April 21, 2025

Examples of Automation in Email Marketing

Email automation takes repetitive tasks off your plate and makes it easier for you to stay connected with your customers. It also helps you stay top of mind and encourages customers to keep coming back.

Ecommerce businesses use automated emails to upsell and cross-sell products. A great example is this replenishment email from toilet paper brand Who Gives A Crap. It’s clever, playful and fun.

Welcome Emails

Welcome emails are often the first email your subscribers receive from your business. They can have a high open rate and set the tone for how your audience feels about you from the start. Using email marketing automation to send personalized welcome emails can help you save time and improve your email campaigns. For example, sending a welcome email that includes the subscriber’s name, which can be accomplished with the use of merge tags, helps your audience feel like you know them and care about their experience.

For example, in this email from Red, the brand uses a personalized subject line with a welcome message that asks for their name and email address. This personalization increases the email’s open rate by 9%. They also provide valuable information about their organization and the products they offer to their audience.

They also include social media links to their Facebook and Twitter accounts at the bottom of the email to entice their audience to follow them. And they make sure to include whitelisting instructions near the top of the email, as a study done by Experian found that emails that have whitelisting instructions at the top get 20% more subscribers to whitelist them. This type of automation is a great way to keep your audience updated and engaged with your business.

Transactional Emails

Email automations are a great way to greet new customers, provide further guidelines on how to use a platform or app, and even say goodbye when a user leaves. These emails aren’t your usual marketing emails that are triggered and sent automatically to a large group of people, rather they’re a one-on-one conversation that you’ve prompted with an action the customer took.

To make this type of email really stand out, it’s important to tailor the content so that it makes sense for your business. It’s not a good idea to create a long series of automated emails if they don’t add value for your subscribers, so you should always make sure that every single email is relevant to the individual recipient.

A good example of this would be a confirmation email for a purchase, which could include a picture of the item and a link to view their order history. In some cases, a company may also choose to include a link to related or similar products that are available for sale, which is an effective way to increase revenue.

Another common transactional email is an account maintenance notification, which can help users keep their accounts up to date and secure by sending them information on how to change their passwords and security questions. This type of email is particularly important for platforms that collect sensitive personal information like credit card numbers.

Product Inventory Updates

The product inventory updates email automation, as the name suggests, automatically sends your shoppers an email when their preferred products are out of stock. This email demonstrates that your brand cares about its customers’ shopping experience and goes above and beyond to keep them happy by informing them of when they can expect their preferred items to be back in stock.

This type of automated email also plays well on FOMO, encouraging your subscribers to buy quickly. It’s a simple way to minimize your customers’ churn and boost retention rates.

Many ecommerce brands use this email to cross-sell their products. For example, if a customer purchases a grooming kit from Dollar Shave Club and decides to add extra razor blades or shaving foam to their order, this automated email lets them do so with a click of a button.

Another common use for these emails is for re-engagement campaigns. Tracking user engagement and activity, you can identify users that have become inactive over time, and then use your marketing automation software to send them a series of automated emails designed to encourage their return.

Automated email campaigns are a great way to grow your business and connect with your audience. These email sequences are scalable, so you can reach your subscribers without losing impact as your list grows. Plus, these types of emails are more likely to receive replies, enhancing your reputation as an email sender.

Reminder Emails

Whether a contact’s deadline for sending overdue payments has passed or they haven’t responded to your previous emails, email automation can help you send timely reminders without the need for a staff member to constantly monitor their inbox. These automated emails should be personalized and start off with the greeting or salutation that is most appropriate for your customer, such as “Dear John” or “Hi, Mark!”

Reminder emails should clearly state the reason for their arrival, be as brief and precise as possible, and include a call to action with instructions on what they need to do next (such as clicking on a link that will direct them back to the overdue payment page). It is also good practice to end your email by giving the recipient some benefit of the doubt or opportunity for redemption.

Using automated emails, you can easily create campaigns that follow customers through the sales process and provide them with valuable information and products that will convert them into repeat buyers. For example, you can automatically email customers that purchase one version of a product with an offer to upgrade to the more feature-rich option. Or, you can use triggered emails to welcome new customers, send them educational content that shows how your product can improve their lives and create upselling opportunities.

Read More: universalassets email