9 Marketing Automations to Grow Your Ecommerce Store

You probably hear “automation” in reference to marketing a lot, but how does it apply to email?

And more importantly, how can you use automated processes to grow your ecommerce store?

When people think of automation, they might imagine an impersonal experience or some robotic process, but automation doesn’t have to be impersonal or robotic. In fact, 86% of marketers either already use marketing automation or plan to implement it within the next two years.

It’s true automation relieves the burden of tedious tasks, but it also helps you personalize and improve your email marketing content. That’s why automated emails tend to generate 320% more revenue than standard campaigns.

Read on to discover how email automation works, as well as a few marketing automations you can implement in your email marketing strategy to grow your ecommerce store.

What are marketing automations and what purpose do they serve for growing your ecommerce store?

In the most basic sense of the word, marketing automations pass certain tasks onto software tools. Instead of sending emails manually, you can design them ahead of time and allow the software to send them at the perfect time. 

Plus, automation tools rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning to study your customers’ behavior, both inside the inbox and on your website. By linking on-site analytics to your email marketing platform, you can send campaigns based on information you may not have access to otherwise. 

When a visitor clicks on a certain page or completes a certain action, they’ll automatically receive a personalized email message based on their behavior. 

For example, automation tools let you send personalized abandonment emails promoting products customers left in their cart. You can also recommend products subscribers viewed on your website but never added. 

Those are some of the most advanced features. However, personalized newsletters, receipts, and birthday emails also rely on automation. 

Email marketing automations are effective for growing your ecommerce store with relevant content. Instead of sending generic campaigns—or even segmented campaigns to different demographics—automation lets you hyper-personalize based on the subscriber’s unique browsing behavior. 

9 marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store

Now that you understand the basics of marketing automations, it’s time to go over some specific tools and features you can use. 

The idea is to design the layout and voice ahead of time. When a customer completes a certain action on your site, it triggers the automation tool to send a personalized email. 

1. Abandoned cart campaigns to win over leads

On average, 70% of customers abandon their carts after adding products. On mobile, the figure is much higher. You can take some steps to prevent cart abandonment from happening in the first place. Such as:

• Offering guest checkout (don’t require customers to register and set up an account)
• Minimizing the number of clicks it takes to complete a purchase
• Reducing the number of form fields 
• Make it easy for shoppers to remove products

No matter how many measures you take to optimize the checkout process, abandonment will still happen. Automated email campaigns can help you win back those previously lost causes. 

Automated abandonment emails are especially useful for nudging mobile shoppers who wanted to complete their purchase later on a desktop. 

Rudy’s included specific products in this email. Plus, they also added some urgency by reminding the subscriber that free shipping would expire soon.

2. Welcome and onboarding campaigns to build authority 

As an ecommerce store, it’s important to use email marketing as a tool to build trust and authority among your subscribers and customers. 

Welcome emails and onboarding campaigns gently introduce subscribers to your brand and explain what you’re all about. 

Plus, welcome emails have an average open rate of 50%, making them 86% more effective than other campaigns. With so much riding on a first impression, it’s important to optimize your automated welcome and onboarding campaigns as much as possible. 

Try to include irresistible coupons, a conversational tone, and useful information about your brand as you see fit. 

Lululemon made sure to include a link to their preference center, along with a store locator button in this welcome email:

3. Automatic reviews to build transparency and trust

Reviews help your customers feel confident in their purchase decisions. 

Marketing automations can help you display your reviews proudly directly in your email marketing campaigns. Instead of manually selecting the most detailed reviews for your promotional emails, automation tools can insert them wherever reviews would be most relevant to the subscriber and content.

See how Le Tote used embedded reviews to help the subscriber build confidence and nudge her towards a purchase?

4. Win back campaigns to stimulate dormant subscribers

Win back campaigns are important for preventing customer churn. Not only can they help you engage dormant subscribers, but they can also help you clean up your list.

Fortunately, marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store can help you revive sleepy customers to boost revenue and keep your list clean. 

Instead of segmenting your list and designing individual emails, artificial intelligence can take the reins and send out a series of highly personalized win back emails. 

Intuit QuickBooks sent this subscriber several personalized win back emails:

5. Supercharged receipts and transactional emails

Transactional emails tend to deliver 8 times higher open rates and clicks than any other email campaign. With figures like these, you can potentially enjoy 6 times more revenue. 

However, to take advantage of these stats, you’ll need to optimize your receipt emails. Since many brands don’t, you can stand out from competitors and capitalize on receipts by using marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store.

Entrepreneur Store included personalized product recommendations inside this receipt. You could also include coupons for future purchases or upsells.

6. Personalized newsletters to educate and engage

Newsletters are effective for communicating with your subscribers and offering engaging content without promotions. 

However, the same newsletters won’t work for every subscriber. Each person on your email list will respond better to different subject lines, topics, and body content. 

Email marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store can put together beautiful personalized newsletters instantly for every subscriber. 

US Outdoor Store sends automated personalized newsletters to their subscribers based on which activities they like and locations they live:

7. Automatic feedback to build trust and improve communication

If you want to display reviews in your email campaigns, you need to first generate feedback from your customers. 

Marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store can help encourage customers to leave feedback and upload photos directly through your email campaign integrations.

User-generated photos of your products give potential customers an extra boost of confidence when they’re deciding whether your product is the right fit for them.

8. Enhanced segmented campaigns to boost loyalty

Segmentation is important for making sure each of your subscribers receives the most relevant content possible. 

However, manual segmentation can only get you so far with demographics like age, gender, and location. 

Marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store can segment your subscriber list on a deeper level based on on-site behavioral data, engagement, and other factors. 

Your automation tools might, for example, notice when a previously engaged customer has stopped opening your campaigns and send them a coupon to prevent churn. 

You could also send an email like this from Keep. It includes personalized product recommendations encouraging the subscriber to shop with Keep for their fall wardrobe. 

9. Prevent browse abandonment with nudge campaigns

Using on-site behavioral data and marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store, you can also nudge interested subscribers toward conversions. 

Why wait for subscribers to add products to their cart before sending an abandonment email? 

Instead, use artificial intelligence technology to follow up with personalized reminders a few hours or days after they leave your website. 

When someone browses airline tickets, they may not necessarily begin the checkout process. However, Liner still sent this follow-up email reminding them about their potential trip along with three reasons to book to help build confidence in the customer’s decision. 

If they aren’t ready to purchase, the subscriber can still set up fare alerts from Liner.

Wrap up

Marketing automations to grow your ecommerce store make it easier for you to reach your customers with relevant content—fast. Instead of analyzing customer behavior, designing relevant campaigns by hand, and sending them manually, automation handles everything behind the scenes. 

Some awesome email marketing automation tools to grow your ecommerce store include:

• Abandoned cart campaigns
• Welcome and onboarding campaigns
• Automatic reviews
• Win-back campaigns
• Supercharged receipts and transactional emails
• Enhanced segmentation
• Nudging campaigns

Ready to boost your ecommerce business with the power of automation? Check out the innovative features from CM Commerce for inspiration.