Email automation is a small set of messages that go out because something happened: someone asked to hear from you, left a cart, or bought. It is not a reason to write to your whole list every day. The useful version is short, specific, and easy to stop.
You need permission, a reason for each message, and a person who can change the words. The email platform sends them. It should not decide who deserves a discount.
Start with the welcome
When someone joins the list, or asks for a catalogue, a quote, or a first order, they should get one clear welcome. Say who you are, what you will send, and how often. If you only mail when there is something to say, say that. Do not promise a weekly letter you will not write.
A welcome sequence can be two or three notes, a few days apart:
- The first confirms they are on the list and tells them how to reply or unsubscribe.
- The second answers the question new customers actually ask, such as how ordering works or how long dispatch takes.
- The third, if you need it, points at the product or service they asked about. Skip it if you have nothing specific to say.
Each note has one job. If you are explaining dispatch times, do not also announce a sale. Stop the sequence if they unsubscribe, if they reply, or if they have already bought the thing the sequence was describing.
Abandoned carts, only if you have a cart
An abandoned-cart email is fair when someone added items on your own site and gave you an address, and the order was not paid. It is not fair for a person who merely looked at a listing, and it is not something you can honestly do for a marketplace that does not give you that cart.
If you do send one, send one or two, not a week of them. The first can go a few hours after they leave, inside the hours you are willing to mail. The note lists what was in the cart and how to finish the order. It does not have to include a discount. If you do offer one, it should be a discount you would offer at the counter, and it should have an end.
Do not send the cart note if they completed the order, if they unsubscribed, or if they have a support thread open about that order. A reminder landing on top of a complaint is how a useful note becomes a nuisance.
Segments you can explain
Split the list only in ways you can point at in your own records:
- Asked for the catalogue, but has not ordered.
- Ordered once, and enough time has passed that a refill or a related item is relevant.
- Ordered more than once.
- Asked a question and is waiting on you. Those people are not a campaign. They are a queue.
Do not invent a segment from a guess about age, income, or mood. If you cannot say where the fact came from, do not mail that group a different promise.
A follow-up to people who asked is a check that you answered, or a single next step. It is not a newsletter. Give it a stop: after they book, buy, or tell you they are not interested, the sequence ends.
Hours, frequency, and the off switch
Choose the hours you are willing for mail to arrive. A sequence that would send at midnight can wait until the next morning you named. Write the maximum a person can receive from all sequences in a week, and make the platform respect it. Someone in a welcome sequence and a cart sequence should not get both on the same afternoon unless you decided that on purpose.
Every message needs a working way to unsubscribe, and a reply address a person reads. When someone unsubscribes, they leave every sequence, not just the one they were in. Keep a short record of what was sent, so a customer who asks "why did I get this" can be answered from the reason, not from memory.
Set it up in this order
- Write the welcome, in your voice, and say what the list is for.
- List the events that may start a sequence: join, cart, first order, a question.
- Draft the notes for one event. Two or three is enough.
- Set the hours, the gap between notes, and the weekly maximum.
- Send the sequence to yourself and to one colleague. Check the unsubscribe and the reply address.
- Turn on one sequence. Add the next only after you have read the replies from the first.
Read the replies
Once a week, read replies and unsubscribes, not just the count of mail that went out. If people reply with a question your note should have answered, fix the note. If they say they did not ask for this, stop that sequence until you can see where the address came from.
The list is in good shape when every message has a reason you can say out loud, and stopping is as easy as starting.
If you want these sequences set up in the email platform you already use, send a request for marketing automation.
Related: Social media automation.
