What is email automation? Actionable tips and tools

Email automation is a widely used strategy in marketing to establish more direct communication with a company's subscribers, potential or existing customers.

This marketing tactic involves using email automation software or programs.

But not all digital marketers understand what email automation is or know how to use it in each stage of the marketing funnel.

What is email automation?

Email automation is the process of automatically sending emails to multiple recipients.

In addition to automatically sending the emails, it also involves email list segmentation, personalizing email content and tracking engagement data.

Most email automation tools also include features to grow your email list and help marketers turn their traffic into leads and optimize their websites' conversion rates.

Email automation allows communications on a large scale, and also gives companies more control over their recipients' behavior.

Why is email automation important?

Although email marketing was one of the first digital marketing strategies, it is still relevant due to its high accessibility, as it can reach a variety of audiences without much effort on your behalf.

Its importance lies in enabling you to be present in your subscribers' lives and form lasting relationships with them by sharing content, news, updates and other information they are interested in.

Knowing how to manage automated email marketing is of the utmost importance to designing and running email marketing campaigns that will help achieve specific company goals.

As with other automations, it saves the marketing team time and massively improves your campaigns' performance.

Email marketing helps ensure that each recipient receives the right message at the right time, which boosts engagement rates and ultimately leads to higher conversions.

Your Inbox, Smarter

Improve your productivity. Get more done out of your inbox.

Try Mailbutler for Free Learn More

Main benefits of email automation

The main benefits of email automation include:

• You can save time by sending automated emails and follow-ups.
• You can reach out to customers at the right time based on data about their behavior or actions.
• You can communicate with as many subscribers as you want by creating automated email workflows.
• You can segment your lists of contacts from the top to the bottom of your sales funnel and contact each group with a different message.
• You can personalize your messages to increase engagement rates.

When to use email automation

The objective of email automation is to maintain a close relationship with clients, subscribers or leads by sending them recent information and content.

But email automation is also used to send hyper-targeted campaigns. This is about creating a very specific segmentation.

For instance when carrying out a year-end campaign, a landing page is created that asks the lead if they are over 35 years old and if they live in the city where your business is located or not.

Once you get your answers, you can use them to create a very specific segmentation. In this way, you can send more specific communications to these people, such as a local offer via email marketing.

Another excellent use of email automation is abandoned carts.

There are a number of reasons why users abandon carts, so when someone has been so close to making a purchase, following up with an automated email is a great way to keep them engaged and prompt them to return and complete their purchase. 

How to send automated emails in Mailbutler

With Mailbutler you can send automated emails in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail. Mailbutler features include follow-up reminders, email tracking, professional signatures and email templates among others.

Mailbutler integrates right into your inbox and also allows you to create tasks, turning your emails into actionable to-dos.

1. First, create an account with Mailbutler.io
2. Build an email list or a number of them based on different customer segments
3. Write your email templates and follow-ups
4. Set up an automation trigger
5. Activate the automation
6. Track the responses and email campaign results

Install Mailbutler for free

Some other examples of email automation

1. Visualping

Visualping is a website change monitoring tool that sends you an email notification every time a change occurs on a webpage you are tracking.

It is a great example of email automation as they email their users with the information they want to know right when they need it. 

With Visualping all you have to do is introduce the URL of the site you want to monitor for changes and select the area of the page you are interested in.

You will receive an email in your inbox only when something has happened and you will be able to see the before and after versions of the selected area.

2. Netflix

Netflix is ​​a platform that will never let you miss out on its latest content.

If you are one of their subscribers, you have undoubtedly received an email in which you can find out what the newest content is they have added.

You will also be able to see recommendations based on your personal use, as well as previews of movies and series.

Netflix sends personalized messages: the subject line and content are based on your taste and your history using Netflix.

Within the email, Netflix also shows the most recommended content in a short video format. Videos are a great way of getting engagement!

3. Shutterstock

How about a little pressure to take advantage of discounts?

If Shutterstock tells you that you only have 24 hours to download free images from its catalog, or offers you special free images of the week, it is an opportunity you cannot miss.

With this email automation, the stock images and vectors provider does a great job of building advocacy and loyalty by keeping its users engaged and coming back to the site to download new visual resources.

Email automation actionable tips

1. How to write engaging subject lines

An outstanding subject line can make all the difference to your open rate.

Don't make it too long, include the recipient's name, solve a pain point that is specific to them, and use relevant emojis when appropriate.

Apply the same logic to the email preview text.

The email preview text (also called preheader text) is one of the most under-used tools available to markets. Taking the time to get it right will make a noticeable improvement to your email marketing campaign.

2. Always send emails from a real person

Along with the subject line, the sender's name is critical to get users to open and read your emails.

Sending emails from a person means using a person's name rather than your company's name, using a sender email address with a person's name, and including a professional yet warm email signature.

3. Keep your contact list accurate and up-to-date

Keeping your contact list accurate and up-to-date will require effort and resources, but it will be critical to your campaign performance.

This implies not only having active email addresses on your list but also populating the recipient's first name and last name with the correct information.

Avoid, for instance, calling a user “Mr J.”

4. Best practices for email list segmentation

Marketers who segment their lists get better open rates.

You will need to find the most appropriate criteria to segment your own list.

Some email segmentation options include geography, gender, language, demographics, degree of interaction with your brand, purchase behavior, subscription length, and engagement level, among many others.

5. Craft your follow-up email

Even if you follow all the email marketing recommendations, it is highly likely that your recipient won't spend the desired time reading your first email, or you will not get a response.

That's why follow-up emails are so important. To obtain the best response from your follow-up email, make sure you summarize what you explained in your previous email, highlighting the most important ideas, but not repeating them all over again.

Recommended reading: How to set follow-up reminders in Outlook

You should also include a very clear call to action at the end of the email.

And regarding when and how many times you should follow up, the 3-3 rule is a good rule of thumb - this is 3 times after 3 days. But you will need to adapt this depending on your specific situation. For this part, different email sequence tools can be useful, since they enable you to schedule follow-up emails automatically.

6. Use AI to help write your automated emails

Newer artificial intelligence technologies can speed up the process of writing automated emails. Using programs like ChatGPT, you can simply enter a few keywords and have the AI write your message for you.

AI programs can compose well-written, professional emails for you in moments. These could be your automated email templates, meaning you can save even more time on your automated messages.

After the AI has created the email for you, you can then either manually make edits, or send the email back into the artificial intelligence and have it improve the copy for you.

Email automation tools

1. Optinmonster

OptinMonster is a lead generation tool designed to help you capture more leads and generate more sales.

With this tool, you can segment customer groups based on several criteria, implement A/B tests, and design attractive pop-ups to increase your subscribers' list.

This tool is very powerful and easy to use, which makes it one of the leading tools in this market niche.

2. Sendinblue

SendinBlue is designed to prioritize user experience and simplicity, so the learning curve is less steep than similar apps like HubSpot - but you won't need to give up advanced features.

In addition to its own email marketing options, it provides tools to manage contacts, send notification emails and carry out fully automated campaigns, as well as a powerful landing page editor, integration with numerous third-party programs, and many pre-built templates.

The platform includes guides and tutorials so you can quickly become familiar with the interface and the main options.

This platform is one the most affordable and easiest to use in the market.

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is one of the best email marketing tools available for marketers for less than $100/month.

The tool allows you to create segmented lists, import contacts, design different types of campaigns with templates, draft emails including links and CTAs, and design forms to increase your contacts list.

4. Wishpond

Wishpond is a very comprehensive prospect management tool and includes a wide variety of functionalities.

Some of the most important functions that Wishpond has include a customer database, activity tracking of your contacts, email marketing automation and analytics, creation of landing pages, pop-up and other types of online forms.

It also has great integration possibilities, with more than 300 marketing tools and applications that you can combine with Wishpond.

5. HubSpot

HubSpot offers an all-in-one solution with which marketers can not only automate their email campaigns but also create blog posts and landing pages among many other tasks.

This complete solution includes all the integrations customers need for content management, sales, and operations. The plan's pricing is dependent on how many marketing contacts you have, but begins at around $40 a month.

FAQs

Can I automate emails in Gmail?

It is possible to automate emails in Gmail. Here is how to do it:

1. Open Gmail on the computer.
2. At the top right, click Settings Settings and then See all settings.
3. Scroll down to the “Auto Reply” section.
4. Select Auto Answer On.
5. Specify the period and write the subject and message.
6. Below your message, check the box if you want only your contacts to see your automatic reply.
7. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

How to send automated emails in Outlook

You can also send automated emails in Outlook by following these steps:

1. Click File > Options.
2. In the Options window, click "Advanced", scroll down and click the "Send and Receive" button.
3. In the "All accounts" settings in the group section, select "Include this group" in sending and receiving.
4. Check the box and select the "Schedule automatic sending and receiving every "XX" minutes" check box. Use the up and down arrows to set the desired minutes.

How to automate an email from Excel

To automate an email from excel, you need to go to the tool and:

1. Right-click on "any tab".
2. Choose the "Customize Quick Access Toolbar" option.
3. In the Commands available section, choose "All commands".
4. Choose "Send to" email recipient and press the "Add" button.
5. Press "OK" and see how it gets added to the top of Excel.

Conclusion

Unlike mass emails, which are sent to a group of subscribers at the same time, email automation consists of campaigns sent to a small number of, or even just one, subscriber(s) at a time.

These emails are sent when an event previously configured is triggered. These trigger events and the high level of segmentation that email automation allows are what make it so powerful. 

Marketers who master the art of email automation and therefore reach their subscribers or customers at the right time with the desired message will have a huge competitive advantage.