Automating your communication can be an excellent way to optimize your time. Furthermore, it allows you to build better relationships with your customers, improving their experience and also helping to increase your revenue. In this article we will show you some basic flows to automate your communication.
What are workflows and how are they triggered?
A workflow consists of a set of rules or conditions that will trigger specific actions, depending on a starting point or initial action. Some examples of these actions are:
- A user subscribes to your newsletter;
- A user clicks on a specific “call to action” in your email, website or landing page; or
- A user leaves an item in your online store’s shopping cart and closes the page.
And these are just a few… check out the following flows and you’ll understand!
Here are 4 workflows you can use to automate your business processes.
Flow 1 – “Welcome Email”
This flow is practically mandatory!!! This consists of a welcome communication when, for example, a new user has registered on your website or newsletter. This way, the user will be able to find out some additional information about your company or the type of content you will share in your newsletter, the frequency with which new communications will be sent, links to your social networks, etc.
How does this flow work?
You need to define a starting point as the moment when a new contact is added to your contact list (segment). After a period of time defined by you (in this case it should be short), the welcome email will be sent to that respective contact.
This is our welcome email that we use at Paipeláine. You will probably have already received it when you signed up to our Newsletter (you are subscribed, right?🥺)
Flow 2 – “Birthdays”
Most likely, when your birthday arrives, you receive a series of emails from businesses you’ve interacted with wishing you a happy birthday. These emails come from marketing automations.
We all love to receive congratulations on our birthday! And, even more so, receiving gifts. This way, you can take the opportunity to give, for example, a discount code for your products or present some type of exclusive promotion for your users’ birthdays. They will feel closer to your brand, creating loyalty with it.
How does this flow work?
As with the previous flow, this one is quite simple. When registering, users enter their date of birth in the personal data they provide, this will be the starting point. When your birthday arrives, your birthday email will automatically be sent.
If your users do not provide their date of birth, you can always celebrate with them the date on which they signed up for your Newsletter. When you sign up for 1 year, you can also offer a discount, after 2 years you can increase the type of offer. This way you also show your customers the advantage of staying subscribed (in addition to, obviously, the quality content it contains).
Flow 3 – “Get feedback”
Getting feedback from your customers is extremely important and something you shouldn’t neglect, as who better than your customers to tell you what they would like to see in your business.
How does this flow work?
The first step is to decide when and under what circumstances you will ask your customers for feedback. Some examples are:
- When the customer makes a purchase;
- When you interact with a member of your team (sales/support/etc.);
- Some time after making the purchase (about the product or service you purchased);
- Among other situations.
After you choose the moment, and the customer meets the requirement you established, they will automatically receive an email with a request for feedback.
You can also make the workflow more complex and define several contact steps depending on the customer’s responses. For example, if they told you that they had a bad experience when making a purchase, you can try to understand whether the problem was in the way the information was presented, difficulty in processing it, etc.
Flow 4 – “Abandoned carts”
How many times has it happened to you that you left a product in the cart of an online store, did not proceed with the purchase and after a few days received an email reminding you that you left the cart with products?
There you have it, this automatic email reminded you of these products, and probably made you end up going there to finalize the purchase.
Just like the welcome email, this one is almost mandatory if you have an online store (we take this opportunity to remind you of some rules that you must follow related to e-commerce in Portugal).
How does this flow work?
This flow comes into operation when someone leaves one or more items in the cart and does not complete the sale. After a period of time determined by you (never less than 24 hours, we don’t want to pressure anyone 😂), an email will be sent to the buyer reminding them of what they left in the cart.
Some online stores offer a small discount, in order to encourage the user to complete the sale, it is up to you to decide what is the best way to proceed.
We hope this content has been useful to you. Take the opportunity to read here how email can help you sell better and how to create the perfect email for your campaigns.
And you know, if you have any questions, send us a message. Don’t forget to follow our Social Networks: Facebook; YouTube; Instagram; LinkedIn. See you soon…