When figuring out how to market your business, it’s easy to get carried away with what’s new: new products, an upcoming sale, what’s trending, what your competitors are doing, that new social media platform you’re not sure whether or not you should be on...
And while some new things are important, it takes significant time and ongoing effort to keep up with all of the things, all of the time.
Here’s the thing: your customers aren’t worried about which product or service is the newest. They care about what meets their needs in the moment.
That’s why email automations—when correctly planned and customized—are the unsung hero in your marketing toolbox. They’re still sent out to address customer needs in real time, keeping you relevant and timely. But you can plan them in advance.
There’s still no guarantee every email will be opened (spoiler: they won’t). And this is not about creating emails you can “set and forget.” Even the best automations need a periodic refresh.
But if you flip your assumptions about automated emails on their head and look for what is needed in key moments for your customers, instead of what’s new for your business, you’ll unearth new opportunities to win customers over.
Here are four of Good and Gold’s favorite opportunities for email automations that don’t sound like a robot sent them.
No one knows your customers better than you do! And we’re willing to bet you’ve already thought about what will help them make a purchase decision at key moments. So whether they just made their first purchase, subscribed to your list, or browsed a category on your e-commerce site, think about what would be most helpful to them next.
Then send it straight to their inbox! (If you make them go search for answers, they might find your competitor instead.)
Automations to consider: Onboarding or getting started guides, abandoned cart reminders, related products or accessories
Just like any other relationship, it’s important to not only tell your customer about yourself, but also remind them why they’re important to you.
If you have a loyalty program, it’s simple to set up automations that congratulate customers on accomplishments, such as reaching a new tier or reward level, or remind them of rewards they can use. You can also celebrate their birthday or customer anniversary with special discounts or promotions.
Automations to consider: Reminders and opportunities for loyalty program members, birthdays and anniversaries, a personal message from you or your team
For your new customer, the most exciting moment isn’t when they click “purchase.” It’s when your product arrives! Lean into that moment and use your automations to demonstrate you’re still thinking about them and interested in what they have to say.
Automations to consider: Use or product care instructions, check in after their purchase arrives, request they leave a review or share a picture on your website or social media
Do you produce a lot of informational content on your website or social media channels? Chances are your customers aren’t seeing every single thing. Help make sure your subscribers never miss helpful content by sending it straight to their inbox, too. You can automate sending your latest blog post, or even repurposing evergreen content like FAQs into a standalone series.
Automations to consider: Regular news or blog posts, new customer onboarding flows, evergreen FAQ content, best-selling product highlights
When set up correctly as part of your overall email marketing strategy, these automated emails aren’t simply transactional. They address customer needs in real time, are personalized based on your relationship and each customer’s actions, and keep your company top of mind—and top of inbox—with minimal extra effort.
We have a long-standing relationship with Bernardo 1946, partnering to drive success on their digital marketing channels with excellent results and ROI. We recently revamped their email marketing channel—read on to see how we knocked it out of the park!
In less than 3 months, we increased Bernardo’s email campaign-driven revenue by 106%! The brand was looking for an email strategy to increase engagement and revenue within Klaviyo. By designing an email system that reflected their sophisticated, timeless brand and leveraged thoughtful subscriber segmentation, we built an immersive ecommerce experience that benefits both the consumer and the brand.
We developed a multi-channel paid media strategy around seasonality, allowing us to deliver a return on ad spend close to 1,000% even in historically slower months. Bernardo needed to stand out in an overwhelmingly crowded footwear market, drawing attention to the quality and craftsmanship of its heritage brand while also appealing to modern digital shoppers. The brand was also hoping to drive consistent seasonal revenue, with a focus on conversions for both iconic best-sellers and newer footwear designs.
Impressed? We are too! To browse our services, see our certifications, and learn more about how our work can help take your brand to the next level, click here.
Keeping your audience both engaged and compliant is one of the most important keys to a successful email marketing program. Doing so ensures you’re reaching people that are interested to hear (and purchase) from you. There are three main steps to maintaining a compliant and engaged audience:
Re-engagement should happen continuously, but the exact timing will depend on your audience size, email campaign cadence, and outside factors. In this article, we’ll go over best practices for these three very important steps!
When the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a very strict privacy and security law passed by the European Union, was announced, marketers everywhere scrambled to ensure they were compliant. Soon after, California followed suit with the California Consumer Privacy Act (‘CCPA’), which is a similar regulation to GDPR. It’s rare, but now that we know how to refresh consent, we’re prepared for if anything similar happens in the future.
It’s recommended to regularly check-in on marketing regulations changes so you aren’t stuck flat on your feet when a change in consent regulations does happen.
Depending on the specific standards you are subject to, like the GDPR, the exact steps you need to take will vary. You may need to send a re-permission campaign (getting people to give their consent again), maintain a double opt-in standard, or store information securely. You’ll want to check the laws that are relevant to your audience, which depends on factors like your industry and where in the world your customers are making purchases from.
Taking these steps is important not only because it’s the law, but because at the end of the day, you want to ensure you’re targeting people who are interested in hearing from you and doing business with you. This is essential to using email as a relationship-strengthening tool with your audiences instead of it becoming a nuisance.
Unengaged audience members drag your KPIs down – it’s a simple fact. Re-engagement campaigns are a great way to, you guessed it, re-engage your unengaged audience members. Here are a few key guidelines we follow when running these campaigns for our clients:
Keep It Simple:
Grab Attention:
Send Only to Un-Engaged Members:
There are a few ways to go about this, and your platform is a great place to start. At Good & Gold, we use MailChimp and Klaviyo, both of which have great templates for creating an email and a relevant segment as a jumping off point.
Your final step will be to archive (or “sunset”) users that don’t engage, even after you send that super-enticing last campaign. Those who do not interact with emails for a prolonged period of time are unlikely to start engaging again and will drag down your KPIs, so it’s best to part ways on good terms! Some platforms have this worked into the automated flow, and some require a manual process – you’ll want to check with your specific platform for their recommended best practices on how to do this.
Remember, staying compliant and maintaining an engaged audience results in a happy audience that’s more likely to make purchases – and that means a happy marketing team and a growing business! It’s a win-win…win!
Over the past year, we've had the privilege of working with LOTS of wonderful clients on their email marketing programs. And though email marketing strategy is about much more than design, we love the process of developing and executing great design systems for email. For us, the challenge of creating something eye-catching and compelling within a notoriously restrictive system is hard to beat. Scroll on for a gallery of email templates we created this year.
In many cases, less is definitely more for email design. We've found that simple and consistent emails using native HTML render perfectly on all clients and convert well.
👍 Pros of simple templates:
We use highly branded emails to leverage well-established and recognizable brand systems. These often require a bit more pre-production work, as they typically require lots of custom assets to make an impact.
👍 Pros of branded templates:
This year, we've also designed some great templates that use a mix of native HTML and custom assets. In our opinion, this is a great approach, as it allows us to showcase strong brand systems without losing the flexibility afforded by HTML.
As digital marketers, we navigate technology changes all the time. For example, now that Apple has released new privacy features in iOS 15 and Mac OS Monterey like Mail Privacy Protection, we know it's essential to understand how those features will impact email marketing holistically.
Will Apple’s update make tracking harder? Sure. Will it make your emails any less great? Nope. Since we recently answered your SEM questions, let’s explore Apple Mail Privacy Protection and ways to prepare for it.
If you're unfamiliar with Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection update, it's basically a privacy feature that hides your IP address to block a sender from tracking your location, what you do online, and seeing if you've opened their email. It also prevents a sender from seeing the device you use to open their emails.
While this sounds like a metrics nightmare for email marketers, privacy updates like these are generally positive in the long run, making it important to adapt.
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection features only affect Apple Mail users, and those who’ve toggled the feature within the Mail app. So, for now, you can still track anyone using the Gmail app or others outside of the Apple ecosystem.
Depending on how many of your subscribers exercise their privacy, the impact may vary. This update will, however, cause metrics like open rates, clicks per unique open rate, geolocation, device usage, or anything else captured by IP address to become less reliable or inflated.
Beyond reporting, Apple’s privacy update could change how you manage segments, resends, A/B tests and automations. For example, automations or resends triggered by non-openers will be a no-go for people using Mail Privacy Protection. Similarly, A/B tests based on open rates like subject lines will become slightly skewed for these users. But remember: open rates aren’t going away. They’re just becoming a little more mysterious or inflated. Metrics like clicks—not clicks per unique visitor—continue to be reliable.
The best place to start is taking a look to see how many of your subscribers use Apple Mail. If you’re unfamiliar with how to do that, here’s how in Mailchimp, and here’s a reporting refresher for Klaviyo.
Once you have a good sense of how many subscribers are impacted, it’s time to do a little platform housekeeping to anticipate shifty metrics. At Good & Gold, we took Mailchimp’s advice to:
As daunting as this sounds (or reads), we’re approaching this as an opportunity to continue doing what we do best: create highly engaging emails that generate revenue.