• Improve the customer experience
• Spend less time on small, repetitive tasks
• Lower costs 

Luckily, marketing automation lets you accomplish all three! While it may seem overly complex or out of reach at first glance, marketing automation is a powerful tool for any small business owner and is easy to learn.

To help out on your marketing automation journey, we’re happy to offer a free online course via the Sendinblue Academy. The course lasts a total of 2.5 hours and covers everything you need to know to successfully implement marketing automation for your business.

What’s more, Sendinblue Academy’s new format combines interactive modules and video tutorials for an engaging learning experience. Originally launched in French, the marketing automation course is available in German, English, and Italian starting April 12. 

Whether you’re just getting started with marketing automation or looking for a refresher, why not try out Sendinblue Academy’s free online course! 

Why Does Your Small Business Need Marketing Automation?

So what is marketing automation? It’s an extremely valuable tool for marketers that not only saves you time, money, and energy, but leads to better performance too. To better understand why your small business needs marketing automation, let’s break things down:

What exactly is marketing automation? 

Basically, marketing automation allows you to send customized marketing content (email, SMS, etc.) triggered by certain conditions or actions taken by your contacts. For instance, when someone subscribes to your email list, marketing automation would allow you to send them a personalized welcome email without lifting a finger.

But that’s not all! Marketing automation also works with contact management. You can easily and automatically qualify leads, sort them according to their score, and nurture them. Automation helps reinforce your top-of-the-funnel lead generation strategy and builds strong, lasting customer relationships in the long run too.

The best part? These are just some of the ways you can use marketing automation. With some practice, you can let your creative side shine and take advantage of the endless possibilities of automation!

Anyone can use marketing automation, no matter the size of your business, the number of contacts on your list, or your tech skills. All Sendinblue plans include access to basic automation features – even the free plan. There’s really nothing to lose… Now let’s take a look at what’s in it for you!

What are the benefits of marketing automation?

Making automation part of your overall digital marketing strategy means becoming more efficient, targeted, and timely. If you’re still not sure, let’s take a look at the benefits more specifically:

Save time

Have you been wanting to send new contacts a welcome email, but always get caught up in something else? Maybe you’d like to send your loyal customers a birthday message, but don’t have the time to check for birthdays everyday? 

Lucky for you, this work doesn’t have to be done manually! Sending simple, yet manually time-consuming messages like these takes no time at all with automation.

Marketing automation lets you free your marketing and sales teams from tedious, time-consuming tasks and instead focus on more meaningful ones.

Optimize your contact lists

Marketing automation also does wonders for your contact lists. Sorting contacts by age, location, interests, purchase history, and their interactions with your website allows you to send hyper-targeted marketing content. 

You could set up a workflow that sends contacts a personalized follow-up email after looking at certain products on your website.

At the same time, consider customizing your marketing content for customers in different regions to keep up with events, weather, and local trends.

Delivering this level of targeted content to your subscribers can take a lot of time and energy when done manually. Don’t bog down your team with tedious work like this. Instead, let marketing automation take care of it.

Improve the customer experience

So far, we’ve touched on the benefits of marketing automation for you, the business owner. While it’s true that it helps you save loads of time, there are also major benefits to consumers!

The result of automation for consumers is an improved, personalized customer experience. More and more, consumers expect to be treated like individuals rather than just customers. With automation, you can deliver on this need for personal client interactions.

With dynamic contact lists, the data you collect about your clients and their shopping preferences automatically contributes to better, more personalized customer experiences. All you need to do is set it up.

Become A Marketing Automation Expert in 10 Minutes/Day with the Sendinblue Academy

For beginners and experts alike, Sendinblue Academy’s marketing automation course teaches you everything you need to know to make great use of the feature. Our team of marketers have put together resources and expert advice in an easy-to-learn way, featuring interactive lessons and video demonstrations.

No more need to spend hours trying to learn automation piecewise. Thanks to the Sendinblue Academy, everything’s brought together in one place!

To top it all off, there’s an exam at the end of the course. If you pass, you’ll be awarded with a certificate, proving your expertise in marketing automation.

Part 1: Marketing automation basics

The first part of the course is made up of seven interactive modules, each of which lasts about 10 minutes. The goal of the first half of the course is to teach the basics of marketing automation and its areas of application. It consists of the following subjects: 

• What is marketing automation?
• Why is marketing automation for me?
• How does marketing automation work?
• Create effective automation workflows
• Emailing and automation – the winning combination
• Manage your contacts with marketing automation
• Marketing automation triggered by the website and API

At the end of each module, we’ll ask you three questions to make sure you got the topic and reinforce your learning. You’ll then be able to watch the module again or go on to the next one. These mini-quizzes don’t count toward your final certification but are meant to help you prepare for it.

Once you’ve reached the end of the seven modules, you’ll get to take an exam covering all the topics in the first section of the course. In order to earn your Sendinblue certification, you’ll need a score of at least 70%.

Part 2: Implementing marketing automation for your business 

The second part of the course consists of four video tutorials, each of which lasting 10 minutes. The goal of Part 2 of the course is to teach you how to implement marketing automation for your business using the Sendinblue platform.

In four lessons, we show you some of the most common automation workflows, including birthday and welcome emails. As well, you’ll get expert tips and advice on how to make the most of these classic automations, making sure they work for your business.

Part 2 of Sendinblue Academy’s marketing automation course covers the following topics:

• Create a birthday workflow
• Create a welcome workflow
• Create an abandoned cart workflow
• Create a lead scoring workflow

Interactive learning

You’re likely familiar with long, drawn-out, and boring professional development courses…

Lucky for you, the Sendinblue Academy isn’t like that!

Our marketing automation makes the most of online learning technology to deliver an interactive and genuinely engaging learning experience. Lessons are composed of interactive modules and video demonstrations.

Throughout the lessons, you’ll follow the story of Adam, a CEO of a small business in the process of digitalization. When his business is overwhelmed by the success of a product, you’ll be the one to get things under control using your new knowledge of marketing automation!

Daily Training Has Never Been So Easy

To make the most of the course, we recommend following through with it from start to finish. For beginners, it’s helpful to start with the interactive lessons then move on to the video demonstrations and applications. (Basically, the way the course is laid out). 

If you already have some experience in marketing automation, feel free to jump around and fill in whatever information you’re missing. You can still earn the certification without completing all of the lessons.

In order to stay focused and retain as much as possible, we recommend you spend only a few minutes a day on the course. For example, completing one lesson per day is a great way to make sure what you learn about marketing automation sticks with you. What’s more, we designed the course to be done this way!

By spending 10 minutes a day on the course, you can be certified in marketing automation in under three weeks. While you may be tempted to get it all done in an afternoon, we don’t recommend this tactic. For most people, small learning sessions spread across a longer period of time have been proven to be more effective.

Plus, ten minutes a day is easy! The course has no time or place requirements, and you can follow along at whatever pace you like. And if any questions come up during the course, you can ask someone directly on the Academy platform – a Sendinblue expert will get back to you as soon as possible.

Don’t Wait – Refine Your Marketing Skills Today!

The Sendinblue Academy is a free online platform allowing professionals to further their knowledge in digital marketing and giving beginners the chance to learn.

To get started, all you need to do is register online. It’s completely free and only takes two minutes. If you already have a Sendinblue account, you’ll have to create another account for the Academy. 

To get an idea of what the content and learning experience is like, take a look at our videos on Youtube and Udemy.

The post Become a Marketing Automation Expert with Sendinblue Academy appeared first on Sendinblue.

Let’s talk about marketing for a minute. Without a marketing strategy in place, you’ll find it difficult to reach new customers and build brand visibility. 

But where do you even start? 

Marketing brings together so many different elements that it’s hard to know where to begin.

This is where marketing automation services can help. These platforms will guide you through setting up strategies that convert and help you put everything in place to get the results you want. 

So you can weigh up the different solutions, we’ve picked out the best marketing automation tools available along with the features that set them apart.

11 Marketing Automation Services That Will Boost Your Results

1. Sendinblue

Sendinblue’s marketing automation software provides a toolbox of everything you need to create powerful and engaging campaigns. The features let you optimize the customer journey from start to finish, using deep insights into customer behavior to track performance and tweak your campaign. 

The intuitive suite of tools creates an enjoyable customer experience, from lead qualification to nurturing and post-sale support. The Sendinblue Tracker lets you track visitors exploring your website and add them to marketing workflows based on their onsite behavior. 

You can also create automated workflows geared towards different audience segments, for personalized messages that will resonate with your customers.

The visual drag and drop workflow editor gives you an overview of the journey your customers will go on. You can then easily edit this based on real-time insights and analytics.

Price: Sendinblue’s free plan lets you send up to 300 emails a day and use Marketing Automation for 2,000 contacts. Unlimited Marketing Automation with the Premium plan starts at $65 per month.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot’s marketing automation service focuses on inbound marketing tools that help you generate leads and convert more customers. The features in place provide strategic guidance for creating an all-round marketing plan that suits your business and its buyers. 

Design beautiful landing pages optimized for conversions with the drag and drop editor and publish blog posts quickly and effectively with in-built content marketing tools. Advanced insights mean you can track activity on your website to better understand visitor behavior and trigger automations.

Elsewhere, you can get real-time SEO suggestions to help boost your search engine rankings, while the Conversations feature enables you to manage customer communications from different messaging channels all in one place.

For more information on HubSpot’s offer check out our detailed comparison of HubSpot vs. Sendinblue.

Price: prices start at $50 per month for the Starter plan or $800 per month for full automation features on the Professional plan. Both include 1,000 contacts.

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign allows you to map out the customer experience from start to finish. It provides tools for robust email campaigns, automation features to put your strategy on autopilot, and a CRM system to help you manage and organize your contacts. 

The platform has a series of features to help with each stage of the customer journey, from the initial reach and engage phase right through to post-purchase care. 

It includes premade subscription forms and landing pages optimized for conversions, segmentation to customize the buyer experience, and split testing functionality to see which strategies resonate best with your audience.

For more details of ActiveCampaign’s features and pricing, take a look at our comparison of Sendinblue vs. ActiveCampaign.

Price: prices start at $15 per month for up to 500 contacts on the basic plan.

4. Omnisend

Omnisend combines powerful email marketing capabilities with SMS and other channels. The key is in the name — it specializes in creating a slick digital marketing strategy that spans multiple channels all from one central dashboard. 

Another aspect that sets the service apart from other marketing automation solutions is that features are specifically tailored towards ecommerce brands, helping them scale while maintaining and nurturing customer relationships.

You can integrate several different channels into your workflow, create branded emails from premade templates, and tap into automation tools that let you run campaigns on autopilot.

Price: there is a free plan for email marketing, but use of the automation tools starts at $16 per month for up to 500 contacts.

5. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a tool created for ecommerce brands that want to up engagement levels and enhance the customer experience. It predominantly combines email and SMS marketing services in an effort to build loyal relationships.

The service integrates with major ecommerce apps as well as Facebook advertisements. There are also prebuilt signup forms to help you grow your email lists and collect customer information for personalization.

Powerful automation capabilities mean you can create complex workflows, with the ability to A/B test. The platform’s greatest benefit is its personalization features, which allow you to create unique transactional emails and campaigns that keep customers happy.

To help you decide whether Klaviyo is right for your business, check out our comparison of Klaviyo vs. Sendinblue.

 Price: there is a free plan for up to 500 monthly emails and 250 contacts. After that, prices start at $20 per month.

6. Marketo

Marketo is known as a lead management platform, but it covers pretty much every part of marketing. This includes powerful email capabilities, as well as mobile and account-based marketing tools.

The service is hot on personalization. You can customize content, messaging, and branding to align with your customers’ wants and needs, all from one central place. There are also insightful analytics to measure every moment in the customer journey.

Price: there are various packages available that include different features. Prices are based on database size but you have to contact the sales team to get a quote.

7. Autopilot

Marketing automation can feel very overwhelming, but Autopilot’s service makes it easy by turning it into a visual activity. 

Marketing teams can streamline their processes from start to finish with a range of intuitive features. Generate leads with signup forms, nurture them with automated workflows, and create personalized experiences with segmentation and trigger-based sequences. 

On top of this, there are tools to automate repetitive tasks like lead assignment, appointment scheduling, and follow-ups.

The platform offers a multichannel solution with email and SMS marketing, in-app messages, and direct mail postcards.

Price: prices start at $49 per month for up to 2,000 contacts.

8. Pardot

Pardot is Salesforce’s marketing automation service. Primarily aimed at B2B marketers, it streamlines the sales process from start to finish.

Features include a landing page builder and smart forms for high-quality lead generation, as well as email marketing capabilities that let you segment subscribers and create automated, trigger-based campaigns.

The analytics track every activity, providing you with real-time metrics on what is and isn’t performing. This helps you keep your marketing automation strategy fluid by continuously tweaking it to improve results.

Price: Pardot is predominantly for enterprise-level businesses and the pricing packages reflect this. The cheapest plan starts at $1,250 per month for up to 10,000 contacts.

9. Act-On

Act-On is an automated growth platform that helps businesses attract new leads and turn them into customers. The service offers a range of features for automating each step of the marketing process and provides detailed analytics.

Key features include premade web and landing pages set up for conversions and smart forms for organizing and tracking leads, while automated lead scoring helps you identify the most qualified leads and tailor your messaging.

There are also a number of powerful email marketing capabilities like segmentation, automated sequences, and a visual editor to help you keep messaging and information on brand while building connections with your customers.

Price: like Pardot, Act-On is predominantly geared towards enterprise-level, with the cheapest package starting at $900 per month for up to 5,000 contacts.

10. Keap

Keap is a combined CRM, sales, and marketing platform with powerful automation tools to streamline your marketing efforts. The emphasis is on creating an enjoyable customer experience and building a solid relationship with your buyers.

The features reflect this, with personalized messages that are automatically sent to each new lead and automated reminders, emails, and text messages. An activity stream keeps you updated on where each lead is in the sales cycle and a central dashboard stores all customer interactions.

There is a drag and drop marketing strategy editor to visualize the customer journey, and you can pull in different activities like social media campaigns, email nurture sequences, and landing pages.

Price: there is a basic plan starting at $79 per month, but for the platform’s marketing automation features you’ll need the Pro plan starting at $149 per month. Both include 500 contacts.

11. Eloqua

Eloqua is a marketing automation service from Oracle that allows you to create engaging campaigns for every step of the customer journey.

The platform combines tools for creating both online and offline materials, bringing them together to build personalized and optimized multichannel marketing campaigns. 

It offers an intuitive way to qualify and manage leads and powerful targeting and segmentation features. You can also create dynamic campaigns that adapt the customer experience based on their activity in real time.

Price: Eloqua is geared towards enterprise-level companies and the prices reflect that. The cheapest package starts at $2,000 per month. 

Discover the Power of Marketing Automation Services

Marketing is a key part of building and growing your business. It helps you reach new audiences, while increasing brand visibility and trust. 

Using marketing automation services to create multichannel campaigns is a seamless way to bring together all the moving parts. The tools in this list all have powerful capabilities to help you build out customer journeys from start to finish, from reaching qualified leads to nurturing them through to the sale. 

All of this is done on autopilot, giving you the space and time you need to focus on other parts of your business.

The post Marketing Automation Services: 11 of the Best Tools for 2022 appeared first on Sendinblue.

Rocket Conseil, a Paris-based web agency and official Sendinblue Expert Partner, has been helping La Fine Fleur boost ROI through omnichannel marketing since the launch of their e-shop in September 2019. In this article, get the inside scoop on how they set up Sendinblue automation workflows for best results.

La Fine Fleur is a French ecommerce website dedicated to sustainable fashion for men and children. Their products are eco-responsible, featuring only transparent and conscious fashion pieces.

Thanks to years of analyzing UX behavior and data, Rocket Conseil knows how to set up the perfect condition-based automated workflows. In this case study, discover how they used omnichannel marketing automation to boost ROI for La Fine Fleur and why Sendinblue is the perfect tool for that.

Benefits of using an omnichannel marketing platform

In 2021, Rocket Conseil became Sendinblue’s Admiral partner as part of their “Expert Program” but in fact it has been the agency’s number one choice for marketing communication software for its clients for several years prior to that.

As an agency, the fact that Sendinblue is an all-in-one platform (email, SMS, Facebook Ads, chat, and CRM) allows us to:

1. Optimize our development efforts and save time. Instead of setting up each communication channel individually, we have the opportunity to manage all aspects of a client’s marketing from one single interface.
2. Constantly iterate and optimize marketing strategies. All data and statistics are centralized on the platform.
3. Configure advanced multi-step automation workflows (uncommon among other email marketing solutions).

And, aside from the amazing product there’s a number of other reasons why we as a growing agency choose to use SendinBlue almost exclusively for all of our projects:

1. Premium customer support allows us to resolve eventual questions and issues significantly quicker, saving time both for us and for the final client.
2. Close cooperation with Sendinblue allows us to contribute to studies of the topic of marketing automation in general and to share our best practices with a wider audience (for example, via this case study!).
3. Sendinblue is a quickly growing and evolving start-up and we enjoy the spirit of the collaboration we have with their amazing team.

On the client side, there are several additional benefits. Omnichannel marketing allows them to:

1. Communicate more efficiently with different types of audiences. According to a recent study by AACC Customer Marketing in March 2021, more than 50% of customers under 35 want to be able to communicate with brands via different channels, such as Facebook or live chat. On the other hand, Baby Boomers, the generation born between 1946-1964, are not swayed by online advertising which makes SMS the best way to reach them.
2. Decrease operational costs — no need to pay for multiple tools anymore.

All of this creates a more engaging and personalized brand experience for customers. Let’s take a look at how La Fine Fleur does it.

Maximizing the potential of a single platform for La Fine Fleur

La Fine Fleur’s needs can be summed up by these four objectives:

• Increase returning customer rates and improve retention
• Promote brand awareness
• Convert prospects and reignite brand interest in warm leads
• Reach new audiences, similar to the brand’s most loyal customers

Le Fine Fleur had been using basic automated email workflows for some time already (e.g. welcome emails, birthday emails, abandoned cart reminders). Our challenge was to find a new creative approach to reach these objectives.

To do that, Rocket Conseil created the following custom advanced automation scenarios for La Fine Fleur.

Workflow #1: Post-purchase sequence

This multi-step omnichannel workflow consists of sending a series of emails/SMS to first-time or returning customers. Contacts are given an incentive (a discount code) to make a repeat purchase.

Originally, this workflow only featured emails but SMS messages have since been added.

According to the above scenario:

• 3 days after the order is shipped, the customer receives a “thank you for your order message” (it was important for the client at this stage to show gratitude to the customer instead pushing a commercial message)

• 8 days after the order is shipped (i.e. the order has already been delivered), the customer receives an email request to leave a Google Business review (great opportunity to capitalize on the customer’s satisfaction to increase brand awareness)

• 30 days later, the customer receives an email with a discount code valid for one month (setting time limits is a good way motivate users to make the new purchase, if they haven’t already)

• 28 days later (i.e. 48 hours before the discount code expires), the user receives another email reminding them that the code will expire

• 24 hours before the discount code expires, if it still hasn’t been used, the contact receives an SMS reminder (by now, there’s a sense of urgency which validates using SMS as a channel)
• 24 hours after the SMS reminder, the workflow verifies if the discount code has been used or not

A couple of key points to note:

• Some may argue that SMS is intrusive but these contacts are already customers and have opted-in to receive this type of communication. For La Fine Fleur, this is done via a checkbox on the checkout page.
• A tip is to explicitly let the customer know which methods of communication will be used and who will contact them (more often than not, user data is shared with partners and this makes potential customers wary of handing over contact details)

• Before setting up any automation workflows, it’s good practice to integrate relevant dynamic attributes to Sendinblue’s database and collect data on them over a certain period of time. Thi will give you ideas on how to use these attributes in the future. In the case of the workflow described above, relevant attributes include Order Status, Site Status (i.e. a customer’s status on the website), and an attribute related to the discount code.
• Speaking of the discount code attribute, it’s recommended to add the usage verification condition to the workflow after each single step in order to avoid irrelevant creative assets. For tracking purposes, it’s also good to have a custom code for each workflow. Please note that the discount code should also always be uniquely associated with the user’s email and not be valid otherwise.
• Since it’s impossible to track the open rate of SMS, the only way to collect any relevant data would be to integrate a shortened URL (bit.ly or similar). This way we could track the click rate and eventually measure the success of the campaign.

Workflow #2: Follow Up with Prospects

This second multi-step omnichannel workflow is primarily targeted at customers who’ve subscribed to the newsletter but haven’t ordered yet (i.e. warm leads).

It consists of email follow ups, importing contacts to a new list for a specific campaign, and Facebook Ads. La Fine Fleur’s goal with this workflow was to reactivate prospects who’ve shown an interest in the brand but haven’t converted.

Upon signup, newsletter subscribers receive a discount code in their welcome email.

Following the scenario above:

• 72 hours after newsletter subscription (multiple email capture points via popup, header and footer), if the promotional code provided in the newsletter subscription confirmation email was not used (i.e. the order was not passed within a period of 3 days following subscription to the newsletter), the users are automatically added to list ‘Prospects’
• At this stage, we manually launch and configure a Facebook ad on Sendinblue to be shown to the ‘Prospects’ list for 14 days. Note that “Include your contact lists as part of your audience” requires a minimum of 20 contacts. The ad format was a single image with a message inviting the prospect to discover the brand and its values, as well as a discount code reminder and a ‘Shop Now’ CTA.

• At the end of the Facebook Ad campaign (i.e. 14 days later), the workflow verifies if the discount code has been used. If yes, the contact is removed from the ‘Prospects’ list.
• If the discount code hasn’t been used, the user receives an email reminder with the same discount code 16 days after the ad campaign (i.e. 30 days after contact was initially added to the ‘Prospects’ list).

• Wait 30 days then verify again if the promotional code has been finally used. If yes, the contact should be removed from list ‘Prospects‘ and moved to ‘Clients‘. If not, moved the contact to the list ‘Cold Prospects‘. Given that contacts can only enter this workflow once, it leaves an opportunity to eventually start another workflow.

A few key aspects to pay attention to:

• Facebook Ads can’t be integrated into automation workflows and have to be launched manually;
• When lists are segmented based on contact activity, as was the case for La Fine Fleur’s ‘Prospects’ list, it’s good practice to verify if the condition to be in this list is fulfilled after each step, resulting in users being removed from the list if the answer is «yes».

Bonus: Facebook Ads targeted to audiences similar to lists «Clients» and «Prospects» 

This Facebook Ad campaign is supposed to compliment the previously mentioned automated workflows. The Facebook Ad is shown to a lookalike audience over a 10-day period and in terms of content focuses on brand discovery. Facebook’s intelligent targeting allows it to find more potential customers with similar interests and characteristics.

It’s important to note that at least 500 contacts must be selected to target audiences similar to your lists.

Results

Implementing these two omnichannel workflows with marketing automation (as well as Facebook Ads), allowed La Fine Fleur to activate their prospects and re-engage their existing customers.

There’s no doubt that Sendinblue played a critical role in helping La Fine Fleur reach their objectives and boost their ROI. So much so that it’s become a cornerstone in La Fine Fleur’s digital marketing strategy:

• 29% of La Fine Fleur’s web traffic comes from emails sent via Sendinblue
• 31% of its conversions are generated via Sendinblue
• In terms of ecommerce shopping behaviour, 64.23% are returning visitors
• When it comes to ecommerce checkout behaviour, 39.6% of sessions have transactions
• For ecommerce sales performance, 54.65% of revenue is generated by returning customers

Conclusion

Sendinblue’s marketing automation platform is a powerful and robust relationship marketing solution. Its omnichannel features allow brands to create individualized experiences for each contact. If you want to create an automated conversion machine with advanced workflows, Sendinblue’s your tool for the job!

And what’s next for Rocket Conseil and La Fine Fleur you ask? A couple of things:

1. Integrating Sendinblue’s chat feature into the existing marketing automation strategy
2. Adding lead scoring to the purchase process to create an advanced onboarding flow that’ll adapt to the contact’s behavior and needs

Do you too want to boost your company’s ROI through omnichannel marketing? If yes, contact Rocket Conseil’s team today.

The post Case Study: How to Use Omnichannel Marketing Automation to Boost ROI appeared first on Sendinblue.

That moment, when you reach out to someone — only to be ignored.

It’s never a good feeling.

And the same applies to your email marketing. Whether it’s subscribing to your email list, signing up for your services, or making a first purchase, your response to new contacts can make or break the relationship.

The examples below are full of best practices and ideas to help you create a welcome email template that’ll engage subscribers from the start.

Why Your Brand Needs a Welcome Email

First impressions count. And if you don’t bother with a welcome email, you’re missing out on an opportunity to make a good one.

While there are lots of different ways your welcome message can achieve this, the basic concept remains the same.

Take note of the last part of that definition – welcome emails are more than just a way to say thank you for signing up. They’re a chance to show the recipient how they can get the most from your company.

The right introduction for your email subscribers can bring long-term benefits, including:

• Stronger customer relationships: An authentic “thank you for subscribing” will warm people to your brand and build trust.  
• More sales and increased customer retention: Presenting your products or services will help boost conversion rates and user engagement. 
• Better email engagement rates: If your first email impresses, subscribers will likely take notice of future campaigns too.

If you’re still not convinced, take a look at these welcome email statistics from a report by Experian. It found that, compared to bulk promotional mailings, welcome emails:

• Get four times more opens, with an average open rate of almost 60%
• Generate five times more clicks, with an average click rate of over 14%
• Bring in eight times more revenue per email

How to Write a Welcome Email

Before getting into some examples of different approaches, here’s a basic formula for what to include in your welcome email template: 

• Show your appreciation with a genuine “thank you for signing up”. 
• Remind recipients what they’ve signed up for and what they can expect. 
• Introduce your brand and what you have to offer. 
• Provide something of value to get your new audience engaging straight away. 

Once you have the content for your welcome message, you’ll need a tool to create your email template and send it automatically after a signup.

Sendinblue’s free email marketing automation software offers an affordable solution with all the essential features. Design emails using the intuitive drag-and-drop editor then set up a welcome journey in just a few clicks using the premade workflow.

Finding a welcome email template

While of course your welcome email design needs to fit your brand, you don’t have to start completely from scratch. The internet is full of free email template resources you can use for your welcome message. Here are a couple of the best ones:

Sendinblue

With a free Sendinblue account you get access to over 60 beautifully designed and fully responsive email templates. The templates are tailored to different sectors and purposes, including for email signups and new customers.

Stripo

Stripo offers over 550 free HTML email templates. What’s great about Stripo is that, without any coding skills, you can jazz up your welcome email design with cool features like CSS-animated buttons, image rollover effects, and other interactive elements.

Unlike Sendinblue, Stripo isn’t an email marketing service so you can’t send your welcome email with it. But if you create your email in Stripo you can then export it to Sendinblue for sending. Stripo allows four exports per month on their free plan.

Now you know how to go about creating a welcome email, you need to choose the right tactics for your audience and business goals. The examples below are full of ideas for how to get the most from your welcome email and ensure your subscribers stick around.

The 9 Best Welcome Email Examples to Inspire Your Strategy

1. The self-introduction

You can’t assume new subscribers and customers already know everything there is about your business. Your welcome email should reinforce your unique selling points to confirm you’re the right choice for them. 

Just one word of caution: this doesn’t mean it should be all about you. Instead, emphasize the benefits for your new contacts.

This welcome email example by TravelSupermarket gets the balance right, presenting the perks customers get from using their services while setting expectations for future emails.

The email keeps it simple by focusing on getting customers to explore their offers rather than overwhelming them with conflicting calls-to-action (CTAs).

TravelSupermarket then uses a Sendinblue automation workflow to follow up their initial “thank you for subscribing” email with more information. This second part of their welcome series offers other ways to engage with their business, like checking out their blog or following them on social media.

2. The video greeting

Showing rather than telling your new audience what you have to offer can help increase engagement with your welcome email content. 

A short video presenting your business brings it to life in a way that’s not possible with text alone. This could be a message from your founder that puts a face to your brand and shares your story, or you could show clips of your product in action.  

Alternatively, you can use an animated GIF in your email to get across your brand and its personality, as BarkBox does in their welcome email:

The GIF works hand in hand with the playful email copy to show subscribers what their company’s about.

3. The personalized welcome message

To get your introduction just right for each contact, you can adapt the email content based on what you know about them. For example, Zapier tailors their post-registration welcome email to the user’s signup method to make it as valuable as possible.

Source

Sendinblue offers personalization tools for sending emails that are unique to the recipient. This can be as simple as adding the contact name to the email body and subject line. Or you can show different content blocks based on criteria such as a subscriber’s interests. 

To try this tactic for your welcome email, add questions to your email signup form to learn more about subscribers. Then create content to match different profiles.

4. The getting to know you email

If you prefer to keep your subscription form brief, your welcome email itself can also help you get audience insights.

Use it to find out what subscribers are looking for, like the content they’re interested in or their preferred email frequency. Not only is this valuable information for your strategy but it also shows your audience you’re serious about meeting their needs. 

The newsletter welcome message below executes this approach in a simple yet human way:

The copy’s conversational tone endears the reader so they’ll be more receptive to the ask. Meanwhile, the email subject line — “Welcome! I’ve got two questions for you!” — attracts attention with an emoji followed by an intriguing statement.

Rather than asking for direct replies, you could share a link to a profile update form to make collecting responses easier. That way you’ll build a picture of each contact’s interests and preferences to aid with your email list segmentation.

5. The product showcase

For B2C companies aiming to convert would-be customers, a welcome email is your chance to show off your best items so they can’t help but start browsing.

You might choose to shine a spotlight on your flagship product or promote top sellers or new arrivals.

For example, take a look at how Glossier’s welcome email template captures shoppers’ interest with the product imagery in the header. They follow this with a well-crafted brand pitch and a CTA button encouraging the reader to act on the curiosity they’ve instilled.

Source

6. The special offer welcome gift

You can further boost sales from your welcome email with incentives like discount codes or free shipping that double up as a thank you for signing up. This tactic works well for ecommerce businesses as the email can direct shoppers straight to their online store to redeem the offer.

For example, skin brand Rootanicals created this welcome email template with Sendinblue to share an exclusive discount with those who sign up on their website.

Another trick is to highlight the offer in your welcome email subject line to maximize open rates.

7. The onboarding welcome email

Once a customer has converted, your aim should be to get them up and running with your product as soon as possible. And onboarding emails provide the know-how and motivation they need to do so. 

Content should focus on educational resources like tutorials and tips that help new users get started and make the most of your product. 

For example, B2B company Workona uses Sendinblue Automation to send a series of welcome emails that guide new customers through their software.

The initial email encourages users to take the first steps in getting set up through clear instructions and a helpful GIF. The CTA button then takes them to the product to try it out. Finally, the customer quote adds a nice touch that shows the benefits they gain.

The emails that follow use a similar template to introduce the software’s different features. Each centers around a customer pain point and shows how Workona’s product holds the solution. The subject lines, such as “Tip 1: Solve tab overload” for the email below, highlight the value inside to keep recipients opening their messages.

8. The resource delivery email

Lead magnets like cheat sheets, ebooks, or free templates are a great way to get prospective customers onto your email list. But, if your first email contains nothing more than a link to the free resource, you’re missing a trick.

You’ve already managed to draw the contact in with something they want. So now it’s time to guide them down your funnel through to sale.

One tactic is to share your related content, as in the welcome email example below. This helps further build your business’ credibility for prospects by showing your expertise on relevant topics.

You could also encourage this new audience to discover your product, for example through a free trial or case study. Just be careful not to scare them off by being overly promotional — the key is to offer something valuable that’ll keep them engaged until they’re ready to convert.

9. The customer seal of approval

Another tactic for winning over new contacts without having to toot your own horn is to let your loyal customers do it for you. 

Playing on social proof in your welcome message will reassure subscribers they’ve made the right choice with your business and encourage further engagement.

Huckberry’s welcome email is a prime example. It instills confidence from the start by referencing their one million-plus fans.

Source

The rest of the email is littered with customer endorsements, from five-star reviews to glowing feedback, that boost the legitimacy of their claims.

Welcome Email Best Practices to Take Forward for Your Own

Now you’ve seen how it’s done, over to you to try these tactics on your subscribers. 

As a recap, here are the key features of a good welcome message:

• An email subject line that gets attention and hints at the value inside
• Customer-focused messaging that shows the benefits you have to offer them
• Useful content for getting the most from your company
• A clear call-to-action offering a way for subscribers to engage straight away
• Follow-up emails that feed contacts with further relevant information through an automated workflow

Remember, there’s no one right way to welcome subscribers — the best approach will vary depending on your business. So, time to get testing and find out what works for your audience!

The post 9 Best Welcome Email Examples to Win Over Subscribers appeared first on Sendinblue.

Now you might be wondering how exactly one should use marketing automation for B2B. What are the most effective B2B automation techniques and tactics for nurturing leads?

Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Whether you’re trying automation for the first time or ramping up an existing strategy, you’ll learn five different ways to use marketing automation for maximizing B2B sales.

But first, let’s make sure we’re clear on how B2B marketing automation differs from B2C.

What’s the difference between B2B vs B2C marketing automation?

Marketing automation is a way for companies to keep in regular contact with leads and customers. 

Marketing automation for B2B shares the same principle as B2C marketing automation: triggering an automated message or series of messages in response to email subscriber activity.

While both focus on targeting subscribers with the right message in real-time, their approaches are different. 

B2C focuses heavily on personalization. B2B, on the other hand, is less about personalization and more about education. 

B2B marketing automation nudges leads towards conversion by nurturing them with helpful, educational content.

5 ways to use B2B marketing automation for high-impact results

1. Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing refers to using automated email marketing to inform and nurture leads. Guiding leads through the acquisition cycle is the most common use case for B2B marketing automation.

This tactic works particularly well in the B2B industry where leads require a large amount of trust and education before making a purchase. 

Once a lead signs up to your list, follow up with targeted content until the lead is warm enough to be passed off to the sales team. 

Lead nurturing does two things: 1. It tracks leads as they move along the buyer’s journey and 2. lets you adjust your digital marketing tactics and messaging according to the different steps.

The best marketing automation workflows to build B2B relationships include:

• Welcome email sequences to introduce new subscribers to your brand/product
• Email marketing sequences following gated content (i.e. free downloadables or webinar signups)
• If/then/else sequences depending on specific lead activity (page visits, email opens and clicks, etc.)

How to set up a lead nurturing workflow

Start your lead nurturing workflow at the earliest possible point in the sales funnel. This could be when a lead subscribes to your newsletter or requests a product demo. 

Once the lead enters the workflow, tailor your communications according to their area of interest and follow up at regular intervals so they don’t forget about you. 

For example, depending on the landing pages visited, you can send an automated email campaign with related content. Check out these B2B lead nurturing examples for inspiration.

2. Lead scoring

Just as B2B leads need to be nurtured, they also need to be qualified. By this we mean putting in place a system to show which stage a lead is at in the buyer journey.

As mentioned, B2B acquisition cycles are lengthy. For a B2B marketer whose job is to send high-quality leads to sales, timing is everything. So what’s the best way to achieve this?

Introducing the idea of a lead scoring model—giving leads a ‘score’ to denote their engagement level. 

Use marketing automation to you assign ‘points’ to leads whenever their interactions suggest a growing interest in your brand (clicking an email link, browsing a product page, etc.). 

With Sendinblue this consists of creating a custom CRM attribute for the score, determining the actions that deserve points, then setting up an automation workflow that’ll add points to the score.

What’s more, the lead score itself can serve as an automation trigger. For example, using the score to trigger a specific email or move the contact to another email list (we’ll talk more about automated segmentation later).

It might sound complicated, but really it’s not. Get all the details in our step-by-step guide to creating a lead-scoring model.

3. Multi-channel campaigns

Maximize your campaign reach and brand awareness by triggering relevant automated communications across different channels. 

If you’re just getting to grips with marketing automation, focus on mastering one channel first. Simple email nurture campaigns are an easy way to start. 

Once you’re more comfortable—and if your marketing automation software has the necessary features—try your hand at a multi-channel approach. 

Multi-channel automation, as the name suggests, targets leads at multiple touchpoints along the buyer journey through multiple channels. 

This could be a combination of email, SMS, retargeting ads on social media sites like LinkedIn, or even direct mail. Experiment to discover which marketing channels work best for your target audience.

4. Segmentation & customer profiling

Did you know you can use marketing automation to update your contact lists and CRM?

We highly recommend segmenting your B2B leads according to their activity, engagement, and other shared characteristics. 

Why do this? Because email list segmentation leads to more relevant messaging and higher engagement. 

Automating list management is a huge time-saver for any business.

Set up is easy if your automation platform, like Sendinblue, offers dynamic segmentation. Create automation workflows that move contacts to specific lists depending on web pages visited, email engagement, etc.  

A marketing automation platform should either have its own CRM component or integrate with your existing CRM. Use automation to keep this database up to date by automatically assigning attributes to individual customer profiles.

5. Page tracking

Page tracking here refers to using website behavior to trigger automated B2B campaigns. 

‘Website behavior’ means visiting specific landing pages and/or clicking a particular link. Basically, whatever a lead gets up to on your website.

It’s a prime opportunity to follow up directly with more information, be it related to pricing or a certain product.

Now you might be wondering, how would I know when a lead is browsing the website?

Good question!

To put it simply, you’d first have to install a tracking code (like the Sendinblue Tracker) on your website. This’ll identify whenever a subscriber opens an email or clicks a link on your website.

All you need to do is insert a Javascript snippet into your website header as you would for Google Analytics. Full instructions available here.

(Keep in mind that the Sendinblue Tracker only functions with ‘identified’ visitors, i.e. those who have already signed up to your email list)

B2B marketing automation best practices

Quick tips to keep you on track for best results.

• Know the different steps in your sales cycle and map out the lead journey before configuring automation workflows. Cover all the key steps from discovering your brand to converting. This’ll form the basis of your automation workflows.
• Get the messaging right at each step in the workflow 
• Establish the metrics you want to track and monitor them regularly. Sure, the whole point of marketing automation is that it runs by itself in the background but ‘set it and forget it’ isn’t the right approach either. Always look for ways to optimize your workflows for better engagement.
• Your email lists should be 100% opt-in (i.e. organic subscribers). Always include unsubscribe links for leads to opt out at any time. 
• Clean email lists regularly by removing unengaged leads. This’ll keep engagement rates high and maintain better email deliverability.

How to choose the best B2B marketing automation software

As marketing automation grows in popularity, marketing automation services have become accessible to even the smallest of businesses. 

Marketing automation tools have varying price-tags and feature sets. Some are geared towards small businesses and ecommerce, whereas others are a better fit for enterprise marketing.

While a lot will depend on your budget, there are certain key features to look out for in a marketing automation platform.

• Multi-channel marketing campaigns for different customer journeys
• Visitor/page tracking to know who’s looking at your website and how they are using it
• Reporting and analytics for evaluating performance
• Segmentation to separate your lists based on different criteria like contacts’ behavior or interests
• Lead management for different stages of the customer journey, from lead generation and capture to nurturing
• A/B testing of different customer journeys and content to automatically select the best performing option

Above all, your B2B marketing automation software needs to be smart, easy to use, and allow for timely content marketing delivery.

Sendinblue’s marketing automation suite is free for up to 2000 subscribers. Test-drive it now on our free plan. No credit card required, cancel anytime.

Try Marketing Automation with Sendinblue

Wrap up

Hopefully we’ve inspired you with ideas to take your B2B marketing automation strategy to the next level.

Implemented the right way, these tactics go a long way in maximizing sales potential.

Have you got any other tried-and-true strategies for B2B automation? Let us know in the comments below; we’d love to hear from you!

The post B2B Marketing Automation: 5 High-Impact Tactics to Drive More Sales appeared first on Sendinblue.

B2C marketers face unique challenges compared to their B2B counterparts. They must serve up campaigns that cater to a broad audience while still making the consumer feel like an offer is made for them.

Marketing automation makes this possible, allowing you to create personalized experiences for customers at scale.

This guide will help you understand the differences between marketing automation for B2C and B2B audiences to ensure you’re using it in the best way for your business. Plus you’ll find example automation scenarios that you can try across the B2C customer journey.

What is B2C Marketing Automation?

Whatever your business type, marketing automation can improve the customer experience by helping you target people with the right message at the right time. In a B2C context, it allows marketing teams to:

• Improve conversion rates through personalized campaigns that address customers’ individual needs and interests
• Increase customer retention and repeat purchases with the right content to keep them engaged 
• Prevent lost customers thanks to well-timed messages

B2B vs. B2C marketing automation: What’s the difference?

Since B2C companies directly target consumers — rather than other businesses as in B2B marketing — they should take a different approach to engaging their audience. And this also translates into how they use marketing automation. 

Below are some key factors that set B2B and B2C marketing automation apart.

The customer journey

Companies make purchasing decisions very differently to individual consumers. While you might decide to buy something on a whim, they normally go through a lengthy process before committing, involving various stakeholders. 

B2C’s shorter sales cycle leaves less time to convince potential customers. So, while B2B marketing automation focuses on lead nurturing that gradually educates prospects on their offer, B2C campaigns are more conversion-focused with content like personalized product recommendations. 

Contact segmentation

B2C target audiences are generally much larger than those of B2B companies who focus their marketing efforts on building close relationships with prospects in their niche. As a result, B2B marketers build more detailed profiles for each contact, often using CRM software. 

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t create personalized experiences for your B2C audience. Instead, marketing automation helps B2C marketers segment their audience based on contacts’ characteristics and behavior to target them with relevant content. 

Campaign channels

Individual consumers are looking for convenience. This means your campaigns need to reach them via the right channel. 

As a result, B2C marketing automation has a more multichannel focus. While email automation works well whatever your audience, B2C strategies are more likely to involve other channels like SMS and social media.

B2C Marketing Automation Software

In the past, companies enjoyed far fewer options when choosing a marketing automation solution, with those available designed for large enterprises catering to B2B audiences. 

Now it’s a different story. New platforms have emerged with automation features that are not only accessible to small business budgets but also more suited to B2C purposes. 

When choosing between different marketing automation services, aside from factors like pricing, functionality to look out for as a B2C business includes: 

• Segmentation

There should be flexible options to group contacts based on the criteria you need, including their characteristics and actions. This will help you target the right people with your campaigns.

• Behavior tracking

Your software should track activities like how users engage with your email campaigns and website, allowing you to create automated journeys that adapt to their real-time behavior.

• Ecommerce integrations

If you’re selling online, linking your store to your marketing automation platform allows you to use customer data like purchase history to trigger campaigns and personalize content.

• Multichannel tools

Depending on how you plan to interact with your audience, you’ll want features that go beyond email marketing. For example, you might want to trigger automated SMS messages or have a tool for creating dedicated landing pages for your campaigns.

• A/B testing

This allows you to experiment with elements in your campaigns and even test whole customer journeys to find what works best for your audience.

5 Ways to Use Marketing Automation for B2C Businesses

Now you’ve got your head around B2C marketing automation as a concept, here are some scenarios where it can help you enhance the customer experience and get more sales.

1. Welcome new customers

When someone first discovers your brand, you want to make sure they stick around.

Marketing automation enables you to target this audience with campaigns that lay the foundations for a long-term relationship.

For first-time customers or those who’ve just signed up to your service, automated onboarding emails like the example below give the introduction they need to your product. Content should reassure them they’ve made the right choice and provide information for getting the most out of their purchase.

Source

New subscribers to your email list can also benefit from dedicated messages to sustain their interest and build brand awareness.

For example, in this welcome email created using Sendinblue, B2C retailer The Little Traveler highlights what they have to offer both online and at their physical store. The coupon code gives subscribers an extra push to get shopping straight away, while also making them feel appreciated.

2. Get reviews

Once you’ve welcomed a customer into the fold and they’ve had time to try out your product, it’s the prime opportunity to ask for feedback. Any positive responses will be a valuable tool for attracting more customers in the future. 

To automate this process, trigger messages a set amount of time after purchases with a call to action to leave a review.

Source

As well as product-specific reviews, you could also collect general testimonials about your company. To up your chances of getting a glowing review, make your automation more targeted by only including repeat customers who were satisfied enough to buy again.

3. Combat shopping cart abandonment

If your B2C business has an online store, abandoned cart emails are a must for your marketing automation strategy. These are triggered reminders to shoppers who added an item to their cart but didn’t end up buying, aiming to tempt them back.

Below is a template abandoned cart message created with the Sendinblue email editor. It contains the essential elements — information about the customer’s chosen items and a link to their cart to easily finish the purchase.

You can also get more creative by adding content to persuade the shopper, such as a discount code or free shipping offer, customer reviews, and recommendations of other products. For a dose of inspiration, check out these abandoned cart email examples.

You don’t have to limit yourself to email either. Try setting up a workflow that integrates other channels to make sure your message doesn’t pass shoppers by. For example, you could also send a “last chance” reminder via SMS or use Facebook retargeting ads to reach customers outside of their inbox.

4. Personalize your offers

A key benefit of marketing automation as a B2C business is that it helps you collect customer insights that you can use to serve individuals with relevant offers. These campaigns are not only more likely to generate sales but they’ll also keep your audience engaged with your content. 

For example, TravelSupermarket uses Sendinblue’s marketing automation software to track users’ activity on their website and send campaigns based on their interests. The email below for instance is triggered by visits to pages related to trips to New York. It includes a good mix of inspirational content and calls to action that encourage the recipient to take the next steps in planning their trip. 

TravelSupermarket’s email also takes the opportunity to promote similar destinations that might be of interest. This tactic can work in post-purchase communications too. For example, fashion brands might send “complete the look” suggestions that cross sell other items a shopper could pair with their recent purchase.

5. Keep your customers loyal

In B2C marketing, attracting new customers is only half the battle. The real challenge comes in making sure they buy again and again.

A special offer sent at just the right moment is one effective way to make customers feel valued and keep them on board.

Automated birthday emails are an easy example of this. All you need is to collect subscribers’ date of birth on sign up, then you can set up birthday messages that include a coupon or freebie as a gift.

To reward your most loyal customers, you could trigger similar campaigns when someone has made a certain number of purchases or been with your company for a defined period.

Source

On the flip side, dedicated offers can also help lure back customers who’ve dropped off recently. Particularly effective are time-sensitive deals, like in the automated SMS campaign below.

Source

Ready to Kick Start Your B2C Marketing Automation Strategy?

Above you’ve seen just some of the ways you can use automation to create more targeted campaigns for customers. The next step is to take a look at your own customer journey and identify where automated messages will bring most value for your business. 

If you’re looking for more resources on getting the most out of marketing automation, be sure to check out our other content:

• 10 Marketing Automation Workflow Examples and How to Set Them Up
• 7 Marketing Automation Best Practices to Maximize Your Results

The post B2C Marketing Automation: How it’s Different & Examples to Get Started appeared first on Sendinblue.

Marketing automation is often lauded as the solution to all your problems as a marketer — from improving conversion rates, to eliminating manual tasks, to boosting customer retention.

And it’s true, automation has the potential to bring significant benefits for your marketing strategy. But only when it’s done right.  

If you’re in need of some direction on how to make best use of your marketing automation tool you’re not alone. According to one survey, 61% of companies said they found the process of implementing marketing automation difficult.

Maybe your automated campaigns aren’t getting the engagement you expected or you feel you’re not using your software’s full capabilities. The best practices below will give you actionable tips for how to make marketing automation work for your business.

7 Best Practices for Marketing Automation Success

1. Know your audience

The word automation might make you think of impersonal campaigns churned out en masse. But if you’re following marketing automation best practices the result should be far from it. The key is to make sure you’re creating campaigns with your target audience in mind. 

The best way to do this is to first come up with buyer personas for your business. These are descriptions of your ideal customers, including details like demographic information, interests, motivations, and pain points. 

You can create your personas based on your own customer data and market research, using tactics such as:

• Surveys, interviews, and focus groups
• Website and social media audience analytics
• Contact form data
• Insights from your sales team

Once you’re clear on who you’re targeting, you can tailor the content of your automated campaigns to their needs and avoid messaging coming across as generic.

2. Understand your customer’s journey

Your audience’s expectations don’t remain static. Instead, they evolve as individuals go from first discovering your brand to becoming a customer and beyond. Your automated campaigns should reflect this by feeding contacts with the right content for the stage they’re at to help them move through the process.

Start by creating a customer journey map, a visual representation of all the touchpoints a customer goes through with your company. This will help you decide what customers should receive and when, to build out your marketing automation workflows. 

For example, you might set up a series of automated welcome emails for when people first subscribe to your list. Since these will target new leads, rather than being overly promotional your messages should build trust before trying to convert them. You can then use your automation software to customize the next steps based on how contacts engage. 

Once a customer converts, the buyer’s journey shouldn’t end there. Further targeted campaigns will help sustain their engagement and keep them loyal to your brand. For newly converted customers, this might take the form of an onboarding workflow that guides them through getting set up with your product or service. Meanwhile, you can target current customers whose engagement has dropped with content to reignite their interest, like the email campaign below.

Source

3. Collect the right data

Marketing automation isn’t about simply running campaigns on a larger scale. Instead, it should ensure you only send messages to those they are relevant to. And for this you need the right information about the individuals making up your audience.

You can start building up a picture of each contact in the lead capture stage through questions on your signup form. What you need to know will vary depending on your business. Ask yourself what traits influence your customers’ needs and motivations. For example, in a B2C context demographics are often an important factor, whereas in B2B marketing the company profile like its size and sector is more relevant. 

You should continue collecting customer insights as they interact with your company. This behavioral data, such as what content users engage with and any purchases they make, offers valuable clues about a customer’s interests. 

With the information you gather, you can use list segmentation to group contacts by shared qualities and create different automated journeys tailored to them.

4. Set up lead scoring

Contact behavior can also give an idea of their level of interest in your company. Knowing this will help you determine where they are in the sales funnel so you can better target your automated campaigns. 

Creating a lead scoring model removes the need for guesswork. This involves giving different actions a numerical value, depending on how important they are in showing a customer’s interest. Actions could be anything from viewing a blog post, to attending a webinar, to visiting your pricing page. Then, using automation workflows you assign points to leads based on their actions and their score will tell you their potential for your company. 

Once your lead scoring is in place, you’ll be able to identify which leads are ready to hand over to sales and which require further nurturing to maximize your conversions.

5. Create multichannel experiences

Email automation is the most common way for marketing teams to start automating their campaigns. But if you want to use your software to its full potential you should explore integrating other channels into your workflows. 

Limiting yourself to one channel means missed opportunities. By reaching out to customers in a variety of ways, you’ll maximize the chances of them engaging. Plus, depending on the nature of your message, a certain channel might be better suited than others.

SMS marketing for example has more immediacy than email. This makes it effective for time-sensitive messages like reminders and follow-ups. 

Say you’re creating an automation workflow for event registrants. You might start with a series of automated emails sharing information in the build-up to the event, then use an SMS message as a final reminder. Straight after the event you could send a thank you via SMS to attendees along with a request to fill out a feedback survey. This could be followed by further emails that aim to continue nurturing the relationship. 

You can also combine email marketing with social media ads to increase your customer touchpoints. For example, if you’re an ecommerce business you might already be using automation to send abandoned cart emails. You could take this further with an extra step in your workflow for those who still weren’t persuaded to buy that adds them to an audience to be retargeted via social media ads.

Looking for more ideas of how to engage your customers with automated campaigns? Check out our introduction to B2C marketing automation, which includes example workflows to try.

6. Automate internal processes not just campaigns

A big selling point for adopting marketing automation is the promise that it’ll save you precious time, especially if you’re a small business looking to maximize efficiency with limited resources.

However, many limit themselves to campaign automation when there are other manual tasks they could eliminate, depending on the functionality of their marketing automation service. Not only would this free up even more time, but it also reduces the risk of human error. 

To get you started, here’s some ideas for activities you could automate:

• Segmenting contacts

Rather than manually managing your contact lists, you can keep them up to date by using automation to add contacts based on triggers like actions they take. For example, the workflow below creates a list of contacts who have converted to customers by tracking purchases.

• Cleaning your lists

To ensure you’re only contacting subscribers that are still interested, you should be regularly removing those who aren’t engaging. Marketing automation can do this job for you in the background. Simply set up a workflow that removes contacts when they fit the criteria for being inactive.

• Assigning leads

To make sure your sales team follows up with prospects as soon as possible you can automatically assign qualified leads to a representative. You can also make sure the right person deals with each lead by adding criteria for assignment, such as the company type or location. 

7. Track your performance

Once you’ve set up your automations don’t be tempted to sit back and let the software take over. It’s best practice to continue monitoring your marketing automation results to know what’s working and what’s not. These insights will help you refine your strategy going forward and make any necessary tweaks to your workflows. 

How your audience engages with your campaigns will help you know if you’re targeting them with content that resonates with their current needs. For example, strong open and click rates are a sign your messages are hitting the mark, while unsubscribes suggest a lack of relevance for the recipient. 

Don’t forget to also look into your results at a segment level. This will help you understand whether you’re dividing up your audience effectively.

Ultimately marketing automation should help you move people along the buyer journey. So it’s not enough for them to engage with your content unless it leads to conversions. Tracking the conversion rate for each stage of your funnel will help identify if customers are dropping off at particular points. You can then adjust your workflows to address this. 

After spotting an opportunity for improvement, you can run A/B tests within your workflows to try new user journeys or content. Then you can compare performance statistics to determine which approach brings the best results.

Let These Marketing Automation Best Practices Guide Your Strategy

Ready to put the theory into action?

Start by laying the foundations for success by making sure you’re clear on who you’ll be targeting, how, and when. Then, once you’re collecting the right data and have your workflows in place, you can explore other opportunities to enhance your campaigns and optimize your processes. 

If you’re looking for more marketing advice like this, consider signing up for Sendinblue’s monthly newsletter. It comes full of expert marketing tips and exclusive discounts for the platform.

The post 7 Marketing Automation Best Practices to Maximize Your Results appeared first on Sendinblue.

Effective email communication comes down to two things: timing and relevance.

The right message sent at the right moment is one of the best ways to engage leads.

Of course, it’s easier said than done. How will you know when a person is ready (and actually wants) to hear from you? And where will you find the time to send all those personalized messages?

The answer: email automation. Stay tuned to learn all about this powerful tool and how you can use it to grow your business.

What is email automation?

Email automation is the process of sending an automated email or email series in response to a pre-defined trigger condition. The trigger can be related to customer behavior, preferences, or other personal/demographic information. Think of it as marketing automation but applied to emails.

How does it work?

Email automation works through the use of automated workflows. These workflows correspond to user information or actions (i.e. clicking a link, visiting a webpage, signing up to a newsletter, etc.). 

For a better idea of how this works, check out these marketing automation workflow examples.

Email automation is one of the fastest growing trends in email marketing. Basically, with email marketing automation software, you use whatever intel you have to move leads along the funnel with email messages. This makes it a highly effective email strategy for lead nurturing (more on that later).

Examples of automated email marketing

• Sending a birthday email with a special offer or discount (one of the best emails for conversion!)
• Triggering a welcome email when new subscribers join your email list 
• Sending an onboarding email series to new customers (an important part of your CRM strategy)
• Automated drip campaigns
• Sending targeted offers based on landing pages visited (great for ecommerce)

Brands today are moving away from mass email and towards hyper-personalization. And email automation is the most effective way to scale personalized one-to-one communications. 

Create an email automation workflow with Sendinblue >>

Email marketing vs marketing automation: What’s the difference?

Email marketing is generally defined as the sending of an email campaign to a list of subscribers (i.e. one message to many people). Email marketing campaigns are great for announcements, promoting a sale, or a time-limited promotion.

On the other hand, email automation or email automation is about one-to-one emails. You send them to follow up on interactions with your email subscribers. These messages serve a specific purpose in the customer journey and your CRM strategy.

Let’s take a look at some of the other key differences between email marketing and email automation:

Manual work

There’s a lot of manual work involved in sending email blasts. With marketing automation, it’s a lot less tedious. Just set up multi-stage automated email series to nurture your leads while you get other work done.

Tracking

Email marketing tracks how subscribers interact with individual email campaigns. It looks at open and click-through rates. But email automation tracks how a subscriber interacts with your business.

To set up email automation you need to have a full picture of the customer journey. Then you create targeted campaigns based on customer behavior.

Audience information

Email marketing tools work with the subscriber information you give them. But marketing automation helps generate even more information through lead scoring.

This is a process whereby leads are ‘scored’ according to how much interest they show. The score acts as an indication of how ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ the lead is and you can tailor your email campaigns accordingly.

Revenue attribution

You need to be able to show how marketing contributes to your company’s bottom line. With email marketing, it’s easy to see if a lead has clicked on a CTA (i.e. call to action). Then you go to your CRM and check if that lead has become a customer.

But how can we be sure the revenue came from that email? The lead may have engaged with a dozen more touch points before converting. But here’s where marketing automation comes in handy. You can easily map consumer behavior and the exact path to sale.

What are the benefits of email automation?

If you want to grow your business fast, basic email marketing won’t be enough.

The more your email list grows, the more email marketing campaigns you need to send. And the harder it’ll be to get the results you need from these mass email blasts.

But email automation is fully scalable. You’ll cover a lot more ground, faster. Use it to put your marketing at full-throttle with drip campaigns and lead nurturing programs.

Let’s look at the main benefits of email automation.

Improve subscriber relationships

The best time to reach out to a customer right is after they’ve engaged with your brand, when you’re still fresh in their minds. This is when they’ll be most receptive to your email messages. So expect higher open rates.

Personalized email messages are key to customer loyalty and the lifeline of every successful business. Email automation lets marketers and small business owners manage these personalized interactions more efficiently.

After all, you don’t want to just convert leads to customers. You want to build brand advocates, right? 

Explore this concept further in our guide to building relationships with email. 

Better conversion rate

Timing is everything. Automated emails so they deliver on time on time, every time. And without you having to be physically there to hit ‘send’.  

Again, it all comes down to sending that email (or email series) when a subscriber’s interest in your brand is at its peak. This’ll lead to higher click-through and conversion rates.

Once you get the hang of automation, you’ll be able to perfect your targeting process. This’ll boost your revenue even further. 

Better user experience

A report by PwC states that 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after one bad experience. Just one. That’s all it takes.  

Email automation cuts out tedious and repetitive tasks so you can spend more time building a better customer experience.

And here’s another thing: Email automation minimizes the risk of human error. The last thing you want to do is send a message to the wrong email address or email list. Once everything’s set up correctly, this isn’t something you need to worry about.

5 easy ways to use automated emails

Trigger emails should play a key role in your digital marketing strategy.

The welcome email

Welcome emails lay the foundation for your customer relationships. You can introduce yourself, all while learning your customers’ needs and preferences.

Capitalize on this opportunity to make a great first impression and forge a connection.  

To be effective, your welcome message should:

• Welcome new subscribers to your community and give them a taste of your brand personality
• Make them want to learn more about your business or content
• Re-state your value proposition
• Guide the reader on the next steps they should take
• Surprise subscribers with a bonus. This could either be a coupon if you have a store or a bonus piece of content they can download immediately.
• Let them know where to follow you on social media 

Need some welcome email design inspiration? Try one of these free email templates.

The abandoned cart email

Research shows that almost 70% of ecommerce shoppers leave the site after adding items to their shopping cart.

Adding items to the cart is a strong sign of purchase intent. A sign you shouldn’t ignore. 

Smart ecommerce businesses won’t miss the opportunity to use email automation in this situation. They’ll send an automated email encouraging subscribers back to complete the purchase.

Here’s how to make your abandoned cart emails a success:

• Remind people what they’ve left in their cart
• Address any concerns that might have prevented the purchase (delivery time, return policy, customer reviews of the products, etc.)
• Offer a discount 
• Notify them if the product is low on inventory or if there is a sale that is about to expire

The birthday email

Birthday emails are one of the easiest, most effective automation workflows you can set up.

All you need is subscribers’ date of birth. Then you can set up a simple workflow to automatically send a birthday email.

According to Experian, birthday emails generate a 481% higher transaction rate than promotional emails.

It’s a great opportunity to grow customer loyalty and positive brand sentiment. Plus, this type of initiative requires very little investment (perfect if you’re a small business).

And think about it: People are more likely to treat themselves to an unplanned purchase on their birthday. An automated email can capitalize on that heightened buying temperature! 

Here are our top tips to make your birthday email stand out:

• Keep your email light, friendly, and fun
• Offer a personalized gift coupon based on your customers’ interests
• Craft an intriguing email subject line to boost open rates
• Make sure your email design pops. Your customer is probably getting a lot of email messages on their special day, you want yours to stand out.

The product category follow-up

To send hyper-targeted emails, you’ve got to know your subscribers’ interests. Automated emailing makes this simple with basic tracking.

This product follow-up email is perfect for ecommerce. A subscriber visits a specific product category or page, like shoes. Then you follow-up with targeted email promoting shoes.

So why does this email work so well? Because you catch your potential customer while purchase intent is high, i.e. right after browsing specific products on your site.

Here are our top tips to convert customers with a product follow-up:

• Customize your follow-up message product recommendations
• Include a promo-code to encourage repeat visits
• Include helpful information that addresses common questions about your products or services
• Add a survey to learn more about your customer’s interests and buying habits.
• Ask for a review of a recent purchase

Lead-nurturing emails

One of the biggest challenges for marketers is knowing where a lead is in the buying process. 

Email automation is great for lead nurturing. 

Lead nurturing is when you send a series of targeted messages based on lead activity and interest shown in your brand. It helps move leads along the funnel towards purchase.

Typically, these emails include different types of content such as resources, product information, offers, and discounts.

Here are our top tips to nurture your most important customers:

• Personalize your email content and subject line to establish a human connection. Address your customers’ pain-points, needs, and ambitions.
• Segment your email lists. Use techniques like dynamic segmentation to ensure your messages are hyper-relevant.
• Map your content and resources to the different steps of the buyer funnel
• Use clear CTAs – what are you trying to get the lead to do at each stage? Sign up for a webinar, download an ebook?

How to set up automated marketing emails

The first thing you need is email marketing software or marketing platform with automation tools.

Sendinblue’s marketing automation software is available for up to 2000 users on the free plan. Sign up is quick and easy, no credit card required.

The first step when it comes to trigger emails is to set up a marketing automation workflow. A workflow is the set of rules that’ll trigger a specific action (in this case, an automated email campaign).

To set up a workflow, you need to decide on the entry point. This is the starting point that sets the workflow in motion.

Examples of entry points:

• Subscriber clicks on call-to-action in email
• Subscriber abandons cart
• New subscriber signs up to your newsletter

Once the subscriber enters the workflow through the entry point, they’ll navigate the rest of the conditions in the workflow as you’ve defined them. The workflow simply uses “if this, then that” logic.

For example:

IF a subscriber abandons the cart before purchase, THEN send email to remind them of what they left behind.

With Sendinblue, entry point conditions fall into two main categories:

• Identity: Based on personal/demographic information stored in your subscriber database. For example, you use a subscriber’s date of birth as a condition to send a birthday email on that date.
• Behavior: How subscribers interact with your website/emails. For example, sending a welcome email to anyone subscribing to your newsletter.

Use these conditions to set up workflows that automatically trigger emails and tasks. Some examples are:

1. Send an automated email
2. Segment a subscriber by adding to a new email list
3. Add or subtract points from subscribers lead score.

Use any combination of conditions to create simple or complex workflows that automate your marketing tasks.

To get you started, Sendinblue has predefined workflows and default templates at the ready so you can start sending automated emails right away.

Key steps to ramp up your email automation

Install the Sendinblue tracking script

Installing the Sendinblue Tracker script allows you to track the pages visited by subscribers via a cookie. Once identified, contacts will automatically be entered into your marketing automation workflows.

The Sendinblue Tracker lets you track key activity on your website. This way you gain valuable insights into user behavior and can target your subscribers according to:

• Webpage visits: Tailor email content according to their needs and interests
• Link clicks: Segment and target subscribers based on link clicks in an email or on a landing page
• Logins and subscriptions: Filter subscribers who have logged into your website or submitted an email signup form.

Follow these simple instructions to set up your tracking script.

NOTE: The automation script only tracks identified users, i.e. users who’ve filled in their email address on your website or users who’ve clicked on your subscription form or in one of your Sendinblue emails. 

Set up ‘Custom events‘

For more advanced tracking of user behavior and a better customer experience, try custom events.  

Custom events are the most effective way to send hyper-personalized, tailored emails.

For example, if you run an ecommerce site, custom events are great for personalizing abandoned cart emails.

With custom events, you can access all the details of the products in your potential buyer’s cart and display them in your abandoned cart email.

Integrate your CMS

The next step is to plug in your CMS. The Sendinblue Tracker can be activated in just two clicks with several of our plugins, including WordPress, Prestashop, and Shopify.

Here are just some of the benefits of integrating your automated emailing strategy with your CMS:

• Create sign-up forms to embed on your posts or pages
• Manage your Sendinblue subscribers within your CMS
• Trigger automated emails thanks to advanced tracking
• Automatically send an email whenever you’ve added a new post or product to your site
• Design email marketing campaigns from your CMS dashboard
• Access and analyze your campaign statistics to continually optimise performance and results.

Defining the goal/exit condition of a workflow

It’s important to define the exit and restart conditions for your email automation workflow.

These are the rules that define who should and shouldn’t enter your workflow.

“If the subscriber [meets condition X] then remove them from the workflow (exit condition) or bring them back to the beginning of the workflow (restart condition).’

Think of the exit condition as the goal you want your workflow to accomplish.

Let’s look at an example. You’ve entered your subscriber into a stream of nurture emails with the goal of getting them to register for a webinar. And they register. Great.

Now if they’ve already registered, then it doesn’t make sense to continue sending emails. You need to set an exit condition that removes them from the automation workflow.    

This avoids frustrating user experiences that could potentially lose you customers.

Similarly, restart conditions tell you when a subscriber has done something that signals the need to start from the beginning. Let’s say your subscriber registers for the event but doesn’t show up. Then it’s time to enter them back into your nurture stream.

Global exit and restart conditions are important to show you recognize and value new customers. They also prevent customer churn and provide an overall seamless customer experience.

Start driving results with email automation

Automation is becoming more and more linked to email marketing success.

Not only does automation help build better customer relationships, it also frees up a ton of time and energy. This means you can work strategically and spend your time where it matters most.

If you want to scale one-to-one personalized communication and transform leads into loyal customers, then email automation is the fastest way forward.

In the meantime, follow us on social media for a daily dose of marketing tips!

The post What is Email Automation & How to Get Started appeared first on Sendinblue.

So, you’ve already got a grasp of what marketing automation is, and you’re itching to get started. But wait — what are the best marketing automation workflows to try and how exactly do they work? 

Below you’ll find 10 examples of marketing automation workflows, along with how they can help your business and instructions for setting them up. The workflows are separated into the following categories, based on what you’re looking to achieve:

• Building relationships
• Improving engagement
• Increasing revenue

But first, let’s go over some key terminology…

Understanding Marketing Automation Workflows

In a marketing context, an automated workflow involves the following elements:

• Different touchpoints in the customer lifecycle, such as when they visit your website or contact your customer service
• The conditions or triggers for steps within the workflow, which may be a customer characteristic or behavior 
• The actions automatically triggered by such conditions, like sending a subscriber an email or adding them to a list

If this all sounds a bit complicated not to worry. Sendinblue’s marketing automation software offers a range of ready-to-use workflow templates for common scenarios.

So, no need to start from scratch!

Plus you can give it a try for free, with access to Sendinblue’s full suite of marketing automation features for up to 2,000 contacts on the Free plan. 

Now, let’s explore some of the best marketing automation workflows and how you can put them into practice.

10 Marketing Automation Workflows and How to Set Them Up

Here are some examples of how your marketing team can use automated workflows to boost your results. 

Workflows for building relationships

Automation can play a crucial role in your relationship marketing strategy. It not only helps you to secure new customers but also to ensure they remain loyal to your brand in the long term.

1. Welcoming subscribers

An effective welcome email is a must for subscribers who sign up to content like your newsletter. This simple email automation example shows your audience you care and lays the foundation for a lasting relationship.

You can use welcome workflows to:

• Re-state (or elaborate on) your value proposition. What makes you special?
• Set expectations for your subscribers. What can they expect to gain from your content and how often will they receive it?
• Welcome new subscribers to your community and give them a taste of your charming personality!
• Surprise subscribers with a bonus. This could be a coupon if you have a store or a bonus piece of content that they can download immediately.

How to set up the workflow

This workflow is a type of email autoresponder. It’s among the more straightforward examples, with fewer variables and conditions involved. So, the perfect workflow for those just getting started with marketing automation! 

The trigger is the submission of a signup form on your website, which adds the subscriber to your chosen list. Once they join the list this automatically initiates the workflow and sends the welcome email campaign you have prepared. 

For more detail, read our tutorial on creating welcome workflows with Sendinblue

2. Offering gated content

Lead generation is never a one-way street. If you want information from your prospective customers, you need to give them a reason to share it!

Gated content is one of the best ways to achieve this. You provide something valuable to users, such as a downloadable ebook or a webinar. And in exchange they provide useful information like their name, company, email address, and other contact details. 

Gated content is particularly effective as a lead generation tactic because it attracts people who are likely to be interested in your offer. A well-crafted automation workflow can help capitalize on this. 

After automatically sending subscribers the content they signed up for, you can nurture leads by following up with more content tailored to their interests. 

How to set up the workflow

Your starting point is to create a popup or landing page for your gated content that is connected to your database. When someone fills out the form to access the content, they are added to an email list. This initiates the workflow.

From there you can create a series of actions so that subscribers receive relevant content at the right time. 

3. Lead nurturing

As the above example demonstrates, marketing automation can make nurturing new leads easier and more effective. 

The goal of lead nurturing is to guide potential customers toward conversion. You could use this type of workflow to:

• Maintain customer engagement throughout their research and shopping process
• Provide prospects with the relevant information they need to make a purchase

How to set up the workflow

Your lead nurturing workflow should start at the earliest possible point in the sales funnel. This might be when someone subscribes to your newsletter or requests a demo of your product. 

Once a lead enters your workflow you can track their engagement to further tailor the customer journey. For example, depending on which pages they visit on your site, you can follow up with an automated email campaign with relevant content based on their interests.

4. Getting Feedback

Customer feedback is a valuable tool not only for improving your service or product but also for building trust. And with an automated workflow collecting feedback and gauging customer satisfaction is much easier!

How to set up the workflow

First decide the touchpoint that should trigger a request for feedback. Some possible scenarios include a product purchase or a customer’s interaction with your support team. This should prompt a message asking the customer for feedback on their experience. 

And you can go even further with a multi-step workflow, based on the customer’s response. For example:

• With satisfied customers, add them to a loyal customers list where you send them exclusive offers and discounts to keep them coming back for more. Another option is to take the opportunity to request a review from the customer so you can share their positive feedback more widely. 
• With unhappy customers, send a personal thank you message for their honest feedback and try to learn more about their negative experience. You could also offer refunds or discounts to try and remedy the situation from a customer service perspective.

Source

Workflows for improving engagement

Once someone subscribes or becomes a paying customer, you still need to work hard to sustain their interest and stop them from falling through the cracks. These marketing automation workflows will help you do just that!

5. Onboarding series

Onboarding emails are an important tool for ensuring customers stick with your company. You can send these automated emails following an account creation or after a customer purchases your product or service. 

When a user creates an account on a website, there are usually several steps they must take to complete their profile. There are also things they must learn to be able to get the most out of their account. Your onboarding series can address some of these issues for a smoother customer experience. 

In the longer term this can have benefits such as:

• Increasing customers’ engagement with your products or services and improving retention
• Identifying low-engagement users or those who have not properly set up their account for further outreach campaigns

How to set up the workflow

When a user signs up or makes a purchase, they submit a form that adds their details to your database. This action sets the rest of the workflow into motion.

Once the user receives your initial email, you can include a condition that sends a follow-up message if they have not completed the required steps after a certain amount of time.

And if they have completed their profile, you can send them a final email that shows them how to get the most out of their account.

Optimizing your email timing and monitoring whether recipients completed the last key action is essential. This ensures users receive value from your onboarding emails and reinforces that your brand is there to help.

Source

6. Celebrating birthdays or anniversaries

Give your customers the VIP treatment by automatically sending them a special discount for their birthday or the anniversary of when they became a customer.

Personalized campaigns like this are a great way to build loyalty and keep your brand top of mind. Plus they give customers an incentive to buy from your company again or maintain their subscription. 

How to set up the workflow

This is one of the simplest examples to get started with automated email workflows. 

For birthday messages you’ll need to ask users for their date of birth during sign up. For other scenarios you can use the date a contact was added to a particular list. 

Using this contact data you can then create a workflow that automatically sends a pre-prepared message to subscribers on the same date each year. 

If the customer doesn’t redeem their promotion, you could also trigger a reminder to be sent after a certain period of time. 

To learn how to set up a birthday email workflow with Sendinblue, as well as best practices for your email design and content, check out our guide to birthday emails.

7. Re-engaging subscribers

If you want to combat low engagement with your content or product, a re-engagement workflow is the way to go. 

There are a variety of possible scenarios for this, such as:

• Asking email subscribers with poor engagement if they still want to hear from you
• Luring back a customer who hasn’t bought in a while with a discount
• Reaching out to users who haven’t logged in or used your product in a while

Source

How to set up the workflow 

The first step is to define an inactive subscriber and thus the conditions for a contact to enter the workflow. This might be a subscriber who hasn’t opened your emails or bought something for a certain period of time. This then triggers either a single message or a series of emails that aim to win them back. 

Bonus tip: you can also use re-engagement emails to clean your list of contacts who are no longer interested. Add a step to your workflow so that if a contact doesn’t engage with your “last chance” message asking them to re-opt in, they are automatically removed from your list. 

For information on how to send automated re-engagement emails with Sendinblue, along with examples to inspire you, check out our guide to reactivations emails. 

Workflows for increasing revenue

With the right workflow, marketing automation can do wonders for boosting your sales. Here are some examples of exactly how you can put this into practice. 

8. Following-up abandoned carts

Abandoned cart workflows are a must for any ecommerce site. Why? Put simply, by giving customers a nudge you can secure more sales and boost your conversion rate. 

Abandoned cart follow-ups generally involve a message reminding a shopper about items left in their online cart, along with a link to take them back to complete their purchase. 

Source

Aside from this basic format, where possible your message should address issues that may have led to the cart abandonment. For example, you could offer the shopper a discount or provide details for contacting your customer service.

Further reading: Abandoned Cart Email Examples & Best Practices to Recover Lost Sales

How to set up the workflow

The trigger for this workflow is based on shoppers’ activity on your website, specifically when they add one or more items to their cart. After a contact enters the workflow, have it wait a certain period of time (24 hours is usually sufficient). Once the waiting period is over, the workflow should check to see if the purchase was completed. If this is not the case it will automatically send your abandoned cart message.

For more detail on setting up this workflow using Sendinblue, check out our step-by-step guide to abandoned cart emails.

9. Upselling/cross-selling

Even if a customer completes their purchase first time you can still take the opportunity to boost revenue using marketing automation. Use purchase history to give relevant recommendations, such as complementary products or items popular with the rest of your customers. 

This workflow is particularly effective for encouraging new customers to buy again. Not only can it increase revenue but when done right you’ll also add value to the shopper experience, which will keep them coming back for more. 

How to set up the workflow

This workflow is based on customers’ past purchases. To implement it, create a segment for customers who purchase a certain product and set your workflow to launch when a contact matches the segment conditions.

Then you can send them personalized recommendations they won’t be able to resist!

Source

10. Lead scoring

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could know which contacts are your most promising leads and how close they are to making a purchase? With a lead scoring workflow you can do just that! 

Lead scoring is exactly what it sounds like—assigning points to prospective customers based on their behavior. This helps you better target your marketing to the leads who are most likely to convert. Lead scoring can also be used for automated list segmentation based on the score of each contact. 

How to set up this workflow

A lead scoring workflow automatically adds points to individual contacts when they perform actions that suggest they are likely to convert. 

Before starting on your workflow, you must first create a column in your customer database for “score”. This value will change based on customers’ behaviors. You will also need to determine what actions prospects generally take before converting and how many points each of these actions should be worth. 

Once you’ve got the planning out the way, you can create workflows that will check whether contacts perform the various actions leading to conversion. 

For more detailed instructions, read our guide on creating a lead scoring model.

Start Building Your Own Marketing Automation Workflows

Hopefully these workflow examples have whet your appetite and inspired you to put your knowledge into action! Be sure to also check out our list of marketing automation best practices for tips on getting the most from your efforts.

And if you’re looking for a solution to get started with marketing automation, why not give Sendinblue a try?

Our Free plan includes all marketing automation features and allows you to target up to 2,000 contacts in your workflows. Or, if you’re looking to scale your marketing, you can get unlimited automation on our Premium plan.

So, what are you waiting for?

The post 10 Marketing Automation Workflow Examples That’ll Get You Results appeared first on Sendinblue.

Marketing automation has become an essential tool for today’s digital marketers. But, you aren’t alone if you’re still unsure of the term’s exact meaning or how marketing automation software can benefit your strategy. So, let’s dive straight into the question at hand: What is marketing automation and how does it work?  

Once reserved for those with enterprise-level marketing budgets, more and more businesses are now recognizing the value of marketing automation. And luckily, with the emergence of new solutions made for smaller teams (and budgets), it has also become much more accessible. 

Automation empowers marketers in all types of industries and organizations to save countless hours of tedious labor while improving their customer experience.

If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to start building better customer relationships and saving time with marketing automation. 

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation comes in many different forms, depending on the aims and activities of your marketing team. You can learn more about the specifics of automated campaigns for consumer audiences in our article on B2C marketing automation.

Marketing automation vs. CRM

If you’re already familiar with the concept of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)  you may ask yourself exactly how this differs from marketing automation. 

While it is true that an effective CRM strategy works hand in hand with marketing automation, they are not one and the same. As the name suggests, marketing automation centers around… marketing — particularly improving the process of capturing and nurturing leads. CRM is more sales focused and helps sales teams to convert leads and manage the customer lifecycle. 

What Are the Benefits of Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation software has grown in popularity in recent years. In fact, over 90% of marketers consider it “very important” to the overall success of their digital marketing. 

So, how exactly can automation tools help marketers improve their results?

Marketing automation has two key benefits: 

• Saving time and money by reducing manual and repetitive tasks, and letting the software do the work for you. 
• Improving customer experience through personalized journeys targeted toward the needs of each customer. 

This increased efficiency allows you to focus on what’s important — your marketing strategy. As a result you can devote more time to developing and scaling your activities. Insights from your marketing automation platform can also show where your efforts are most fruitful, leading to better ROI. 

On top of this, marketing automation helps create a more effective customer journey that not only increases conversions but also strengthens the longer-term relationship and improves retention. Through more targeted marketing, you can ensure customers receive the right message at the right time to boost conversions and connect with them on a personal level. 

What can marketing automation be used for?

For many, the first example that comes to mind is email marketing automation — sending targeted emails triggered by defined conditions.

But aside from email campaigns, you can also use marketing automation software for activities on other channels. These include:

• SMS messages — for example ecommerce sites may send automated order confirmations via SMS. Or when organizing an event, businesses can keep event attendees in the loop with automated updates. 
• Social media — some platforms enable you to schedule and publish content across different channels, or send automated responses to messages you receive. 
• Landing pages — if your landing page includes a signup form, you can use marketing automation to add new leads to your contact lists and follow up with them. 

Aside from multi-channel campaigns and content, you can also automate various marketing processes, such as:  

Segmentation and contact management

Marketing automation can simplify the process of managing your lists and segmenting contacts based on different criteria. For example, a contact might be added to your “qualified leads” list if they visit your pricing page.

You can also automatically update contact information depending on their behavior. For example, clicking a certain link in your emails could trigger a  subscriber to be associated with a particular interest.

Lead scoring

Marketing automation is a powerful tool in lead qualification — that is, determining whether a prospect is likely to be worth your valuable time and energy. By creating a lead scoring model, you can assign points to leads when they perform actions that suggest they are on the right track for conversion. 

Now you know enough to get your bearings, let’s take a closer look under the hood of marketing automation.

How Does Marketing Automation Work?

If you’re just getting started, you’ll want to spend some time looking into the different automation tools available.

Marketing automation software

With its increasing popularity, there is now a wider choice of marketing automation solutions. Each platform differs in its focus and offers varying functionalities. For example, some are geared towards ecommerce businesses whereas others are a better fit for B2B marketing purposes.

While a lot will depend on your budget, there are certain key features to look out for in marketing automation software:

• Multi-channel marketing campaigns for different customer journeys
• Visitor tracking to know who is looking at your website and how they are using it
• Reporting and analytics for evaluating performance
• Segmentation to separate your lists based on different criteria like contacts’ behavior or interests
• Lead management for different stages of the customer journey, from lead generation and capture to nurturing
• A/B testing of different customer journeys and content to automatically select the best performing option

Ready to take the plunge? Check out this roundup of the best marketing automation platforms. 

Implementing a marketing automation strategy

As you have seen, marketing automation offers a wealth of opportunities for your business. But how exactly can you get started with it? 

The steps below will take you through the process of using automation software from start to finish.

Looking for an intuitive automation platform to take your marketing to the next level? 

On the Sendinblue Free plan you’ll have access to the full suite of marketing automation features for up to 2,000 contacts. So you can try it out without blowing your budget. Or if you need more, the Premium plan allows you to target an unlimited number of contacts in your automation workflows.

1. Decide on your goals

As with any area of marketing, your starting point should be defining what you’re aiming to achieve. Perhaps it’s to generate more leads or to improve retention. Depending on your goal, you’ll then be able to work out how marketing automation can best help you get the desired results. 

2. Identify the target contacts

The next question to ask yourself is which segment of customers you’ll target. This could be leads you have already acquired or certain website visitors that you want to convert.

Marketing automation tools like Sendinblue hold valuable insights into your contacts — from their engagement with your previous campaigns to whether they have visited a specific page on your website. 

3. Build your workflow

Now you’re ready to create your marketing automation workflow. This is the set of rules that trigger your desired actions for a customer journey.

But don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it sounds — especially with Sendinblue! Our platform comes equipped with ready-to-use workflow templates for different scenarios, including follow-ups with subscribers who engage with a campaign or personalized emails to shoppers based on their activity on your ecommerce site. You can then customize these templates to your needs or create your own from scratch.

4. Monitor performance

Once you’re happy with your workflow, you’re ready to go!

But hold on just a second. That doesn’t mean your work is done. ? 

To get the most out of marketing automation it’s important to continually track performance. Your platform should offer the functionality of real-time statistics to track activities like the number of campaigns sent, or metrics around engagement and conversions. This will help you refine and improve your strategy as you go. 

Best practices for effective marketing automation

Now you know the process of using marketing automation, here are some tips to help you maximize your success. 

Plan out your user journeys

With the excitement of a new software that offers endless opportunities, it’s easy to get ahead of yourself and dive straight in. 

However you should always begin by mapping out the journey customers should take, covering the key stages from discovering your brand to converting. This will form the basis of your automation workflows. 

Get your messaging right

Even if you create the perfect automation workflow, without the messaging to match you’re unlikely to see results. It must fit who you’re targeting and where they are in the journey to becoming a paying customer. For example, do they already know a little about your brand’s offer? Are they showing signs of being close to conversion?

Don’t forget that a central benefit of automation is that it empowers you to be even more targeted in your marketing. Use this to your full advantage by considering how you can personalize each stage of the customer journey based on information you have gathered.  

Source

Don’t set and forget!

While marketing automation has the potential to save you significant time in the long term, don’t be tempted to leave the software to do all the work and just hope for the best. It’s important to keep a close eye on your key metrics to ensure you’re on track and help you pinpoint any areas for improvement.  

Start with the basics

If you’re still new to marketing automation, it’s natural to feel a little overwhelmed by all the possibilities available to you. 

In this case, start small by identifying areas of your existing activities that could benefit from automation. This might be setting up a series of onboarding emails for new customers and subscribers or sending messages like birthday emails to mark special events.

Once you’re confident with the basics you can move onto more complex automation scenarios, such as workflows that take customers through the purchase process with the right message at the right time. 

Make sure your contact lists are in order

The foundation of successful marketing automation is a reasonably-sized database of quality contacts. Without first consolidating a flow of relevant leads, your investment in automation will have limited impact. 

But, don’t get caught in the trap of buying contact lists either — these contacts will engage poorly with your campaigns. There is no point spending time on a marketing automation strategy to build relationships with potential customers if they were never interested in the first place. 

If you’re looking for effective ways to attract quality signups, check out these top email list-building tactics.

Further reading: 7 Marketing Automation Best Practices to Maximize Your Results

Accelerate Your Growth With Marketing Automation

You should now have a clearer understanding of what is marketing automation, as well as how you can use it to grow your marketing. The next step… giving it a try!

If you’ve already done your research on different softwares, you probably found that many platforms are too expensive for anything but a large enterprise. Made for growing businesses, Sendinblue offers a more affordable and easy-to-use solution that doesn’t compromise on functionality. You can get started straight away with the Free plan, which allows you to use marketing automation for up to 2,000 contacts.   

So no more excuses — time for you to give marketing automation a shot and see the difference it has on your results.

The post Explainer: What is Marketing Automation & How Does it Work appeared first on Sendinblue.

What is lead scoring?

Lead scoring is the process of assigning a “score” to each one of your contacts that reflects their conversion potential and level of interest in your business. This score can be used to qualify leads for marketing messages or sales outreach.

A targeted message sent at exactly the right moment is often all it takes to convert a lead into a paying customer. But how can you figure out when the lead will be most receptive to your offer?

With a lead scoring model that helps you identify the people who’ve shown the most interest in your product or service.

So how do you set one up? It’s actually quite easy when you’re using a marketing automation platform like Sendinblue.

Follow along and we’ll teach you how to:

• Map out your buyer journey and assign scores based on actions and events
• Set up a marketing automation workflow in Sendinblue that assigns points to actions taken by a lead
• Dynamically segment your lists with lead scoring

But first, let’s look at how your business can benefit from a lead-scoring model.

Why you need a lead-scoring model

As marketing tools become more sophisticated, consumers will continue to develop less tolerance for marketing that isn’t personalized.

Nobody likes to feel like they’re being sold something. It’s uncomfortable and can sometimes even feel invasive, especially if you’re not looking to make a purchase at that exact moment.

This is what often happens when businesses don’t take the time to nurture or guide leads through the acquisition life cycle.

Many businesses, particularly those in the B2B industry, require a large amount of trust and education before they can convince leads to make a purchase. That’s why it’s so essential to track leads as they move closer to a conversion, adjusting your marketing tactics and messaging along the way.

Lead scoring works particularly well with email marketing. Here’s a video explaining the concept:

Create a lead scoring model with marketing automation

The easiest way to do this is to implement a lead scoring workflow with marketing automation.

You get it. Marketing automation is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolbox.

You’re probably already aware that automation allows you to send automated emails (welcome messages, abandoned cart follow-ups, etc.) at the perfect time to your customers and combine these with other conditions and filters for more personalized communications. 

But did you know you can do much more? Businesses that use marketing automation to speed up their sales funnel see a 451% rise in qualified leads.

If you’re not getting that kind of boost in leads from your marketing automation, maybe it’s time to step it up a gear.

You can use Sendinblue’s Marketing Automation to build a powerful lead scoring or loyalty scoring system while saving yourself hours of time.

Loyalty scoring works the same way as lead scoring but with existing customers. Use customers’ actions on your platform and purchase histories to automatically generate a loyalty score for them. You can use this score to determine who to invite to exclusive loyalty programs that will encourage upsells and brand advocacy.

Example of Basic Lead Scoring Automation

In this basic lead scoring example, a contact opens your welcome email, clicks on a link and ten points is added to their score.

The logic is that a contact who clicks on this link in your welcome email clearly has a higher interest level in your business than a contact who fails to make the same click.

Obviously, this is a simple example and would be just a small piece of a larger lead scoring model, but hopefully, it illustrates the idea.

How to build a lead scoring model

As previously mentioned, lead scoring helps automated lead scoring gives each of your marketing leads a numeric score. The score corresponds to a lead scoring model that you create, taking into account various details about your contacts, which may include:

• Contact attributes (e.g. demographic information)
• How they came to your site
• Specific behavior/actions (engagement with your emails, visits to specific pages on your site, etc.)

This helps you sort through all of the leads who come to your website and identify those who are most engaged and ready to convert.

So, how exactly do you go about setting a lead scoring model up?

Define the important steps leads take before acquisition

The first step is mapping out your acquisition life cycle. This usually consists of 4 stages:

• Awareness
• Engagement
• Exploration
• Acquisition/Retention

For lead scoring, you should really focus on the first three stages.

To create your lead scoring model, you will need to identify key actions that leads take and categorize them according to each of these stages. Then you can determine the proper amount of points to assign each action for your lead scoring automation workflow.

Awareness

Awareness is the very top of the acquisition funnel. It consists of the very first actions users take when they visit your site.

In the case of lead scoring for known contacts, this is usually indicated by signing up for your email list. You could also include people who give you their email address from an event or for a contest.

For the actions that fall into this first step, you can assign them a relatively small number of points (e.g. 5 or 10) to get them started in your lead scoring model.

Important: If you have contacts living in Europe, make sure your email signup forms are GDPR-compliant. Clearly state that you plan to send targeted emails using marketing automation according to their behavior and interests.

Engagement

In this stage, contacts have moved beyond the point of just being aware of your business to actually engaging and showing real interest. Actions at this stage might include:

• Downloading an eBook or other resources from your site
• Frequently engaging with your email campaigns or newsletter (e.g. clicked on your 3 previous emails)

Actions in this stage should receive more points than the previous (e.g. 10 or 20) because they show a higher level of interest in your business.

Exploration

This is the final stage before conversion. It is usually the point at which leads have realized they need a solution and are researching their options. Exploration actions would probably include:

• Contacting sales
• Filling out a form for a quote
• Visiting your pricing page

These actions will receive the highest amount of points (e.g. 30+) and should push your contact into the category of “sales qualified leads.”

How to set up lead scoring with Sendinblue

You’ve identified the key actions your contacts take before becoming customers. Now it’s time to put your lead scoring model into action with Sendinblue.

Don’t have a Sendinblue account yet? Sign up for free and test-drive the Marketing Automation feature. Our free plan lets you set automation workflows for up to 2000 contacts.

The steps below will show you how to set up a lead scoring model with Sendinblue. Alternatively, you can watch this video:

Assign points to actions in marketing automation workflows

If you’re a Sendinblue user, start by creating a ‘SCORE’ contact attribute.

Once that’s done, you need to determine which actions update a contact’s score and by how many points.

Start by creating workflows for each of the three stages in the acquisition cycle.

In each of these workflows, create starting points that correspond to each of your key actions in this stage. If you want this action to update the lead score, add a step to the workflow at that point and select ‘Update contact attribute‘.

Select the ‘SCORE’ attribute previously created and define the number of points by which the score should be updating following this action.

If you follow this method, make sure to check the box that allows contacts to enter the workflow multiple times.

This will ensure that they receive points for any of the key actions in this category.

Dynamic list segmentation with lead scoring

Dynamic segmentation consists of using marketing automation to arrange contacts into specific lists based on specific characteristics or behaviors to better target them with your marketing emails in real-time.

Although you can create dynamic segmentation using various methods (specific action triggers, contact attributes, etc.), it is also one of the most popular use cases for lead scoring.

Once you create your lead scoring model, you can use each contact’s score attribute to determine which list they should be added to. This will enable you to send email campaigns that are much more relevant to the reader.

Example:

In the above example, when a contact reaches a score that is greater than 4, they will be added to a list of “new qualified leads.”

Create targeted contact lists

As we’ve just mentioned, you can use the lead score attribute to automatically add your contacts to targeted lists according to their interest level in your product or service.

To do this, simply assign point values to different categories of leads. Here is an example:

• New leads: Scores < 20
• Warm leads: Scores of 20 – 49
• Qualified leads: Scores 50 – 80
• Sales qualified leads: Scores > 80

After defining these parameters, you can set up your segmentation workflow to add users to each corresponding list.

Be sure to include an “escape” that resets your leads score if they start to show a lack of interest after receiving more targeted emails from you. You can use a condition based on their engagement with email campaigns in a set period of time (e.g. the previous 30 days).

Note: If some of your actions are highly qualified (e.g. requesting a quote from your sales team), you can include a condition in your lead scoring model workflow that automatically adds them to your “sales qualified leads” list.

Other use cases for lead scoring

Although we mostly talked about using lead scoring for dynamic segmentation, it can also be used for other purposes:

• Instead of segmentation, you can use lead score as a trigger to immediately (or after a set period of time) send that contact a specific email or SMS.
• Set up a score that is specific to one action (e.g. newsletter clicks) that is important to your goals and track engagement for specific contacts.
• Find your most qualified leads to use for ad targeting on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Check out this case study to learn about one of our partners’ experiences using email sequencing for lead generation with Sendinblue.

Check out this case study to learn about one of our partners’ experiences using email sequencing for lead generation with Sendinblue.

Boost conversions with lead scoring

Hopefully, this guide gave you a better idea of how you can use a lead scoring model to better target your leads. You should use these tips as a starting point and adapt the workflows to match your business goals.

Just make sure that whenever you implement this type of data processing, always obtain your subscriber’s consent. One of best ways to track proof of consent is by using double opt-in.

For more content like this, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter.

The post How to Create a Lead Scoring Model with Marketing Automation appeared first on Sendinblue.

As a business, sending a birthday email to your customers is a fantastic way to increase loyalty and rake in some serious sales. 

Because here’s the thing: we’re much more likely to splash and treat ourselves when it’s our birthday. 

You can capitalize on this heightened desire to purchase by offering a birthday discount, free delivery, or another incentive.

This article will walk you through:

• How birthday emails work
• How to design a birthday email template
• How to write birthday email copy that converts
• How to set up automated birthday email workflows with Sendinblue

How birthday emails work

Birthday emails need to be friendly, delightful, and warm. Some of the best techniques to make your email stand out include:

• Offering a personalized gift coupon based on your customers’ interests
• Including a mystery offer to generate intrigue and increase click-through rates
• Having an email design that POPS! Your customer is likely receiving lots of messages on their special day, so you want your email to stand out.

Puma hits the nail on the head with an eye-catching design in this birthday email example:

Source

Puma didn’t forget that birthday coupon either! Including that discount creates a strong incentive for the customer to visit the store and make a purchase.

You can even take this one step further by showing an expiration date on the birthday coupon code. This creates urgency, increasing the likelihood that the birthday email recipient will use their coupon code.

Why are birthday emails so important?

Now that you know what a birthday email is, you might still be wondering what all the hype surrounding birthday emails is about.

Sent with the help of a marketing automation tool like Sendinblue, birthday emails are one of the simplest automation workflows that you can set up.

Because of their timing and the nature of the content, these automated emails generate a TON of engagement. Back in 2014, Experian carried out a study that showed birthday emails produce:

• A 481% higher transaction rate than promotional emails.
• A 342% higher revenue per email than promotional emails.
• A 179% higher unique click rates than promotional emails.

Amazing numbers, right?

Let’s take a look at how you can achieve the same success – starting with your birthday email template design.

How to design an awesome birthday email template

You want an email design that jumps out and grabs the reader’s attention. Here are your options when it comes to designing email templates:

1. If your email provider has a template gallery, find one that you like and customize it to match your brand.
2. Not impressed by your provider’s template gallery? Swipe another template from one of the many free email template sources.
3. Want to go all out? Hire an email designer to code you an awesome professional template that’s unique to your brand.

Here are some ideas for customizing your template.

Highlight the CTA with bold color combinations

The CTA (call-to-action) is super important in a birthday email. If you’re looking to include that ‘10% discount’ or ‘$50 off your next purchase’, make it as prominent and attractive as possible.

Your CTA needs to be visually appealing. Use bold color combinations that are hard to miss. Take a look at this example from Subway, see how the ‘Get Reward’ is highlighted in yellow?

Source

Embrace the birthday celebration theme

For some it might mean straying away from the brand guidelines, but birthday emails should be fun and light. See it as an opportunity to showcase the more playful side of your brand.

Think of the colors and objects that represent the theme of birthday celebration – cake, candles, colorful balloons. How can you integrate these and add your own original stamp? Chipotle does exactly that in this example:

Source

Boost engagement with animated GIFs

If you’ve read our guide to animated GIFs in email, you’ll know that GIFs are a powerful tool for personalizing an email, telling a visual story, and catching a reader’s attention.

Why not add a GIF to your birthday email template? After all, they’re fun and light-hearted which sits well with the birthday celebration theme.

For some inspiration, look at how Hulu did it:

Source

Tips for writing birthday email copy that converts

Reel them in with an intriguing email subject line

When writing a captivating birthday email subject lines, you’ll want to include this important information:

• The main point of your email
• Details of a promotional discount
• A date or time limit expressing urgency
• An intriguing phrase that piques the reader’s curiosity

Here are some example of birthday email subject lines that work well:

• An important birthday is coming up!
• A special gift for your birthday
• We want to celebrate your birthday too!
• Make a wish!
• A special gift of 20% off for your birthday

By appealing to your customer’s curiosity in the subject line using examples like those above, you can increase engagement rates and sales.

Struggling to come up with something catchy? Check out our easy 7-step process for writing email subject lines.

Make it personal

Seeing our name or something relevant to our interests in an email subject line can make the content feel more relevant. This will often catch our eye more effectively and increase the desire to click.

With Sendinblue and most other email marketing software providers, it’s easy to dynamically inject data attributes that you have stored in your contact database (e.g. first name, topic of interest, city of residence, etc.) for each individual contact.

This means you can type something like {{contact.FIRST_NAME}} in your subject line and email body, and your email tool will automatically add the name of each recipient based on their contact details.

Your email provider doesn’t offer this kind of dynamic personalization? Sign up to Sendinblue and see what you’ve been missing (bonus: send 300 emails/day on our free plan!).

How to set up automated birthday emails with Sendinblue

As mentioned, birthday emails are one of the easiest automation workflows to put in place. Almost every email marketing service comes with some kind of automation feature.

Gather the date of birth information

As a Sendinblue customer, you need to add ‘Date of birth’ as an additional field to your initial email signup form so that you can gather the data. 

If you think customers might be uncomfortable with sharing this information up front, you can make this field optional and or ask for it later by sending an Update Profile form. The main goal at this point is to get folks onto your email list!

Once you have the necessary data, it’s time to create your automated birthday email workflow.

Step 1: Select the Anniversary Date automation scenario

Click the ‘Automation’ option at the top of your Sendinblue dashboard and then select ‘Create a workflow’. You’ll be greeted by this screen from which you’ll select ‘Anniversary Date’:

Once that’s done, you’ll land here where you’ll hit ‘Next’:

Step 2: Select the workflow entry point

Here’s where you define the workflow’s starting point. You’ll be prompted to select one of the contact attributes, i.e. the variable that will trigger the workflow every year.

By selecting the attribute “Date of birth”, the workflow will be triggered on that date every year. You can also specify how often you want Sendinblue to check if a contact is having an anniversary.

Step 3. Select your birthday email template

Once you hit ‘Ok’ you’ll be brought to a new screen. Now it’s time to select the birthday email template that you’ve already prepared and saved prior to this. It’ll be available in the drop-down menu.

If you didn’t get around to designing an original template, you can use one of the default templates provided by Sendinblue and customize it with your details.

Hit ‘Finish’, double check all the details (test the workflow to be sure) and then click ‘Activate the workflow’.

Woohoo! You’re all set to send automated birthday emails to your customers. Easy as pie.

Over to you

Remember, you’re not the only business who’ll be wishing a happy birthday to your customer on that day. Think about how you can stand out in a crowded inbox.

A successful birthday email is one that looks beautiful, speaks to interests, and seduces the customer into making a purchase.

Yet, above everything else, a birthday email must be caring and sentimental. It should make the recipient feel special. It is their birthday, after all, right?  

To get more advice like this, sign up for Sendinblue’s monthly marketing tips newsletter!

The post How to Send The Perfect Birthday Email appeared first on Sendinblue.