Lifecycle Email Marketing: 3 Newsletter Automation Workflows Everybody Needs!

Join your recipients on their journey through your world: here are 3 simple email automation workflows for effective customer communication.

What is Lifecycle Email Marketing? 

Lifecycle campaigns support your customers at the different stages of their lifecycle. New customers need different information and motivation than loyal customers – or customers who didn’t come back after their first purchase. Lifecycle email campaigns cover all the different needs of your customers.

Use typical autoresponders and follow up emails in your newsletter marketing to be there for your customers throughout their entire lifecycle. Create automated email workflows for various situations:

• Welcome Email: Welcome new customers!
• Confirmation Emails: Confirm an online purchase or order
• Purchase recommendations: Send product recommendations based on the last purchase
• Reactivation Emails: Customer who haven’t visited your shop for quite some time get discounts for winning them back
• Surveys: Ask for feedback after a transaction. This will increase engagement and you get important insights on how satisfied your customers are with your offers or relevant topics and features.
• Regular news, e.g. free tips or webinars: provide your customers with ePapers or other know-how
• Birthday Emails

Many of these cases certainly also apply to the lifecycle of your customer base. It’s best to create automated scenarios that are triggered by your recipients through certain actions.

We’ll show you 3 different autoresponders that you can easily set up in your CleverReach account!

Lifecycle Email Automation: 3 Most Common Newsletter Funnel Examples

To simplify your email marketing even more, we have created sample workflows for the most common events. Use our pre-designed email workflows to send relevant emails to your recipients.  

1. Welcome Email after Subscription

Short and simple: the autoresponder after a subscription. New subscribers in your recipient list automatically trigger the workflow. You can find a template for the welcome workflow in your CleverReach account. Use this THEA automation to welcome your new subscribers or customers with a warm-hearted message or a discount!

 

You only have to adjust the following details:

• Select a recipient list. After clicking on “Edit” you can select your preferred recipient list and determine whether the subscription should take place via a specific signup form.
• Schedule your campaign. The next thing to do is scheduling the time that should pass before sending out the confirmation. The preset time is 5 minutes. By clicking on “Edit time frame” you can determine a different time frame. Choose between hours and days.
• Select an email. If you have already saved a confirmation email, click on “select existing email” and select your email. When clicking on “Create new email“ you’ll end up in our template selection and you can choose one to create a new email for your marketing automation campaign.

TIP: Don’t let too much time pass between a subscription and the confirmation, but send out a confirmation right after the subscription. That builds up trust right at the early stage of the customer lifecycle.

Are there more emails you want to send concerning the subscription? Click on “Add email” to automatically expand your email workflow. If necessary, change the suggested delay time of 7 days and select the email you want to send second or create a new one. Activate the workflow by switching it from inactive to active in the top right corner and confirm the security check.

2. Use Calendar Events 

Our automation template “Calendar Event“ sends out emails on specific dates, for example

• every first day of the month
• once a year at a specific date
• daily
• on a specific day of the week.

It’s particularly suited for regular reports, status updates or birthday emails. For the latter, the automation template “Say Happy Birthday” in your CleverReach account is suitable.

Define a calendar trigger for your automation workflow, e.g. every day at 10 am. After a click on the gear symbol you can select the recipient list you want to send your email to. Please note that you need the birth dates of your recipients to segment for this characteristic.

You know the rest: select the email you want to send or create a new one. You can also add further steps including a preset delay time and the follow up email.

Don’t forget to activate the automation workflow once you’re done.

TIP: Your recipients won’t miss it if you send the same virtual birthday card every year. It pays to vary & personalize the content you send!

3. Win Back Inactive Recipients

Sometimes even perfectly designed lifecycle email marketing doesn’t help: a recipient is inaktive when they no longer react to your emails. Although they haven’t unsubscribed, they haven’t been opening your newsletters for several months. No drama, but too many people who don’t open your emails negatively affect your delivery rate and sender reputation.

What can you do instead? Start a reactivation campaign. It could look like this:

1. Schedule your workflow
   As in the 2nd example, you can use the calendar icon as a trigger to start the campaign.
2. Segment your inactive recipients
   Define when a recipient is considered inactive, for example, when they have not opened a newsletter for 30 days. Only these recipients get an email from your reactivation campaign.
3. Send an email to inactive recipients
   Think about what content could move inactive customers to opening your newsletters again. They’d probably enjoy a coupon for your shop. Or simply use a survey to ask your recipient what they are missing from your emails. Addressing them personally makes your emails more relevant, combined with a catchy subject line.
4. Repeat your reactivation campaign
   If inactive recipients don’t react to your first reactivation email, they might click when you try a second or third time. Modify subject and content. Practical experience shows that inactive customers can definitely be won back – and generate sales again.

If that doesn’t help either, you can exclude inactive recipients from your regular campaigns – Clean up your recipient list and switch all those who didn’t react to your reactivation campaign to “inactive”. As a result, you will suddenly achieve improved open rates for your next mailing – and a better sender reputation.

Lifecycle Email Marketing: Stay Close to Your Customers!

With the help of a simple automation workflow, you automatically send a whole sequence of pre-designed emails after a previously defined number of days. That’s how you keep in touch with your recipients and automatically increase customer retention.

All our automation workflows are based on commonly used email workflows and can be adjusted individually. Benefit from our automation templates and optimize your customer communication!

You want to find out more about the advantages of email automation? Dive deeper into our features:

• New THEA Email Automation: Integrate RSS Feeds and Send Automated Updates
• Get People Back to Your Online Shop with the CleverReach Abandoned Cart Automation

 

---

Tips and tricks for successful email marketing!

Subscribe