9 of the Best Email Autoresponder Examples to Improve Customer Experience

An email autoresponder is one way to take your customer experience (CX) to the next level. To help you decide what kind of automated emails you should set up, we’ve put together a list of the 9 email autoresponder examples that have the biggest impact on customer experience.

There is a lot of talk about CX in 2019. Companies have become increasingly aware of the massive impact that CX has on growth, customer satisfaction, and retention.

Here a few statistics that put the importance of CX into perspective:

• 76% of consumers are ready to go elsewhere if a brand doesn’t meet their expectations in terms of CX (Salesforce)
• 75% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a company who makes them personalized offers based on their preferences (Forbes)
• 81% of companies are set to compete mostly or completely on the basis of CX in 2019 (Gartner)

CX refers to the feelings, perceptions, and impressions a customer gets every time they come into contact with your business. The concept essentially covers every single touchpoint of the customer journey, from beginning to end.

And you guessed it, that includes all communication by email.

Given that 80% of Americans check their personal email at least once per day, email represents a crucial touchpoint in the customer journey.

Ask yourself this: How is your email marketing contributing to your overall customer experience? Is there room for improvement?

If you’ve answered yes to the latter, then autoresponder (or ‘automated’) emails is an area worth looking into.

Keep reading to learn:

• How an email autoresponder will help you achieve a better customer experience
• The email autoresponder examples that work best for this purpose

How an email autoresponder will improve your customer experience

A great customer experience is one that is useful, seamless, and exceeds expectations. It makes the customer feel valued and understood.

An email autoresponder (also known as email automation software) automatically sends an email (that you’ve already written) to contacts on your mailing list that have fulfilled specific conditions. These conditions can be either characteristic (e.g. date of birth, location) or behavioural (e.g. a new contact subscribes to your site).

Set up your own email autoresponder with Sendinblue >>

There are several ways in which an email autoresponder improves customer experience.

• Personalization: It’s a great way to send tailored messages that correspond with a contact’s preferences. According to the Smarterhq Privacy report, 72% of consumers claim that they will ONLY engage with marketing messages that are tailored to their interests. Hence the importance of personalizing your emails.
• Relevancy: It helps you send emails that correspond to existing customer data. For instance, you’re not going to want to send dog food promotions to someone who doesn’t own a dog. This would go some way towards explaining why 66% of consumers unsubscribe from emails because they aren’t relevant.

• Timeliness: You can ensure that a message reaches a contact within a specific timeframe, without you being there to hit send.
• Builds trust: When your emails are personalized, relevant, and timely, this represents quality for the contact. This quality translates into trust in the brand and strengthens your customer relationships.

Here are 9 types of autoresponder emails that are highly effective at driving engagement and improving customer experience.

Further reading: How an autoresponder works and how to set one up

The birthday email

Who doesn’t like being made feel special on their birthday? The birthday email greeting does exactly that.

But not only does it show a customer that you’re thinking of them, it’s also a great way to drive sales. As people are generally more in the mood to treat themselves on their birthday, it’s much more likely they will splash out on your product/service with that birthday discount code you just sent them.

You customers are definitely going to appreciate this simple gesture.

Further reading: Top Tips for Sending Effective Birthday Emails Your Customers Will Love

The welcome email

The welcome email is essential when it comes to laying the foundations of your relationship with a new subscriber.

This is an opportunity to introduce a new subscriber to your brand and let them know what to expect from your emails.

This is also the ideal moment to capture your new subscriber’s email preferences (as in the example below). This will allow you to segment subscribers accordingly and ensure future emails are tailored to their needs and interests, paving the way for a more engaging customer experience.

The onboarding email

It’s important to help your customer get started when using your product or service for the first time.

Providing a set of instructions like in this onboarding example from Tinder encourages engagement. This engagement is crucial, especially in the early days when you’re trying to get a new customer hooked on your product.

Set up autoresponder onboarding emails so new customers learn to use the product and you avoid the risk of abandonment.

The reactivation email

This autoresponder email is sent with the purpose of re-engaging a contact who hasn’t made a purchase in a long time.

You don’t want your contacts to forget about you so let this email serve as a reminder of your existance. You could even go a step further and lure them back in with an exclusive offer or discount code.

Tip: If your reactivation email gets no interaction then follow up with an re-opt-in email. If again, you get no response, then remove the contact from your list. To maintain high levels of deliverability, you need a clean email list.

The feedback request email

If you’re looking for ways to improve your customer experience, a good place to start is to gage the satisfaction level of your current customers.

Use an autoresponder email to periodically reach out for feedback which you can then analyze to highlight any areas for improvement.

The abandoned cart email

Abandoned cart emails are reminders that are sent to customers who filled their shopping cart with items on your site but failed to check out.

Abandoned cart emails are not only highly effective at catching the ones who got away, they’re also great from a customer experience perspective.

If the customer had no choice but to leave your site at that moment to go do something else, this lets them pick up exactly where they left off. No time is spent time searching for the products again.

You can make the abandoned cart even more inviting by including a coupon or discount code in your email.

The customer appreciation email

Did you know that it costs up to five times more to attract new customers?

All the more reason to look after your existing ones and show them how much you appreciate their custom.

This is one autoresponder email example worth incorporating into your email marketing strategy.

Recognizing and rewarding your most loyal customers is going to make your customer experience more enjoyable and further cement customer loyalty.

The ‘Follow me on social media’ email

You probably already include your social links in your emails but are your subscribers clicking enough on those tiny icons down at the bottom of the page?

To drive traffic towards and encourage engagement with your social channels, why not send a dedicated ‘follow us on social media’ email?

This email is ideal for new subscribers as part of their onboarding process.

The ‘Best of’ email

Add your best performing and most popular content to an email and send it to your subscribers at recurring intervals.

This is useful for busy subscribers who only have the time to skim your highlights.

It’s also an effective means of reviving the interest of an inactive subscriber, enticing them back with your most interesting content.

Set up your own autoresponder emails with Sendinblue

The email autoresponder examples above should provide the necessary inspiration to start creating your own.

These emails are simple yet highly effective when it comes to creating a satisfying, personalized, and engaging customer experience.

Sendinblue’s marketing automation software gives you the flexibility to create a custom autoresponder workflow or choose from a range of workflow templates.

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