All the Automations You Can Set Up with SmartrMail

Our goal at SmartrMail is to make it as easy as possible for merchants like you to make more sales with email marketing. 

That’s why email automations are a core feature of SmartrMail.

Not only do automations generate sales by sending relevant and timely emails to the right customers, but they do so automatically. This means once you set them up, they generate sales on autopilot with minimal ongoing work required.

And to make setting them up even easier, SmartrMail comes with several pre-made templates of the best-practice email automations. 

But exactly what are these automations and what are the range of automations you can set up in SmartrMail? Well in this post we’ll take you through all the automations you can set up in our app as well as explain their purpose and why they’re important.

Welcome emails

Your welcome email is likely the first email your customers will receive from you. 

As you’ve almost certainly received countless welcome emails in the past, you’ll likely already have a good idea of what they are: a simple welcome and thank you for joining the email list.

But in case you need a reminder of what these emails look like, the email below from Casper is an excellent example of a welcome email.

From an email marketing perspective, welcome emails are also one of the most important automations.

Not only do the vast majority of people expect to receive a welcome email immediately after joining an email list, but they also act as a first impression that sets the tone for the rest of your email marketing.

Welcome emails also generate great engagement. 

They have an 86% higher unique open rate, 336% greater transaction rate, and make a whopping 320% more revenue on average compared to regular sale emails.

So if you haven’t enabled welcome emails yet, not only are you leaving your customers with a negative first impression but you’re also missing out on a massive sales opportunity.

And to make setting them up easy, SmartrMail comes with a pre-made welcome email automation when you first install the app. 

What you’ll notice is that this automation is made up of multiple emails instead of just a single welcome email.

This is because the best welcome email strategies consist of follow-up emails after the immediate welcome message to help build a relationship with your customer. 

You can learn more about welcome email strategy in our guide here and how to set up welcome emails in SmartrMail in our support doc here.

As for the follow-up emails within a welcome series, here are the key ones you should consider adding:

Brand introduction emails

After you welcomed your new subscriber to your email list and thanked them for signing up a great follow-up email is one introducing your brand a bit more. 

You can do this by going into things like your brand’s values or mission statement and what separates your brand from your competitors.

A great way to do this while building a strong personal connection between your subscribers and your brand is to include a founder story. This is where you talk about the reasons and motivations behind why you or your brand’s founders started the business. 

Doing so humanizes your brand, especially if your audience is able to relate to the story, increasing people’s affinity with your brand. 

The example below from Yuppiechef does a great job of this.

Follow us on social media invitations

Another great follow-up to your initial welcome email is a dedicated email to inviting people to follow your brand on social media.

These social media invite emails will help grow your number of followers and when combined with an effective social media marketing strategy, will help keep customers engaged even if they hardly ever check their emails.

In terms of content, you can simply mention your social media accounts and invite customers to follow them or you can take things up a notch by including some of your top posts or even inviting customers to share user-generated content (UGC). 

Just like Toms has done in their email below.

You can learn more about this type of email campaign in our guide on social media invite email strategy.

Product education emails

Lastly, it can be worthwhile adding some product education to your welcome series. 

Educational emails make for the perfect natural pitches for your products where you can talk about how your items solve particular problems your subscribers might be facing. 

For example, if you sell laundry detergents you could include emails cover:

• How to remove difficult stains
• Toxins found in common laundry detergents to avoid
• How to keep your whites white
• How to reduce the environmental impact of your washing loads

You can then link customers to blog posts from your emails to boost your click-through rates and improve engagement. In these blog posts you’ll then have plenty of opportunities to promote your own products to increase sales.

Harry’s does this well in their email below.

Browse abandonment emails

After signing up for your email list, the next step people take on the journey toward becoming a customer is browsing products on your store. 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of customers who visit your product pages don’t go on to make a purchase. That’s where browse abandonment emails come in. 

These are emails that are automatically sent to customers who browse items on your store but don’t add anything to their cart. In other words, they’ve abandoned their browsing session.

However, because these customers have displayed an interest in particular products, they are very likely to engage with a browse abandonment email. 

Compared to regular sale emails, browse abandonment emails have an 80% higher open rate and a 50% higher click-through rate. And over 1 in 10 clicks lead directly to a sale. 

As for the contents of these emails, the campaign below from Loeffler Randall is a good example of a browse abandonment email.

For more information on this particular email automation, check out our guide on browse abandonment emails here.

Abandoned cart emails

Thankfully, not everyone will leave your store without having added something to their carts. 

Unfortunately, not everyone who has added something to their carts will complete the checkout process and become a paying customer. 

In fact, for every paying customer, there are on average two would-be customers who have added items to their cart but never checked out. That’s where abandoned cart emails come in.

Similar to browse abandonment emails, this automation entices people to come back and finish checking out their cart. The email below from Moment is a typical example of this in practice.

Because of how common it is for people to abandon their carts and how effective these emails are at recovering these sales, SmartrMail comes with a pre-made abandoned cart automation you can quickly enable. 

For more information on this particular email automation, check out our guide on abandoned cart emails here.

If you find it hard to tell the difference between abandoned cart emails and browse abandonment emails, check out our explainer on the differences here.

Post-purchase emails

Not everyone visiting your store is going to leave without making a purchase, especially with the help of the email automations we’ve been through already. 

The thing is, while a customer making a purchase can feel like you’ve achieved the goal of generating a sale, you still want to nurture them so that they become loyal, repeat customers. 

That means your email marketing still has a major role to play with the help of post-purchase email automations.

As their name suggests, these are automations sent to customers after they’ve made a purchase. 

SmartrMail actually comes with two pre-made post-purchase email automations: one for first-time customers, and one for repeat customers.

And like welcome campaigns, post-purchase automations should contain more than just a single email. Ideally they should contain the following emails that you can easily set up in SmartrMail:

Thank you emails

One of the best ways to strengthen your relationship with your new customer is by sending them a dedicated thank you email shortly after they made their purchase.

While it might not seem like much, small gestures like this can go a long way in establishing brand loyalty. 

The contents of this type of email are straightforward as well. All you need to include is a sincere thank you message outlining what your customer’s support means to you and your business. 

Just like in the example below from Abercrombie & Fitch. 

Another option is to include a special offer as a more tangible way of saying thanks. This can be especially useful for first-time customers to incentivize their second purchase.

For more information on this particular email automation, check out our guide on thank you for your purchase emails here.

Review/testimonial request emails

Positive reviews and testimonials are the ultimate form of social proof for your store and work wonders at converting new customers. 

And the best way to generate these reviews is by sending your existing customers a dedicated review request email shortly after they’ve made a purchase. 

To help ensure they leave positive feedback, you may want to wait until after their second purchase to ask for a review on a public platform like Facebook or Google. After all, if they’ve come back a second time, they must like your products.

The email below from Whistlefish is a good example of this type of post-purchase email.

But just because you might want to wait until someone’s second purchase to ask for a public review it doesn’t mean you can’t ask for a private review after someone’s first purchase.

Asking for this kind of feedback shortly after someone’s first purchase will provide valuable insights into your customer experience and any potential issues holding people back from becoming repeat customers. 

For more information on this particular email automation, check out our guide on customer review request emails here.

Cross-sell emails

Cross-sell emails are another type of post-purchase follow-up that is worth sending. But unlike thank you and review request emails, you can wait a bit longer after someone makes a purchase before you send them. 

Essentially, these emails simply promote (or ‘cross-sell’) similar or complementary items to the one your customer originally purchased.

For example, if someone purchased a particular style of t-shirt you might want to recommend hoodies or pants that match well with it or even other t-shirts from the same collection. 

Or, if you sell digital cameras, you might want to recommend items like SD cards, extra batteries, and tripods like Best Buy has done in their email below.

For more information on this particular email automation, check out our guide on cross-selling with email marketing here.

Replenishment emails

If your customer has purchased an item that requires replacing or replenishing after a certain period of time, like pet food, toiletries, etc., sending them a replenishment reminder just before they run out is a great way of generating repeat purchases. 

You don’t even have to frame this type of email as a sales email either. Instead, you can style it as a ‘friendly reminder’ that improves your customer experience by helping prevent them from running out of an essential item. 

Just like in Purina’s email below.

And it doesn’t have to strictly items people purchase on a regular basis either. If you sell books, you could send a ‘what to read next’ style of email every few months. 

For more information on this particular email automation, check out our guide on replenishment emails here.

Win-back emails

No matter how great your email marketing is or how well you keep your customers engaged, eventually even the most loyal of customers go cold.

Thankfully there’s an email automation you can set up in SmartrMail for that too: win-back emails. 

Win-back emails do exactly what their name suggests: they attempt to win customers back so they keep purchasing from your store. 

So that they’re more enticing, these emails will also typically contain a special offer to help re-engage customers and bring them back to the store. Just like in the example below from Sephora.

For more information on this particular email automation, check out our guide on win-back emails here.

Custom automations

We’ve now covered all of the best-practice email automations you can set up in SmartrMail. 

In most cases, you’ll want to set up and automate all of these campaigns unless there’s a particular reason you don’t think they are suitable for your store. This is made easier in SmartrMail with our pre-made templates. 

But in addition to all of these best-practice automations, there may be some others you want to set up for your store. 

For example, you might want to check in with customers a few months after they purchase a particular product. In which case you’ll want to create a custom order-triggered automation which you can find instructions on doing in SmartrMail here.

Or you might have a popup where you promise new subscribers a special discount or an offer like a free guide. In which case you’ll want to create a custom list-triggered automation which you can also find instructions on doing in SmartrMail here.

Lastly, you might also want to send customers a particular email whenever they enter a specific segment (such as customers who have spent over $1000). For these automations, you’ll want to use a segment-trigger which you can find instructions on here.

Conclusion

Email automation is a powerful way of not only generating more sales for your store on autopilot but also improving your customer experience. 

And as you’ve seen, SmartrMail lets you quickly and easily set up all the best-practice automations with the help of our pre-made templates. 

You can also set up custom automations that are unique to your store and address the needs of your customers. 

So if you haven’t taken advantage of email automation in SmartrMail yet, now’s the time to do so!