Email marketing automation should be part of your digital marketing strategy. It involves utilising your email software (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Campaign Monitor, etc) to send emails based on triggers and schedules, streamlining your communication for opportunity, efficiency and personalisation.
For e-commerce, you’d typically create email marketing automation to boost sales through personalised product recommendations, cart abandonment reminders, and timely order updates.
For lead generation businesses, you can nurture your leads with targeted information, segmentation, and follow-ups. When correctly applied, email marketing automation enhances customer engagement and touch points, driving revenue.
We wanted to highlight how we utilised email marketing automation to grow the digital marketing strategy for one of our Melbourne-based clients.
PorterVac is a roof restoration and gutter cleaning business. They have been working with Business Assist since 2013 when they were just a four-person business. When they reached a critical stage where the business needed to achieve substantial business growth to take up a leadership position in their industry, we helped them expand to a 40+ person business. As their digital marketing solutions and online presence developed, they were ready to optimise their sales and marketing strategy to include email marketing automation. And it was felt that this would assist PorterVac cementing their market leadership in gutter cleaning and further enhancing and growing their market position in the roof restoration market.
The plan was to utilise email marketing automation to:
- further boost returning gutter cleaning customer business
- assist in following up on roof restoration quotes
- lead nurturing of new gutter cleaning leads
We created the following email marketing automation sequences:
Gutter Cleaning Reminder email
Generally speaking, houses should have their gutters cleaned every 6 months (it does depend on the house and how many trees are close etc.). However, PorterVac found that their customers (on average) only booked a gutter clean every 16 months.
To address this and reduce the period between gutter cleans for PorterVac customers, an automated Gutter Cleaning Reminder email sequence was set up to trigger the first of a 5-email sequence, 6 months after a customer’s last gutter clean, with 1 email sent every 30 days. The emails were focused on reminding the customers of the benefits of regular gutter maintenance.
Results:
- Within only a few months, an average of 105 gutter clean bookings per month were received from this email sequence
- PorterVac Gutter Cleaning returning customer bookings dropped from an average of every 16 months to under 13 months (an increase in frequency of about 20%)
Cold Customer Re-Engagement Email:
PorterVac had a large database of previous customers that had not booked a gutter clean in the previous 2 years. Earlier attempts of “email blasts” and phone calls to these contacts were unsuccessful.
An automated Cold Customer re-engagement email sequence was set up to trigger the first of a 5-email sequence, 2 years after a customer’s last gutter clean, with one of the 5-emails sent every 30 days. The emails were more “sales focused,” with a discounted promotional offer on gutter cleaning to motivate these customers into more frequent gutter cleans.
Results:
- Within only a few months, an average of 25 gutter clean bookings per month were received from this email sequence
Gutter Cleaning Lead Nurturing
A large number of people had engaged with PorterVac; however did not book in a gutter clean. These included:
- people downloading an eBook
- people leaving messages on social media
- people calling for a quote but not booking
- people submitting their details on the website but not booking
So when someone meets any of the criteria above, it triggers a 5-email sequence sent 1, 7, 14, 30, 60 days after entering the lead nurturing sequence.
Results:
- This lead nurturing sequence increased conversion rates by 18%
Roof Restoration Quote Follow-Up
PorterVac’s Sales team were finding it difficult to allocate enough resources to follow up on roof restoration quotes. When they initially sent a roof restoration quote, it would trigger their email marketing automation software to extract the details of the quote and add the person into a 3-email “quote follow-up” sequence. This sequence would follow up with the customer automatically after 3, 7 and 14 days. Any replies would be automatically forwarded to the salesperson.
An added functionality tracked the IP address of the person, so when the person receiving the quote returned to the Portervac website – an automated email would trigger to the salesperson stating:
“This customer is back on the PorterVac website, and they would likely welcome a phone call regarding their roof restoration quote.”
The customer and quote details would be contained in the automated email.
Results:
- This quote follow-up email sequence increased conversion rates of roof restoration quotes by 27%
Email marketing automation can enable a business to expand with new customer growth but also increase touch points and engagement with existing customers. It runs in the background, doing the grunt work while you’re focusing on other areas of the business.
PorterVac is an excellent example of how utilising email marketing automation effectively can significantly and positively improve the revenue of your business while working smart, not hard.
How to help your business with email marketing automation
If you would like help, advice, or guidance on your email, whether automated or not, our digital marketing experts are happy to help. And why not sign up for a complimentary 45-minute strategy session – obligation-free?
