Email Marketing Automation That Moves People to Action  ## Metadata - Author: [[Social Media Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: Email Marketing Automation That Moves People to Action - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/e5871f81-946d-4c43-9958-9df445243ab5 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Prioritize Email Automation For ROI** - Do prioritize email automation over occasional broadcasts to drive measurable ROI. - Automation saves time and delivers the right message at the exact moment to prompt action. Transcript: Michael Stelzner Or said another way, when this is done really well, what is the upside for marketers? Jessica Best Yeah. So I'm going to answer two questions because the first one is I promise you that no matter how much you love social media, email marketing can be your very best buddy. So I actually became really good friends with both the paid media and organic media side, social media sides of my agency, because email is kind of a different bag, right? Like this is an owned database of people that literally gave you permission to put ideas in their inbox. You guys know the power of it. I mean, you know the power of it, Michael. So I think just maybe if you're not sure about email marketing and you listen to this podcast to see if you might have interest, I will tell you my two favorite letters, ROI. Email marketing makes money. We have permission to send and we do. And then people read it and they take the actions that we want. So we're a channel that really prides ourselves on attributable action. And that's what we hope to maybe optimize today, together today, specifically email marketing automation. So I know one of the big, you know, gaps in the marketplace when I talk to marketers is I'm doing emails and they mean they're doing like a monthly newsletter, which is a good start, or they're Doing when they have time-ish newsletters. So I think just really dialing in on where do you make your effort back? Where do you make your money back in email marketing? And that's in automation. So when done really well, email marketing automation not only saves you time and sanity, it also puts something in somebody's inbox at the exact right moment for them. And there's almost nothing more powerful than that. ([Time 0:06:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6a3b0019-f18a-468d-b786-2ed12b535dc8)) - **Use Triggers Instead Of Broadcasts** - Do set up triggered automations (not broadcasts) that send when an action or inaction occurs. - Use automation for immediate timely responses like welcomes or purchase confirmations. Transcript: Jessica Best So I love broadcast as a counter term, right? Broadcast means it's sent on my schedule, the marketer's schedule. And then automation is that it's really almost that one-to send at the moment that means something to the recipient. And the best example, the most basic example of this is a welcome email. Somebody signs up for your email list, they should get an email. So it's triggered by an action or by inaction. Some of my favorite automation is actually how do we wake folks up if they haven't taken the next step? So automation is meant to mostly be in very small quantities. ([Time 0:08:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a1a4b0f8-6721-4b9a-bb55-80771986868f)) - **Turn The Welcome Into A Short Series** - Do send a welcome series, not just a single welcome email, to deepen the relationship. - Use the series to show voice, deliver top content, and include a clear next ask. Transcript: Jessica Best So the one you already heard me say is the one that I hope everyone listening is at least doing something for their welcome email. And this is kind of in two categories, right? When somebody signs up or subscribes for your newsletter, they should get a welcome email. Welcome to the newsletter. Here's some of our best stuff, some of our subscribers' favorites. And here's what we want you to do next, right? Don't forget this is email marketing. Is there something else that would deepen their relationship with us? And I would say even better than one email would be to send a series of emails where the first one is sent immediately. And then sort of the next email is, you know, since you're interested in our newsletter, you might also check out our social channels, or you might love this five-star review from one Of our readers. Is there anyone else that you think should be subscribed? Right? What is the next thing? People will never be more engaged with your brand than the second after they just signed up to receive your emails. That was a pretty big step they took. So just taking advantage of that and really trying to deepen the relationship at the right moment. ([Time 0:10:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ca4971c8-837f-41d9-9ec6-a583b35c37a7)) - **Welcome Email: Tone, Expectations, Ask** - Do use the welcome email to set tone, state expectations, and include an ask like follow, download, or buy. - For e-commerce, include product suggestions because subscribers are often shoppers. Transcript: Jessica Best And I know this is cheating, but you did give me the platform. So the first one is for B2B marketers, I think even signing up for a newsletter, you want to really start to show your brand, your voice. So you and I are both friends with Rich Brooks and his Agents of Change podcast does this so well. If you sign up for his podcast newsletter, he immediately starts talking in his own voice and sharing some of his own stories. You know who they're going to be. You like almost validated why they signed up for you, which that's what a welcome email does, right? So one piece of that is setting the tone and kind of giving them a pat on the back. They're going to feel really good about signing up because they're already starting to relate to you. The second thing I would say is just newsletters, whether it's B2B or B2C or whatever in general, is we kind of just said it. I think the next ask needs to be in there. Do I want them to download something now? Do I want them to follow me in social? Do I want them to reach out to somebody? Do I want them to start shopping? So this is where that third piece comes in. If you are direct to consumer, if you are literally an e-commerce brand, that first welcome email, forgive me, should sell something. That's probably why they got on the list to begin with. And while I'm not a huge believer in every welcome email needing an offer, it is pretty prevalent for e-commerce. And at the very least, they probably signed up because they're shopping for your brand. So final word for me is e-commerce folks. It's time to put products in front of them. They've said yes to the first date. ([Time 0:13:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c84821bb-c62b-4db7-a83d-90c0012dae7c)) - **Timing For Welcome Sequence** - Do send the first welcome email immediately and follow with two more within the first week. - Match the day of week/time of the initial send to increase engagement on follow-ups. Transcript: Jessica Best The first one has to go out immediately. That's the only hard and fast rule. Like the thing automation, email marketing automation can do better than almost any other marketing channel is it can be human beings to the punch. So the first one should go out immediately. That's the expectation of the person who subscribed. And I think it's just our best chance to get in front of somebody while they're still warm. The second and third, I would typically start with, well, I would start with one. So if you don't have any, start with one. But if you have one, I would suggest trying to expand that to three. That's one of my favorite sort of bundles of email marketing. And it's because we're trying not to overwhelm the person. We're going to send them a newsletter at some point in this month. So we're just trying to kind of warm them up. And again, as just a template, I would say that starts in the first week. So if you send one immediately, wait a couple of days, send maybe a plus up. Hey, did you think about this or have you seen this? And then I like to send on day eight, which is usually the same day of the week as that first immediate email. ([Time 0:19:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aa945e83-f22d-42c2-ba7b-310cd9f37cee)) - **Automate Lead Nurture To Support Sales** - Do support sales with automated lead-nurture emails that beat humans to the punch. - Automate a polite salesperson-style follow-up promising a call and giving reply options. Transcript: Jessica Best And I think this is actually, I love that you bring up the sales, like shoot the email off to the salesperson and it's in their court. It is, but remember I said automation beats humans to the punch every time. So I want to figure out as a marketer, how I can best support my sales team by either supporting or even automating what they would send already. What I can't automate is picking up the phone and calling the person. So like if you get a request for a demo and they put a phone number in, please call them. Like I can't beat that, right? As an email marketing person, I cannot substitute you picking up the phone and calling them. But what I can do is if you, Michael, are my assigned sales rep when I submit that lead form, because it's based on the product that you own or the geography that you're assigned to, I, the Marketer, can actually send an email as if I'm Michael that beats that call to the punch, right? I can literally get that out the door before a human being even has time to dial the number. And the truth is, while I would love to say that all of our sales teams are calling within five minutes because they know the effectiveness of that, the truth is it might be in the first Few hours or maybe even a day. And so this is one of those, I get it. You're listening. You're ready for me. I'm going to give you a call. So kind of prepping that prospect for, I'd love to set time to call. I'm going to give you a call in the next couple of hours. If there's a time that works better for you, hit reply and we'll take care of you, that type of thing. ([Time 0:21:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7917d3dd-d77f-4987-8770-a9c5ade5ec97)) - **Deliver Requested Content Then Nurture** - Do send the exact brochure or resource they requested to their inbox and follow with targeted nurture content. - Build multi-email streams tailored to long purchase journeys like Winnebago models. Transcript: Jessica Best The website, including literally a downloadable brochure, technical specifications, all the model variations. And they basically just said, here, do you want it? Click. And there was a form that said, do you want to give us your email address? And I was like, oh, great. Lean capture. And then they didn't do anything with it. And I was like, um, I'm about to blow your mind. What if we sent the brochure that they just downloaded to their inbox if they give us their email address and permission to use it? Like, we have to make sure that they want to receive emails. But since it's not a required field, if they give us an email address and say, I'd like to get this in my inbox, I think we should send it to them. What do you think? So not only that first, again, immediate email saying, here's the brochure you were looking for, but then that nurture series was actually over about two weeks. Winnebago is a long-term decision. So we actually, the next email was, here's kind of a deep dive into the specifications of the model that you were looking at the third one is behind the scenes or influencer videos of kind Of the tour of the vehicle either how it was made or how it's laid out and we start to add in a you know if you're shopping for this model you might also be interested in this model in case this Isn't quite the fit for you so starting to suggest you may also like. And then the fourth email was really just driving the Winnebago brand home. So we talked about this a little bit with Rich. It's so important that if Winnebago has direct access to someone while they're shopping for an RV, that they take that opportunity to really convince that person that there's no other Brand like Winnebago. Because Winnebago doesn't sell direct to the consumer. They have to sell through a dealer and that dealer might have an incentive from a competitive brand that's better. And they'd rather move that person that comes in for a test drive to another brand. We have an opportunity to convince them no other brand will do. It has to be Winnebago. So that four part email series, we set this up for one of the vehicles just to like, let's see if it works, guys. We set this up for one of the vehicles and it made an immediate lift year over year in sales, not just like we saw clicks or like, like we literally could see the jump in sales for that model. ([Time 0:26:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/28fca07a-cb4c-431e-8ae9-f81fc305ae9c)) - **Gate Premium Research, Don't Auto-Opt In** - Do gate high-value research behind a valid business email but avoid auto-opting people into marketing. - Use checkboxes for explicit newsletter opt-in and keep sales follow-up separate. Transcript: Jessica Best A hundred percent. This is maybe one of the top three questions I get from a B2B audience, especially. Do we gate our content or do we just ask people for their email address and give away the content anyway right and I think the answer is maybe shifted a little bit over the years I definitely Know some brands that still say give us a correct email address and we'll just send it to your email address if you didn't give us a real email address go back and fill out the form again But I think we've kind of moved away from that a little bit. And partially, you can kind of see the example with Winnebago. It maybe doesn't make sense to gate that. Like if you're shopping for a Winnebago and you want all of the specifications of a $400,000 vehicle, I don't think we should gate that. I don't think we should say, you have to give this to us to get it delivered to your inbox. So I think it depends on the content. Michael Stelzner So in this case, you offer the option to have it delivered to their inbox or download it. Okay. That's interesting. Jessica Best Exactly. So when they submitted their email, we did just say, and here you go, it's going to download in a new window, but we did take that opportunity to send it to their inbox so that it's for safekeeping Later on. But I would say if you have something on the flip side, that's more like primary research, let's say you spent three months doing primary research on the topic that everyone quotes, But nobody has numbers for. You can get that. That is wildly valuable. And it's fair to say, no, no, we'll send that to your inbox for you. You're going to have to give us a valid work email address. Now I will say the asterisk there is I don't automatically opt people in. You do have to tell me who you are because we're a sales driven organization, but you don't have to opt in for marketing automation. You don't have to opt in for our newsletter. ([Time 0:29:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5baaf8b4-9bc1-42c5-8950-a21c0d261c75)) - **Personalize Using Form Data And Behavior** - Do use form data to personalize paths or assign an appropriate sales rep. - Personalize content to match the specific product or topic the prospect showed interest in. Transcript: Jessica Best Exactly. So that's the one piece that I want to make sure that we say is possible. And don't get overwhelmed if you're like, listen, I just turned this thing on. I'm not personalizing 15 versions of it. That's okay. But using the data that you're collecting on that form, you actually can send people either down different paths entirely or just an assigned sales rep is a great example. If you're in Nebraska shopping for Winnebago, I can literally send the email, the nurture email from the Nebraska Winnebago dealer. Right. It's signed by that person at the bottom. If you have any questions, my name is Bob. Call me Bob. Right. So I think doing little things like that, you know, we think of personalization as being hi, Jessica, hi, first name, but really valuable personalization also makes sure that the content Of that email matches what the person is shopping for. So for example, somebody is shopping for a Travato for Winnebago. If we send them the brochure for an adventurer, what are we even doing? That doesn't even make sense, right? So really using the data of where somebody is on your site, what does that mean they're interested in? Who's getting assigned to that person who should be signing the email? Then, frankly, using what they click on in that email, if nothing else, if we don't know if they're this product or this product, that first email, what they click on could actually give The salesperson some direction on what that person is most interested in. ([Time 0:31:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3a32ace0-dc0c-4306-81a1-935071290c1c)) - **Keep Forms Short And Use Progressive Profiling** - Do keep initial gated-content forms short (3–4 fields) and use progressive profiling later. - Append data via tools or ask one extra question on return visits to reduce friction. Transcript: Jessica Best It's got to be a balance. If I don't have enough information to send you the relevant email that you're actually looking for, then I didn't collect enough. But the truth is more than four fields on the first signup form is probably too many. Like all of this is friction, right? Do I really want to give you my contact information? Request a demo is different, but as long as we're talking about gated content, we keep those pretty short in my world. It could be first name, company, email address. I don't really have a use for last name. Mostly you talked about HubSpot, for example, there are platforms out there that will tell you the rest of what you need to know about that person. Oh, Jessica with Bedareff, her last name is best. She's been doing email marketing for 20 years. She has one company, one employee at her company. I mean, we can fill in a lot of information now with some of the data systems there. And so that I think starting simply and either paying for additional information to be appended or just asking for more information later, either with clicks, like you said, or a progressive Profile approach, which HubSpot actually as an email platform has that built in. ([Time 0:34:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7d2c017b-4fdb-474c-8f88-ec9bf194476d)) - **Handle Generic Emails With Scoring, Not Blocklists** - Do not automatically exclude generic email domains from marketing; instead apply backend rules for sales assignment. - Score and qualify engaged Gmail users for sales if their behavior indicates strong intent. Transcript: Jessica Best Yeah, so most of my clients don't actually need to exclude those because if all that's going to them is marketing automation, it didn't cost us anything. So even if there's an autofill or it's a student, ah, you can have the content for free. I don't really care. We just wouldn't assign that person to a sales rep. So it's more like rules on the backside. If fewer than 10 employees or a.edu email address or gmail.com. We're just not going to assign that person, but they can still have our content for free. And if they reply and it's like, Hey, I'm actually the like CEO of Coca-Cola, but I'm using my Gmail address on accident. Like, Oh, well then yeah, let's, let's hang out. Let's talk. Michael Stelzner Yeah. Cause I don't, I'm using my personal address or whatever. Okay. Yeah. I, I see what you're saying. I like this a lot. So what I'm hearing you say is that like, Hey, if you're actually fishing for leads and they don't put their company email address in there, maybe throw them into a nurture sequence. And then when they, they hit a series of actions that qualify them through a different route, then bring them back to the sales team. Is that kind of what I'm hearing you say? If they're on like a welcome sequence or a newsletter or something like that? Absolutely. Jessica Best And I think you just have to be really stringent about how you're scoring that because you might get a student email address that's really engaged that would otherwise have a really High lead score, but you still don't really want to call them. So if they're clicking on the right things, again, I'll stick with the HR example, X at HR. They have high value clicks. So like they've got like free content about legal risk and some of these other, but they also have high value clicks, like what to look for when hiring a PEO firm. That is a shopping click. Like that person is ready to talk. And even if it's a Gmail address, it's probably worth sending that one to the sales team, right? Because that action is so strong. So yeah, I think you just have to have a good sense of what you're defining as engagement or what you're defining as, okay, that one's ready. That one's cooked. Let's send them to sales. ([Time 0:37:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/112f1152-22ed-4c34-ab6c-29ec9044d5b9)) - **Onboard Customers And Ask For Feedback** - Do create post-purchase onboarding automations that ask satisfaction and offer help. - If customers report high satisfaction, follow with review or referral requests; if low, intervene quickly. Transcript: Jessica Best So I, this is again, a big gap that I see when I talk to folks on the road, we're really good at nurturing people by email until they buy something. And then they were like, okay, thanks. Michael Stelzner That's no longer my job because I'm marketing. Right. And that's somebody else's job. Right. Jessica Best Well, a little bit, but so I'll go back to the Winnebago example. We looked in their database, their numbers, 70% of the people that will buy a Winnebago this year already own a Winnebago right now. Their best prospects are the people on their list already, are the owners that are in their database already. And if they're not sort of welcoming them on board, there's a missed opportunity there. So new customer or new product owner onboarding, right? So this is almost like the welcome email, but to the next level, because this person has literally done the exact thing you wanted them to do. And they might do it again if you're nice to them. So new customers sort of post-purchase, are you pleased with your purchase? Do you need assistance with your purchase? Frankly, one of my favorites is doing a post-purchase customer satisfaction survey or NPS net promoter score survey, which is just a one question customer satisfaction survey. And then if that person is really satisfied, what's the next thing we can ask for, right? What's the thing we're marketing for? It's a review or a referral, right? We're asking somebody if they're happy. And then if they are, we're putting them back into the content library as a really satisfied customer or a five-star review or whatever that is. So that first thing, I think onboarding new clients and still making one more ask, but also, you know, between you and me, I would almost rather know right away if somebody is unhappy. So even though it doesn't give me a marketing five-star review, if I get the results back from that customer satisfaction survey and they are a two out of 10, I got to know that because I am never going to get to cross sell. I'm never going to resell that person on the brand again until I fix that issue. So right after that purchase, there's that moment where we're really trying to both welcome them to the family of brands and to the experience and to kind of help them have the best experience Possible. ([Time 0:40:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c1b46b25-81be-40fe-baa7-d115767ad7ef)) - **Mercedes Uses 10/10 Rule For Reviews** - Mercedes-Benz only asks for a public review after customers score a 10 out of 10. - If customers score below perfect, a human calls to resolve the issue before requesting reviews. Transcript: Jessica Best Well, my favorite is I got to work on, there was a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Kansas City and Mercedes-Benz whole brand is the best or nothing. So like they have a customer satisfaction survey after you purchase a Mercedes. And unless you say you were 10 out of 10 happy, somebody calls you. A nine is not good enough. It has to be a 10. Now, if you score them a 10 out of 10, and most people did, then they would send you a second follow-up email that says, thank you. That is so wonderful to hear that you had such a great experience. Here is our Google review link for you, right? Notice we don't ask for the review until we're sure that you are a 10 out of 10 happy customer. So Mercedes-Benz was one where we kind of set up that neat automation. And a lot of platforms are starting to, I think, give you that as an out of the box template. Send the survey. If a nine or 10, send the follow-up request for a review or referral. ([Time 0:42:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/050310f4-3ea0-41e6-bcf8-17d6bf5d3c3f)) - **Cross-Sell Complementary, Use Engines For Scale** - Do cross-sell complementary items after purchase, not redundant ones the customer already owns. - Use recommendation engines for many SKUs and avoid manual matching when complexity grows. Transcript: Jessica Best Yeah. So the post-purchase cross-sell is one of the like go-to money-making email marketing automation campaigns. You bought this, a toilet seat. Do you also need a toilet? So my least favorite version of marketing automation is those people that buy a toilet and then they get nurtured to buy other toilets they may also like. Michael, how many toilets do I need? Michael Stelzner You need just enough. Jessica Best Just the one, just the one that I just bought. So I think there's a bad way to do this sort of lookalike suggestion modeling. But if we can get to things you might like that go with your purchase, right? And I love an example from the retail space at home was a client of mine when I was at Barkley. And they actually paid for software, like a SaaS plugin that did this both on their website and in email. You didn't have to buy it. You could actually abandon it like cart abandonment or page abandonment. And it would say, oh, I saw you were looking at this rug. Do you like these instead? Right? Again, if they bought the rug, selling them a second rug, very low probability. But if they didn't buy the rug, selling them a different rug. Oh, did you need a different size? Or if this is your style, try these others that you may also like. That lookalike model was something that absolutely paid them back when they invested in a tool like that. ([Time 0:44:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/46742eba-b866-474f-8674-43889c0d44ec)) - **ML Already Powers Next-Best Actions** - Insight-driven personalization already uses machine learning to pick next-best actions. - This ML differs from generative AI but achieves automated next-best recommendations at scale. Transcript: Jessica Best Yeah. So actually, I mean, not to brag, but email marketing has been doing AI and machine learning led automation and triggers for a long time. So just what we were just talking about, Sertona is machine learning and AI. It's literally letting the computer figure out what the correlation is instead of the human having to do it. So that level of AI or that system of AI, I think is something that's so embedded in our marketing brains that it doesn't seem like maybe it's the same thing. And it's not the same as generative AI or agentic AI, but it is the same idea of, why don't you just tell me what the right answer is, computer that has all the data in it, and it will actually Give you the quote right answer or those segments or bubbles that you need to be able to market to without a human being having to ask it questions or prompt it or whatever. We're using a system that already knows how to find the next best recommendation. Michael Stelzner About a lot of these email platforms that we use, they're almost like a big old database with all sorts. They are a database of not just email addresses, but all the actions that prospects and customers have taken. And I would imagine they're all working on some sort of AI analysis to help identify the people in the database that are the most likely prospects, right? And then you can just go ahead and have those messages kind of even slightly customized behind the scenes. Are you seeing that coming out from a lot of the email platforms? Yeah. Jessica Best And actually, again, it's not even entirely new. So I think probably five, six, seven years ago, Salesforce Marketing Cloud rolled up sort of their quote AI and their email platform. And it was very underwhelming because all it was, was your top 25 most engaged and your lowest 25% engaged. And I was like, I could have done that with a sort feature, but thank you for trying. So they are now, I think, progressing into flight risk, right? Like likely risk of no longer being engaged so that we can catch somebody before they just stop checking that email address. I think we're also seeing to what you're saying, the point that you make is, can you actually kind of listen to what Jessica clicks and then just decide what Jessica should get next for Me? ([Time 0:47:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6aaf6369-afb1-49ae-9211-76c7854c7afa))