Email Marketing for Beginners: Flows and Automations (4)

We wrote a full post to explain why to use email marketing in your online store, another to discuss segmentation and list creation, and one more on email typology and design, where we briefly talked about flows or journeys.

At this point, I believe you are no longer a beginner. At the very least, you have grasped the most important concepts, and thanks to that, we can delve deeper into a more sophisticated part of the strategy.

Join me in this new chapter and discover to what extent many tasks can be automated, with minimal effort, to enhance brand engagement and, most importantly, increase conversion rates.

Email marketing automation means using digital tools to free ourselves from mechanical tasks or to manage activities that require continuous monitoring, but always without direct human intervention.

Among the first category, we could include, for example, sending a purchase confirmation email every time an order is placed. An example of the second category would be recovering abandoned carts.

In any case, as you can see, there is always a condition or trigger. This is what starts the automation and sets off the programmed action: when User A does B, then we do C.

Beyond exploring the use cases of this email marketing feature, it is important to highlight the main advantages it offers for any online store.

This section could be quite extensive, as automation has numerous benefits, but I will focus on the top five.

A machine will always be more effective in repetitive or mechanical tasks. If you have someone sending emails one by one, you are wasting their potential on more qualified tasks.

But it is not just about sending campaigns; automation also covers specific responses in certain situations (order confirmations, onboarding, order tracking…), and, importantly, the segmentation of mailing lists.

Hours and hours of work that you can delegate to technology.

This is one of the main benefits of automation. It ensures constant monitoring of your email lists and customers.

Let me explain with an example: imagine you have an email list of inactive customers who have not made a purchase in over six months. Your strategy is to send them an email (automatically) with a discount.

You can take it a step further by setting up software that automatically moves users into this list as soon as they reach six months of inactivity.

This is intangible but has a significant impact on the customer’s relationship with your online store.

Automating emails allows you to personalize communication far beyond just addressing users by name. The goal is to make them feel like they are receiving premium service in two ways:

In short: we can be present at the right moment with the perfect offer. This directly enhances the user experience.

A key goal of any marketing strategy is to sell more and sell better. Everything we do ultimately leads to this objective, either directly or indirectly.

Email marketing is no exception. By automating certain aspects, we can extend customer lifecycles and increase their spending. Some examples:

Thanks to automation, you will have all key business indicators (KPIs) under control and updated in real-time. Forget about manually filling out spreadsheets after each campaign—let the tool handle and populate your reports automatically.

This alone is an advantage, but the real benefit is the system’s ability to take action based on any fluctuations in these indicators. For example, sending different emails depending on open rates or link clicks.

Now we take automation a step further. We combine everything discussed in the previous section, emails that work perfectly on their own, and create a sequence of messages triggered based on predefined conditions.

This is best explained with an example, so let’s break it down:

1.- Newsletter Subscription: We send a welcome email with a 10% discount for the first purchase.

2.- Popular Products: A couple of days later, we send an email showcasing the most popular products in our catalog. This is important because the customer’s interaction with the brand (and the discount) is still fresh.

3.- Discount Expiration: Two days later, we remind them that their discount is about to expire. This creates urgency to encourage conversion.

4.- Purchase or No Purchase: At this stage, the flow splits:

        a. If they make a purchase: We send an order confirmation and tracking email. Once received, we follow up with a review request.

This is a simple example that can be as sophisticated as we want by adding more interactions.

For instance, we could set up an email recommending products based on past purchases after a certain period. Another common approach is initiating a loyalty strategy.

The best part is that these automated flows will yield results with minimal effort. All you need to do is invest some time and strategy in defining the flow and refining it based on performance analytics, but otherwise, it practically runs itself.