As a small business or nonprofit, you thrive on bringing in sales or donations from new and existing customers or supporters. With email automation, you can do more and save time by communicating timely, relevant information to your subscribers based on their interests and actions. Email Marketing
That’s why, in this free one-hour webinar, we’ll show you how to:
Use email automation to welcome new subscribers and start building relationships
Create automated email series that map to your goals
Use data to optimize and automate more timely and relevant emails
How is an onboarding series different from a welcome series?
A welcome series should be sent right after someone joins your email list. In many cases, they may not have heard from you before and they’re already engaged with you. Keep them interested! Onboarding series can be sent after someone has made a purchase from you or maybe signed up for a program you have.
You mentioned four steps to take when creating a welcome series for new contacts. What are those?
For a lead nurture series:
About your business
Features and benefits
Client testimonial/press
Ask for the sale
If you are already a customer of Constant Contact, is there an extra fee for this?
If you are in the "Email" or "Core" package, you'll have access to a basic welcome email. For automated series and birthday and anniversary emails, you'll want to be in the "Email Plus" package which starts at $45 per month.
What happens when a contact gets to the end of an email series? Can they automatically be added to another list so we don't have to manually move them? We don't want to lose sight of them.
At this time, the series will stop and the contact stays on that list. We are working on some options to build out more features for the automation tools.
Automation Strategy
How can you structure an automated series for the real estate industry?
It's all going to be about education for your audience. You can nurture your leads to become clients of yours to buy or sell. Think about different groups of clients you work with like first-time homebuyers, commercial property clients, etc to have specific information for all of them. Another example is an onboarding series is if someone is going to sell with you. You could provide a series of emails that educate them on all of the things they need to be aware of: prepping their house for appraisal, home updates to get the most value, etc.
I’m working on a win-back campaign. Ideas around that?
Think about segmenting your list for different emails based on why they left you (if you have that information.) Education is going to be valuable on benefits and anything else educating about what you offer. If possible, you can provide a special offer to them.
Any recommendations for getting more calls for consultation calls for services: plumbing, teacher coaching, ed consulting/training, etc.
Like real estate, focus on education and the benefits of these services. When thinking about automation and plumbing, maybe you want to tie that to regular maintenance service and the benefits of why it's important to regularly have your line cleaned or inspected. For people who are brand new to you, we would suggest onboarding them to the service and what you offer and what to expect. For teacher coaching, what are the benefits, what are the results in your teacher coaching sessions? Better student reviews, higher test scores, etc.?
For a solo B2B business, what's the most streamlined email campaign that's realistic?
We always suggest the Welcome series and then use a nurture series to get prospects to buy your product/service. An onboarding series could be valuable as well once they buy from you. Provide education and details to help them get the most out of what you offer.
List Growth
Some of our leads just come in through an info@ mailbox and are not a hard opt-in. Is there a way to send out an opt-in verification email that would push the opt-in directly to my account? I don’t want to set up a sign-up form on my website.
You could use a confirmed opt-in email for this. Upload the contacts under the "implied" permission status and send the confirm opt-in to that list.
Important: If contacts don’t click the link, they'll be labeled in your account as "Awaiting Confirmation" and won’t receive any further emails from you. You cannot manually resend the Confirm Opt-in email. If contacts let you know they didn’t receive the confirmation email, have them check their junk or spam folder. If they still don’t find it, you will need to create a landing page and have them sign-up again to trigger the email a second time.
What is better: a paper sign-up form or a sign-up form hosted on a website?
If you're collecting their email address for the first time, an online sign-up form is going to be better than a paper sign-up form. That way you don't have to try to read their handwriting and when you use a Constant Contact sign-up form, it automatically gets added to a list in your account.
Segmenting Your Contacts
I want to set up segments and then send out the best content based on their interests. Can you talk about setting up segments and then accessing those lists?
There are many ways to set up segments. We've got a great webinar that runs on a regular basis called “How to Segment Your List to Get Better Email Marketing Results”. You can find it on the schedule here: https://constantcontact.com/freewebinar
Does Constant Contact have some kind of AI to segment emails?
We send a weekly email to our list already. What timing between weekly and automated emails would be good for sending automation so a customer wouldn't feel bombarded?
It could be tricky depending on what you have set up, but try to manage not having the automation and your regular emails send on the same day. If they are sent on different days but the information is still relevant, you should be okay in most cases. But keep an eye on your unsubscribes, opens, and clicks.
How many emails are too many?
The age-old question. In many cases, you can get away with multiple emails a month. That includes regular and automated emails. There's no one answer for everyone. So when you start adding in more automation, pay attention to things like your opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Your unsubscribes are sure to tell you.
How concerned should we be about sending too many emails and triggering unsubscribes - do you have any data on that?
This is always something you want to keep tabs on. The big tip is to make sure your information is relevant. As long as your information is relevant and timely, they are less likely to unsubscribe. Keep an eye on your data over time and between your automated emails as well as your regularly cadenced emails. Pay attention to unsubscribes and also clicks.
Is there anywhere in Constant Contact that shows me the best day/time to email my customers using previous data?
You can find the best time to send by looking at your reports. See our Knowledge Base article on the best time to send an email.
I love the idea of the follow-up email. Can I set up an email that can be sent after someone places an order at my online store?
At the moment, you can do this most easily if you have a store hosted through Shopify. See our Shopify integration article for more information.
Use Sections to Build Email Campaigns Faster and Improve Engagement Rates
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