Keeping in touch with your contacts is the key to a successful business. While at first you’re devoted to nurturing leads to turn them into customers, you shouldn’t ignore the after sales communication. Contacts in your database – whether they’re leads or existing customers – should be included in your email workflows. Learn about HubSpot Workflows.
The majority of email automations are designed to increase your conversion rate. But emails shouldn’t be limited to just inbound and lead nurturing campaigns. Existing customers deserve equal attention as well, as they provide several opportunities to grow your business as well.
Automating your emails provide value for your business as well as your customers. Through this, you’re still able to deliver content and other offers even to existing customers. Upgrades, cross sells, brand advocacy, and more purchases can be gained by charming your way through your contacts inbox.
Email marketing automation workflows
Email marketing automation is implemented through a set of conditions triggered by your subscriber’s actions. Once they perform the chosen action or have gained a certain attribute, they’ll be automatically included into a workflow. Then, they’ll receive emails based on the workflow.
Automation eliminates the repetitive and generic tasks such as writing and sending blanket emails, generating lists, or even scheduling events. This not only saves your internal team time, but likewise minimises their room for error, allowing them to focus on other productive tasks.
Unlike the burdensome task of doing it manually, email automation requires an automation software. HubSpot’s Workflow, for example, stands as one of the best automation tools in the market. It’s user-friendly and they have a knowledge base you can depend on.
Workflow allows you to have separate workflows for your different audiences who will receive unique sets of emails. It’s based either through their future actions or past behaviours or even a combination of both.
If you’re having difficulty coming up with ideal workflows, here are some examples you can start with.
Welcome new customer
Trigger: updated contact status to customer
Whenever contacts turn into customers, you should always give them a warm welcome. Create a series of emails to send out when their contact status changes from ‘contact’ to ‘customer.’
This reminds customers that you want to build a lasting relationship with them, not just up until you close a sale. A welcome email is just as effective as a thank you email, sometimes more so. This is because you’re embracing them as part of your community, and you’ll be in touch with them for a while. Maintaining a positive relationship with your customers even after they buy, likewise keeps them engaged. Additionally, you can also send bits of tutorials or training materials to your new customers, especially if they’ve bought a product which requires some technical know-how.
Lead nurturing
Trigger: top-funnel events/actions
Top-of-the-funnel marketing offers are your general content: infographics, e-books, manuals, webinars, etc. These types of content attract your audience and once they’ve downloaded them, it can be a sign that you can nurture them further down your funnel.
Based on your customer’s actions in this initial stage, you can then trigger several emails which can upgrade them to a marketing qualified lead or a sales qualified lead. Emails in this workflow can both be persuasive and educational, so long as they target and remain focused on your customer’s purchasing intent. Examples of content you should include in your emails are product demos, case studies, or free trial offers.
Internal sales notification
Trigger: conversion action/activity
High value pages of your websites are those pages that your contacts view when they are seriously considering a purchase of your product. Often, these are your price pages, product descriptions, or free demo sign up page. Use this to your advantage by setting up a workflow for your internal sales reps to reach out when your contacts visit these high value pages.
Once you’ve identified the pages that arouse your contact’s interest, use them as a trigger to send an internal notification to your sales team. Contacts with high-value activities, like visiting those pages, are more qualified for your sales outreach. Through your workflow, you can also internally send useful information such as content relevant to your contact’s activity, wherever they may be your funnel.
Engaged with contact
Trigger: clicks, visits, opt-ins
HubSpot Smart List is a useful tool together with your workflows. The dynamic lists generated are automatically updated based on your contact’s activity. Workflow and smart lists also work together. Set up triggers to include them in a list based on their opt-ins, number of page visits, email opens, or social media shares. Then, you can leverage those segments by creating email workflows that pair with their activity.
Contacts that are engaged with you are influenced to share your content, leave positive reviews, or become brand advocates. And if your customer base has influencers, you can set up triggers based on contacts who have a certain sets of followers, which opens opportunities for influencer marketing.
Event registration
Trigger: registration
Events are useful ways to attract audiences that have greater potential of becoming customers. Be it an online event like a webinar or an in-person event, audiences are bound to provide their information to secure a slot. That data can then be utilised in your email workflows. Use it to communicate to your audience before, during, and even after the event.
Sending out automated emails with an interval to your attendees is a great way to deliver useful information regarding your event. If you’re hosting live events, you can send hotel recommendations and agendas. For online events, you can send useful references or log-in credentials. After the event, you can create a workflow to deliver content relevant to the event they attended, or you can further nurture them through additional content. And if you’re planning future events or promotions, you can easily include them in another workflow to invite them.
Abandoned shopping cart
Trigger: Shopping cart abandonment
E-commerce businesses are more likely to benefit from this type of workflow. When a customer adds items to their cart, it doesn’t always lead up to a sale. Customers may forget to check out or finish the purchase for various reasons, which leaves items in their online carts. This data is accessible to you, as the owner, and you can use it for your email workflows.
Customers who have items in their carts which they haven’t checked out, can be those who you include in an email workflow reminding them to complete the purchase. In this workflow, you can include promos, discounts or other incentives which motivate them to complete the checkout process. Check out our marketing tips for E-commerce businesses.
Customer success
Trigger: Success metrics
Metrics are important for keeping track of your customer’s activities. This not only benefits you giving insights on how to improve your marketing, but also offers opportunities for case studies and testimonials. A workflow centred around your customers is triggered once they’ve reached certain customer success metrics. You can track those based on positive reviews or surveys you send out to them. Once they’ve met that criteria, you can trigger an email in a workflow which asks them if they’d like to be featured as a success story for your brand.
Monitoring the opposite metric can be useful as well, such as when customers are not fully satisfied or have not found success with your product. Those responding less than favourable experience with your product are enrolled in a different workflow, one where you can improve their experience. Send them useful training materials for the product or introduce them to features they are not aware of.
Re-engagement
Trigger: Inactive contacts
Dormant and inactive contacts in your database are not always a lost cause. Through a workflow, you can still reawaken your once valuable prospects that fell through. Enrol inactive contacts into different lists depending on their last activity. Depending on certain conditions such as their last visit, last form submission, or last email open, you can identify when the last time they were in contact with you was.
Send out this workflow to these contacts to reconnect them with your brand. Create it based on the last product they’ve bought or the last trial they’ve had, which is used as a targeting tool to effectively deliver your reengagement email. You can also include exclusive promos, discounts, or offers to inspire them to reach out once again.
Customer service or ticket
Trigger: Contacted customer support
Your response rate to your customer’s concerns indicates how well you care for your customers. Address their troubles and concerns immediately, or at least respond by letting them know you’ve acknowledged their concern. While it remains important, it takes a huge chunk of your time as well. Automating your customer support workflow avoids that time intensive task.
Trigger this workflow based on your customer’s concerns, then categorise, label, and assign them to different customer services representatives. This way, you can keep track of the ongoing concerns and you can rotate your team. In addition, of course, to seeing which problems have been resolved.
Deal based
Trigger: quotation or contract
Obviously, sales underpin your success. And small aspects in automating your after sales process ensures a successful customer relationship as well. After signing a contract or sending an e-quote, emails can automatically be triggered, which gives you extra time for other important matters, such as product demos or onboarding.
These deal-based workflows are automatically triggered once contacts turn into customers or qualified when they’ve received your quote. Additionally, HubSpot’s CRM allows you to automatically change their status from contact to where they are in their customer journey, which makes for better segmentation.
