Automation in marketing allows you to save time, reduce costs and get more profit from every dollar invested in promotion. And email marketing is no exception. We tell you how automated email newsletter scripts work and how they can be useful for companies in different business areas.

How do automatic scripts work in email newsletters?

Automatic email newsletters are letters that are sent to users according to a given scenario. To do this, you do not need to click the "Send" button in the mailing service - the message will go itself as soon as a certain event occurs. For example, the user places an order or their birthday arrives.

Scenarios can be very simple, as in the case of sending a congratulatory letter on the user's birthday. Or they can be complex - with many different messages and a branched algorithm that determines at what time and which letters to send to the recipient. An example of a more complex automatic scenario is a training welcome chain in a project management service.

An example of an automatic training welcome mailing script

Registering with the service → request to confirm the subscription;

Subscription confirmation → welcome letter describing key features and offering to create the first projects;

Creating projects → training in working with tasks, assignees and deadlines with an offer to add colleagues and employees to the service;

Adding new users to projects → description of different boards, views and an offer to customize them;

Setting up boards and views → story about advanced features and an offer to upgrade to a paid version to try them.

Scheme of automatic welcome chain

In practice, the scenario may be longer, depending on the path a new client must take from registration to a regular user. The chain may also take into account situations when the recipient has not opened the next letter. Or read it, but has not performed the target action. Letters can also be sent for such events. For example, duplicate the same letter with a different title for recipients who have not opened it. And send another message to those who have not performed the target action to encourage them to continue their journey.

Automatic mailings save time - you don't need to send each new letter manually. It's enough to set up the script once, and it will work without the participation of a marketer.

However, in addition to this, they also bring other benefits, helping businesses:

increase sales - the user receives letters when he is most ready for the target action;

return customers - thanks to automatic mailings to those who have not bought for a long time;

increase loyalty - each customer receives a relevant message and exactly when he expects it;

improve engagement - users interact more actively with personalized content, and mailing rates grow;

fight abandoned carts and views - automatic reminders about the completed cart or viewed products increase the percentage of completed orders;

retain customers - regular letters with relevant content will not let users forget about the company.

All of this is definitely worth the time it takes to create an automated email script once. Especially since you don't need to learn programming or hire a developer to do it.

What are the types of automated scripts in email newsletters?

Automatic email campaign scripts differ in the purpose of communication and the method of launch.

By the purpose of communication

Welcome scripts. Such scripts are set up to automate the first contact with a new client or newsletter subscriber. These are the very same welcome letters that arrive in the mail immediately after the user has left their email address. With the help of automation, they can be made as relevant as possible and not make the person wait for the marketer to answer him manually.

A well-developed script at this stage helps to immediately begin to build loyalty and promote the recipient through the sales funnel.

Onboarding. These chains are also usually launched at the first stages of interaction with a new user, often right after the welcome ones. The main goal of onboarding scenarios is training in a broad sense. You can teach new subscribers not only how to work in online services and applications, but also how to use the capabilities of the marketplace or online bank tools, search for the necessary information on websites, and much more.

With the help of such chains, you will create a positive experience of interaction with the brand for new customers and guide them through the first stages of the user path. And at the same time, you will collect initial information about the client's interests, offering to set up a personal account or specify data.

Reactivation. The main goal of such mailings is to return to the segment of active subscribers those who have stopped buying, opening letters and interacting with the brand in any way. Thanks to automation, such work can be done regularly. The script selects subscribers from the database according to certain criteria, for example, those who have not opened your mailings for 3 months. And sends them a pre-prepared letter with useful information, bonuses and discounts or a warning that inactive addresses are removed from the database.

This is much more effective than manually analyzing the database once every 3 months, forming an inactive segment and sending a letter. In addition, in an automated script, you can use a chain of letters, where the content of the next one depends on the user's reaction to the previous one. This allows you to increase the percentage of reactivated subscribers.

Service. Such scenarios are set up to notify the user about certain events - transferring an order for delivery, crediting or writing off bonuses, changing tariffs. They do not directly affect sales, but help increase loyalty and retain customers. When service letters contain truly useful information, are written with care, simply and clearly, the user gets a positive experience of interacting with the brand.

And to increase traffic to the site or the profit that a specific client brings to the business, you can add marketing messages to service mailings, for example, about promotions or new products. But this should be done unobtrusively, so as not to irritate and not reduce the increase in loyalty to nothing.

Promo. The goal of such automatic scripts is to increase sales and profits. This is a large group that combines mailings with different mechanics. These include, for example, warm-up chains in online schools and reminders about collected baskets in online stores.

An automatic promo campaign script can consist of one letter that is sent to the user for a specific event, or dozens of messages. The main difference of this type of mailing is that their main task is to bring the user to the point of purchase and increase their check.

An invisible but important role of automatic chains is to simplify segmentation. With their help, you can add or remove data about a user, move them to a list or remove them from the database. For example, if a company launched a reactivation series of letters and the user did not respond to it, at the end of the script you can set the condition "remove from the database" or "move to the inactive list".

By launch method

Trigger. Trigger-based mailing automation is the most common type of scenario. Letters are sent when a certain event occurs. The user performs or does not perform the action we expect from them:

leaves their email address and clicks subscribe;

opens the letter and follows or does not follow the link;

views certain pages of the site;

puts products in the basket and closes the tab.

Automation of such scenarios allows you to quickly respond to user behavior and send them appropriate messages at the right time. And thus solve business problems: sell, increase revenue and profit, retain or return a client.

A specific day and time. Such automated scenarios do not depend on user actions and are launched when a specific date occurs. This could be the user's birthday, public holidays, days of regular mailings or events of the company and its partners.

For example, an online school launches a promotional campaign to attract students to a new course. The marketer sets up an automatic scenario that involves sending warm-up letters a month, 20 days, 2 weeks, a week and 3 days before the start of training.

5 examples of use in different niches

Let's move on to practice and use specific examples to understand how to use automatic email newsletter scripts in different areas of business.

Ecommerce. A classic automatic email newsletter scenario for an online store is a newsletter with product recommendations. These are selections of items from the catalog based on the user's interests - categories and specific products that he viewed.

A marketer can set up a mailing so that users are sent product recommendations after a certain time after visiting the site. For example, if a person left without making a purchase, the mailing will arrive in a day; if they placed an order, in a week

In addition to a separate mailing with such a scenario, you can add a personalized block of product recommendations to all emails from an online store.

Online education. In the field of online education, automated scripts are a popular and effective tool. For example, marketers of such projects use warm-up chains of letters that start with a lead magnet on the website of an online university or a separate landing page and lead the potential client to purchase a large educational program.

After the lead magnet, the user starts receiving newsletters on the same topic:

training materials and instructions;

invitations to free school events;

success stories of people who have completed a paid course;

information about the prospects that await the user after training;

conditions and advantages of studying in this particular online school.

At the end of the chain, the person receives an invitation to enroll in a large paid course. Usually there are several such messages - with promotions, discounts, bonuses and other special offers that can motivate the user to make a purchase.

B2B. In this area, email marketing should be aimed at creating trusting and long-term relationships. Quick sales techniques are ineffective in this area. It makes no sense to start without creating portraits of the clients’ businesses and thinking through a separate email strategy for each sector. The most effective techniques in B2B sales are specific numbers, cases, social proof, and clear solutions.

Banks. In the banking sector, email marketing is generally used less frequently and less actively than in online education or e-commerce; automatic scripts are not very common. For example, some banks send automatic mailings by launch date on the client's birthday and on public holidays.

However, in this niche, there are other areas for developing communication with clients through automatic email scripts. For example, a marketer can set up sending trigger messages in response to client actions: using a mortgage calculator, viewing credit products on a website or in an application, closing a deposit, and others.

In such letters, you can send useful information, special offers, selections of more profitable products, and other content that motivates the user to start or continue using certain tools.

Medicine. Medical clinics and laboratories have many ways to stimulate sales and increase loyalty using automated email campaigns. One of the most obvious ones is reminders about regular visits and preventive examinations. The clinic has information about the last time the client visited a dentist or gynecologist. It is easy to set up a mailing about when it is time to get checked again, six months after the last visit. In the same way, you can remind about vitamin and microelement tests, comprehensive checkups and other preventive procedures.

Another option is trigger mailings in response to user actions in the application or on the clinic's website. For example, a person looked at information about laser vision correction. Some time after that, he may receive an email with a special offer for this service and detailed useful information that removes fears and objections.

Ophthalmology Clinics Automatic Email Scripts

In this article, we looked at ideas for automated email newsletter scripts for 5 business niches. But this tool can be successfully used in many other areas. It is enough to analyze what data about customer behavior the company has and how it can be used to send users the most relevant offers and content. And then incorporate automated scripts into your email marketing strategy.