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As a business owner juggling multiple daily tasks, time is the one asset there never seems to be enough of. That’s why a tool like automated emails should be an integral part of your customer communication and marketing strategy. It saves you time, increases engagement and conversions, and allows you to focus on other important aspects of running your business.
Email automations are personalized messages that automatically send out, triggered by actions people take on your website. You can usually tailor automations to your needs by setting specific rules around them. Instead of manually creating and sending these messages yourself every time, you can use automated email marketing to streamline the process.
As the Senior Product Manager of the Email Campaigns team at Squarespace, I understand how important email automation is to growing any brand or business. Here’s what you need to know about using automated emails.
How automated emails benefit your business
Using an automated email tool gives you a competitive advantage because it allows you to scale your marketing without losing its personal touch. You can connect with the right customers and potential customers at the right time, without any additional effort after setup.
Email automations can help you:
Save time and cut down on manual work. Email automations take care of preparing and sending emails for you. That frees you up to focus your energy on other parts of your business.
Convert leads into customers. Consistent emails can establish trust and lead to conversion. Automated emails can help you nurture leads by keeping prospects engaged and building relationships, one email at a time, until leads become customers.
Increase revenue. Email automations deliver targeted messages exactly when they’re most likely to have an impact. The right timing can get more people to click through your email and increase the chances that you’ll make a sale.
Improve engagement with subscribers. Subscribers are already in your ecosystem, so they’re more likely to engage with your automated emails. That increases your open and click-through rates.
Scale your business. No matter how big your business gets, email automations scale with you, so that your customers and subscribers get the same brand experience at every stage of your growth.
Send well-timed information. Time-sensitive messages are more efficient and effective when they’re delivered quickly and at the right time.
When to use automated emails
Creating and maintaining relationships with your community is crucial to keep them engaged and interacting with your business at important moments during their journey with you. These different types of email automations can effortlessly preserve those connections with your community.
Welcome email: Make an impactful first impression and set expectations for your new subscribers with an automation when someone subscribes to your mailing list.
Membership or course onboarding email: Guide new members or students through their first steps so they can seamlessly join your community and engage with your content.
Thank you email: Show your appreciation for customers who make a purchase from you.
Lead nurturing emails: Educate and build trust with potential customers to move them closer to making a purchase. This automation is essential when a potential customer has shown interest in what you offer but hasn’t bought yet.
Win-back email: Reengage inactive or lapsed customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while and encourage them to return to your website. You can add discounts or exclusive access to incentivize them to come back.
Subscriber check-in email: Avoid losing subscribers and remind them why they signed up with you by checking in to keep them engaged.
How to use email automations on Squarespace
You have a lot of options among email automation tools on the market, but it’s important that the tool you choose is compatible with your website platform. Squarespace’s automated email marketing is directly integrated with the website builder, so you can be confident that it syncs with your site and selling features.
For example, you can get customer data directly from your website to craft highly tailored messages. Plus, you can set up real-time lead capture: When people sign up on your site, their info is instantly added to your mailing list so you can reach out right away. You can also personalize your email sequences based on people’s interactions with your website, including their product browsing history, recent purchases, or abandoned carts. And an integrated system lets you track key data like subscriber engagement with your emails and your website, so you can optimize your marketing strategy.
Follow these steps to set up a personalized automation sequence in Squarespace.
Access the Email Campaigns dashboard. From your Squarespace account, navigate to Marketing > Automations in the lefthand menu.
Choose from the dashboard or click Create to set up an automated email flow. Choose from nine pre-built automations, categorized by engaging subscribers, first-time engagement, loyal customers, or re-engaging customers.
Choose an email template. There are 10 pre-designed styles to choose from, based on popular, high-performing triggers. You can edit the template however you choose using the canvas builder.
Configure your trigger. You can choose from three triggers: post-purchase, signup, and win-back.
Post-purchase: Send an automatic email when a customer buys any product from you—physical items, digital downloads, services, gift cards, courses, memberships, or gated content. Customize further by setting a minimum number of orders or amount spent before they get an email.
Signup: Send to leads, specific mailing lists, or all subscribers who indicate they want to receive marketing emails from you.
Win-back: Trigger an automated email after a set number of days since a customer’s last purchase from you. This is helpful for encouraging lapsed customers to purchase a product again.
Set up your time delay. Choose whether the email sends immediately after someone takes an action or if it’s delayed by a set number of days.
Customize your email. Match your email style to your website and customize the logo, images, text, and other content to fit your brand and voice. Remember to personalize the email, using dynamic fields like [First Name] and ensure it’s optimized for viewing on a mobile device.
Activate your automation. Review your choices and select ACTIVATE.
We recommend keeping emails short, visually appealing, and focused on a single call to action (CTA) to maximize conversions.
See more tips for using automated emails
Strategies for effective automated emails
A good automated email strategy empowers you to send targeted, relevant, and timely messages to specific segments of your community to maximize engagement, increase conversion rates, and leave customers satisfied—and to save you time on repetitive tasks.
Here are some ways you can make your email automations as impactful as possible:
Personalize them. Leverage your customer data to tailor your emails so subscribers feel like you’re talking directly to them. Use info like their name and purchase history to make your messages feel human and personal.
Time them right. Send emails at the right point in someone’s journey to keep your business top of mind without overwhelming their inbox. Too many emails risks them unsubscribing, so it’s best to pace your messages for when they’re most relevant.
Segment them. Create audience segments based on criteria like behaviors, number of products purchased, demographics, or interests to make sure each email they get is targeted to their experience with your brand.
Optimize subject lines. Write subject lines that are short, value driven, and timely to the action of the recipient. These will help grab attention and encourage opens.
Stay out of the spam folder. On top of using a recognizable sender name and authenticating your emails, avoid language like “free” or “click now” in your subject lines, which could get your emails sorted into spam folders.
Email automations are critical to your marketing approach, because they perform a key task—keeping up communication with your community—while giving you time back to manage other elements of your business. Effective automated email tools let you personalize your messages, keep leads and subscribers engaged, increase conversion rates, improve community retention, and scale your email marketing.