emails at strategic intervals (e.g., 1 hour, 24 hours, and 48 hours) to remind the customer of their abandoned cart.
- Incentives: offer a discount or free shipping to entice the customer to finalize their purchase.
- Product recommendations: include related products or bestsellers to increase the likelihood of a purchase.
3. Order Confirmation Series
Order confirmation emails are by far the most opened, re-opened, and clicked-on emails. This presents a great opportunity to showcase complementary products, related categories, etc. Other emails in this series that can be used to encourage repeat purchasing could be: shipping confirmation emails, order tracking emails, and delivery confirmations.
4. Post-Purchase Series
The post-purchase phase is a critical opportunity to reinforce brand loyalty and encourage repeat purchases. Post-purchase follow-up automations can help ensure customer satisfaction and create opportunities for additional engagement. Effective post-purchase automation strategies include:
- Request for feedback: solicit customer reviews or feedback to improve future offerings and address any potential issues.
- Product usage: provide valuable tips or tutorials on how to get the most out of their purchase.
- Complementary products: to match the recent purchase.
5. Dynamic Content Personalization
Dynamic content personalization automations ensure that your marketing messages are tailored to individual customer preferences and behaviors, enhancing relevance and engagement. It can be as simple as an abandoned browse session email follow up personalized to the user’s past viewed products, but many other behaviors can be used to trigger dynamic content. Dynamic content can also be inserted in any of the above series to make them even more personal and relevant to the recipient. Key aspects of dynamic content personalization include:
- Behavior-Based Segmentation: use customer data to segment your audience based on their behavior, interests, and purchase history.
- Customized Content: deliver personalized content and product recommendations that resonate with each person’s browsing history.
- Adaptive Messaging: adjust your messaging in real-time based on customer interactions and engagement metrics.
While most of the automations above are executed via email, this is certainly not the only channel that can be used for marketing automation. We have successfully worked with brands that leverage SMS for some of the series mentioned, or use it as support for email marketing. Another channel that can be extremely useful is direct mail, typically used for welcome series or re-activation post-purchase.
Embracing these processes not only optimizes operations but also builds stronger, more personalized relationships with your customers, driving sustainable growth and success in the competitive D2C landscape.
