Every eCommerce entrepreneur works towards the goal of boosting their online sales. One of the key factors that contribute to that ultimate goal is effective communications. There is no doubt that in-store engagement works like a charm; however, keeping in touch regularly with your customers even when they're not shopping on your store drives intangible values to your business growth. At this point, email marketing automation serves this purpose best.

According to Venture Beat, for most entrepreneurs that have adopted email marketing automation, the average conversion rate can reach up to 77%. It is considered to be a huge opportunity for all eCommerce merchants like you to increase sales and nurture the engagement with customers.

If you are determined to triple your sales, these 7 email marketing automation examples below are best for you to start making friends with your customers and retain them to be loyal customers of your brand.

1. Welcome emails

One of the biggest reasons to send a welcome email to first-time visitors is to make a good impression. It's the very first step to build trust and form a relationship with your customers. If your welcome email to your customers at the first place isn't memorable, your follow-up campaigns won’t be, either.

Every time when a new visitor signs up or makes their first purchase with your store, it is suggested that you send out a welcome email, including a thank-you note. You'd better send it after at least 30 minutes so it looks pretty much like being sent from you - the shop owner rather than being automated from a machine.

Here are a few tips you can consider adding into your welcome email to make it more attractive to your new subscribers:

• Offer a reward code, store credit or free shipping as a welcome gift.
• Be personal and friendly, don't make too much fuss over the tone and mood.
• Add a call-to-action button “SHOP NOW” to encourage customers to shop with you.

This welcome email isn't difficult to create. It simply takes a little of time and works on the copy. Happy Email, an effective email marketing automation tool, can help accommodate it by sending an automated and well-written thank-you email 30 minutes after they make the first purchase or sign up for a new account in your store.

2. Abandoned cart emails

Online shoppers, no matter how much they're interested in your products and tend to place an order, are easily distracted while shopping online and abandon their cart in the middle. In fact, the eCommerce industry has seen an average of 67.45% cart abandonment rate, which is painstaking to store owners.

This is where theabandoned cart emails come in, reminding your customers of the products that they have left behind and encourage them to come back to finish their cart. By building a compelling abandoned cart email series, you can win back 10-15% total of abandoned orders and leave an everlasting impression on customers.

Let’s consider these points to make your abandoned cart emails more effective:

• Ask your customers a curiosity-piquing question like “Did you forget something?” or “Still thinking it over?”
• Offer your customers an incentive (i.g: percentage off or free shipping)
• Provide links to the cart that they have left
• Let customers know that the amount of time to hold the items is running out
• Make a call-to-action button stand out to motivate customers to finish check-out process (“Finishing checking out”, “Check out your shopping bags”, etc)

3. Post-purchase follow up

Following up with customers by email marketing automation after their successful purchases is a powerful step in showing your appreciation for their visits, and ensuring their satisfaction. It helps you learn whether customers are satisfied with their purchases, associated services (customer care, delivery options, shipping), or pricing, encourages future purchases and leads to more sales. It is also a great opportunity for customers to spread the word about their purchasing experiences to their friends, especially when they are still excited about having received your products.

With a post-purchase follow-up email, you can show customers that you value their feedback and would love to hear what they think about your products by asking them to leave a review. This review is a good reference for other potential customers and also important for you to know as an eCommerce merchant.

Consider these values to make your post-purchase follow-up email more sincere to customers:

• Offer a unique discount code for further purchase.
• Add a social sharing button that either encourages customers to share their shopping experience with their friends.

4. Re-engagement emails

People have different options when it comes to shopping. They might be interested in something new and gradually they forget how much they liked your store. This is when re-engagement emails could perform as a powerful tool to win your customers’ heart back.

A recent research by Return Path has shown that 45% of recipients who received a re-engagement email read subsequent emails, and this, in turn, leads to an increased chance that these subscribers will come back to visit your store and shop with you again. These re-engagement emails typically provide a special promotion or a too-good-to-pass-up offer to visitors who have not visited your website or purchased from you for a while and then convert their visits into sales.

So, how would you make this work for you?

• Provide a significant discount, free product, or a chance to win items
• Add more values with a great piece of witty copy and an appealing image
• Start with a “We miss you” or “Where are you?” message that will catch their attention.
• Try A/B testing to check if what tones and re-engagement offers perform best towards your customers.

5. The tailored upsell offers

Getting customers to spend more by sending them upselling offers is a great way to boost sales and encourage more repeat purchases. Upselling can benefit your stores by increasing cart value, resulting in better profit margins and improving customer satisfaction rates. With upselling techniques, you can encourage customers to buy more relevant products based on their past choices. Consequently, you are still growing, while increasing the order value per customer and maximizing your revenue.

The key to get most out of your upselling efforts is to provide specific and relevant suggestions for other items in an appropriate price range. You can also advertise the product bundle as a “set” that a consumer might like or afford to buy based on their previous purchases. For example, if a customer has purchased a $20 shirt from you, you’d better skip that offer for $300 pants, however, it makes sense if you offer him a $10 tie and show him how good it looks on the shirt.

One more tip to make your upselling emails outstanding is to start the email with a hooked subject line “Maybe you want some more?” or just like the example below.

6. Milestone emails

Do you know that it costs 7x more to acquire a customer on average than it does to keep an existing one? The more you show your customers that you appreciate their loyalty to your shop, the more likely that you will become their top-of-mind brand. It’s your call to show customers that you care about their purchasing interest or let them know you remember their special day.

You can give them a reward-coupon gift (i.g: 20% off for their next purchase) for being awesome customers and show that how grateful you are that they have chosen you to shop with. Another way is simply to congratulate them on special occasions and give them a glance of some more great items that they might be interested in.

At this point, you can rely on email marketing automation to send out these occasional emails as you don't have to record and remember customers' information. One of the amazing campaigns of Mailbot is to motivate customers who have multiple purchases on your store with a reward coupon. Not only will customers say thanks to your thoughtfulness, but you will also get more sales, as the coupon code will encourage customers to come back and buy more.

7. Relevant updates

Being said above, customer retention is too important (and expensive) to overlook. That’s why it is recommended that you should always stay in touch with your customers and provide them with relevant updates of your stores to keep them thinking about you as a top-of-mind option.

Once people have subscribed to your email list, keep them updated about promotions, sales events, and new arrivals.

But don’t be spamming! People only want information that’s relevant to them; otherwise, they will unsubscribe your notifications. Therefore, by using email marketing automation, you can easily create your cohort lists to only send announcements to relevant audience subsets.

There are two occasions that you need to send emails about product updates:

• Promote products that can be bought again or give site-wide recommendations based on customer’s history purchase and the product's lifecycle. For example, your customer has bought a box of hand-made fruit juice which should be used in a week, it’s wise to send them a newsletter to inform that you’re now rolling a new flavour juice box a week later.
• Introduce new arrivals or new collections so that your customers keep abreast of what at your store might interests them. One tip to make the email outstanding is spending more time on the subject line like “New arrivals JUST FOR YOU”, “Hottest trend for you?” to grab subscriber’s attention and make them want to open the email. Also, you can modify a call-to-action button to trigger their excitement to shop with you like “MISS IT OR NOT?” or “BUY NOW OR NEVER”

Since there seems to be a lot of campaigns that you need to follow, Mailbot by Beeketing can help you send personalized automation emails to follow-up each unique customer based on their behaviors on your store. Its Newsletter Bot can detect new products in your store then create a new arrivals campaign & promote them your customers every week. No more burden of picking new items and creating weekly newsletters yourself!

In conclusion, email marketing automation can tremendously help you as an eCommerce store owner stay engaged with your customers while increasing conversions and boost sales significantly. Let's follow the tips and think about specific occasions that you can take advantage of and honestly communicate with them. By delivering targeted messages to the right cohorts at the right time, email automation can help you convert more subscribers into frequent buyers and experience better results over time.

Do you think email marketing automation is helpful for you? Do you know of any other tips to maximize your sales with automated emails?