Campaigns are the strongest tool in marketing automation. Campaigns enable you to automate the process of offering your leads the right content at the right point in their customer journey, to monitor their reaction, and to follow up with further actions that bring your future customers even closer to your company.
A well designed marketing strategy is essential for this. But you can start with small steps. Create your first campaign, evaluate its success, and build on your strategy as you go. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use Friendly Automate to create a simple nurture campaign that delivers immediate value.
- What is email nurturing?
- Understand and plan your welcome campaign
- Choose the topics for your welcome emails
- Create the emails for your sequence
- Create the trigger for your newsletter subscribers
- Create the welcome campaign
- Campaign Step 1: Select trigger
- Campaign Step 2: Send emails and set up waiting times
- Campaign Step 3: Record campaign participation
- Campaign Step 4: Evaluate emails being opened and clicked and award points
- Campaign Step 5: Assign tags
- Your complete Nurture campaign
- Test your campaign and go live
- Evaluate your welcome campaign and continue to develop it
What is email nurturing?
Email nurturing is a drip campaign, which is a sequence of emails you send out over a period of weeks or months that motivates your leads to become or stay your customers.
Email Nurturing is very effective and many, especially small companies are not yet fully maximizing its potential.
When you create an email nurture sequence, it's important that you don't think of it as a one-time marketing effort. Think of it as an ongoing campaign that's automated, but that you evaluate and expand and improve on an ongoing basis.
There are a number of email sequences that you can profitably automate. These include, for example:
- The Welcome Campaign: Your lead has signed up for your newsletter. Send a sequence of inviting emails that introduce your offer in a personable way.
- The Lead Magnet Campaign: Your lead filled out a form to receive an asset such as a white paper. Send the promised document and offer more relevant content in subsequent emails.
- The Event Campaign: Inform interested leads about an upcoming event, motivate them to attend, and show them their next steps after attending.
- The Repeat Customer Campaign: Offer new product recommendations to your loyal customers and encourage them to make another purchase.
- The Reactivation Campaign: Win back potential customers who haven't interacted with you in a while. Remove their purchase obstacles and offer them purchase incentives through discounts and coupons.
- The Promoter Campaign: Reach out to your most active and engaged fans with a series of emails encouraging them to write testimonials or share your content on social media.
You can already see here how important it is to start your campaigns with a specific lead segment and a clear focus. This is the only way to ensure that the right information gets to the right audience at the right time. This will reliably increase your conversion rate and prevent newsletter unsubscribes.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to launch successful campaigns with Friendly Automate using the example of a welcome campaign. With the skills from this tutorial, you can also create many other campaigns.
Understand and plan your welcome campaign
First, let's take a look at how an automated email campaign is basically structured. This graphic shows you what steps make up a simple email campaign and what you need to plan before you can implement your campaign in Friendly Automate:
- Trigger: Every campaign starts with a trigger.
- Emails: The trigger will initiate the mailing of a series of emails.
- Topic: Each email should be dedicated to a specific topic.
- Call to Action: Each email should contain a call to action, i.e. a prompt to click on a link.
- Waiting Time: Between the emails you put a reasonable waiting time to spread the mailing over a set period of time.
- Points or tags: Optionally, you can assign points or tags for opening emails or clicking on links.
Before you implement your campaign with Friendly Automate, you should take the time to plan these points carefully. This means that your initial campaign planning will take place outside of Friendly Automate. Make sure you know what your strategy is for your email sequence and answer the following questions:
- What is the trigger that starts the campaign? You capture this trigger with a segment or a form. For a welcome campaign, the trigger is usually the newsletter subscription.
- How many and which emails do you want to send? Your welcome campaign can include any number of emails. Think about the topics you want to address in sequence and how many emails will be needed for that. The call to action should be a matching prompt with a link button.
- What waiting time do you want to set between the emails? The waiting time depends on your sales cycle. The entire welcome campaign should generally not take much less time than a typical sales cycle in your industry. And email sends should reasonably be no more than a month apart.
- How do you want to evaluate your campaign? Think about how you want to evaluate and reward the behavior of your leads. For example, you can award points for opening an email or give out tags for clicking on the call to action.
For your first welcome campaign, you can follow our example and adapt it according to your company's needs.
Choose the topics for your welcome emails
Your welcome campaign is about personally introducing your new subscribers to your brand. This is not yet the best time to sell them something. Therefore, the emails shouldn't be too salesy, the goal should rather be that your future customers know, like and trust you.
Tell stories. Show interest. Address the emotions. Get on a personal level. Inform and inspire. You want your leads to enjoy engaging with your content. Be entertaining and unique.
Focus on one topic per email, and connect the call to action to that one topic. This will give you the best results.
Possible topics for your welcome emails can be:
- Welcome! Simply say hello first, thank them for subscribing to the newsletter, and redeem any opt-in promises, such as a coupon or discount.
- Introduce yourself, your company and your team.
- Ask about your leads' interests, and offer them various links to their areas of interest.
- Introduce your social media presence and pique curiosity about the content.
- Invite your leads to take a survey.
- Send something of value, a free piece of advice that your leads can use to get a positive result right away.
- Share something entertaining in a fun way to gain sympathy.
- Explain the benefits of your product and what your leads could achieve with it.
- Address objections or answer frequently asked questions.
- Tell stories and anecdotes, such as the origin story of your business.
- Give case studies that show your potential customers that your product might be suitable also for them.
- Tell them about news in the broader area of your product or service.
For our welcome campaign we choose the following topics:
With this, we try to create a coherent story: First, we welcome our new contacts. Then we show them what benefits they will get from our product and ask them about their specific interests. Finally, we clear up any possible objections before finally giving them an incentive to buy with a discount code.
Create the emails for your sequence
Once you have selected the topics for the emails in the sequence, you can start creating the individual emails. You can do this directly and easily with our email editor in Friendly Automate.
To write effective emails that resonate with your leads, we've put together a few tips:
- Write a clever subject line. The subject line is the first thing that your customers will read, and it can determine whether they decide to open the email altogether. The subject line needs to be captivating or intriguing. Take the time here to come up with a good idea.
- Personalize the salutation. We like things to have our name on them, like a gift or a card. This also works for emails.
- Use expressive images. Photos and graphics can enhance your topic in a personable way.
- Integrate a call to action. A link button with a catchy text invites your leads to engage more closely with the topic: "Read the full story here", "Redeem your discount", "Learn more", "Discover our offer". The click rate will also allow you to evaluate the success of your campaign later on.
- Use a personal name in the sender and signature. With Friendly Automate, you can have different people as senders for the same email, so your customers always get their emails from their personal sales representative.
It makes sense to give your emails an internal name that clearly identifies them as part of your campaign. For example, you can use the format "campaign_number_theme" for the internal name. It also makes sense to create a category for each campaign and assign the emails to the category (in this case, "Welcome"):
Once you've created your emails, you can set up the trigger for your campaign.
Create the trigger for your newsletter subscribers
As we looked at earlier, each campaign starts with a trigger. You capture this trigger with a segment or a form.
For a welcome campaign, the trigger is usually the newsletter sign-up. There are several ways to set up the trigger. The easiest way is to link the campaign directly to your newsletter sign-up form.
To do this, create a new form in Friendly Automate and select "New Campaign Form".
For example, name the form "Newsletter Subscription". As a submit action, you can choose "Display message", and below that you enter a short confirmation text.
Switch to the "Fields" tab and enter the desired form fields there.
Then switch to the "Actions" tab. Here we recommend you to add the action "Remove contact from do not contact list".
Basically, however, there is no need for any particular action here. The campaign is triggered automatically when a lead submits the form. Save the form and embed it in your website.
Create the welcome campaign
With this, you have all the components you need for your campaign!
To create your welcome campaign, click on "Campaigns" on the left side in Friendly Automate and then on "New" in the upper right corner:
Enter a name for your campaign. If you want, you can also add a description. Click on "Launch Campaign Builder". Now we are ready to go! :-)
Campaign Step 1: Select trigger
In the campaign builder, first specify that the campaign will be triggered by a form and select the newsletter form:
Campaign Step 2: Send emails and set up waiting times
Now you can already add your first email! Click on the small plus at the bottom of the start field, and then select an "Action":
Select the "Send email" action. (The similar action "Send email to user" sends an email to you or other employees of your company).
A popup will open. Enter the following there:
- Name: Name the action that will be executed here.
- Email to send: Select the corresponding email.
- Email type: Select "Marketing".
Then click on "Add":
This is how it looks now:
Congratulations! You have already created your first mini-automation. Save your progress by clicking on "Save" in the upper right corner.
Next, you can add all your further emails to your welcome campaign one after the other. To do this, click on the gray plus under the email action and select "Action" – "Send email" again.
Fill in the popup for the other emails in the same way as the first one. With one important difference: To prevent the additional emails from being sent immediately, you set up a waiting period for each email send, in our example four days:
If you want, you can also choose to send emails only at certain times or on certain days of the week. (MailerLite found little preference among customers for specific days of the week, while most marketers send their emails between Tuesday and Thursday. Most emails are opened between 10am–6pm).
Here's what your campaign looks like now:
You have already created your welcome sequence! You now have two more ways to improve your campaign:
- Decide what happens at the end of your campaign. What happens next for the campaign participants?
- Evaluate the behavior of your leads during the campaign. Do they open the emails and click on the links?
Campaign Step 3: Record campaign participation
First, let's look at what happens at the end of the campaign. Our advice is to always give the campaign participants a tag in the end to mark that they have gone through the campaign. Then, if needed, you can create a segment from that tag and use that segment for further targeted actions.
In our example of the welcome campaign, all participants receive the tag "Newsletter" at the end. Because after the welcome sequence (and only then) they should receive the regular newsletter. You can then send your newsletters to all contacts with the tag "Newsletter".
To assign this tag, click again on the gray plus under the last email, choose "Action" and then "Modify contact’s tags".
A popup will open. Choose a name for the action and enter a descriptive tag in the corresponding field, for example "Newsletter_Campaign_Completed". Press Enter to confirm the tag. Then click Add.
This is what the end of your campaign looks like now:
Campaign Step 4: Evaluate emails being opened and clicked and award points
Now build decisions in for each email to evaluate how your leads interact with the emails. For example, you can award points when your leads open an email.
To do this, go back to your first email and click again on the little gray plus below it. (That means you can have several parallel events after each step). Now choose a "Decision".
A decision waits until the contact does something specific. The linked actions will be triggered in the future as soon as the contact does something, for example, clicks on a link.
A condition queries something that is true or not true at the present time, for example, whether the contact is in a segment. The linked actions are executed immediately or will just not be executed.
Choose the decision "Opens email":
A popup will open. Enter the name of the decision. It makes sense to enter the name of the email here, so that you can see directly in the campaign evaluation which email it is. Click "Add".
Drag-and-drop the decision box to the left of the email action. (If you don't find the decision box at first: It will appear at the very bottom of the campaign). Then click on the little green plus below the decision:
Select an "Action" and then "Adjust contact points":
A popup will open. Name the action and again note that the title indicates specifically how many points will be awarded for which email. Below, enter the number of points you want to award and click "Add".
TL;DR: We recommend awarding 1 point for opening an email and 2 points for clicking on a link.
This will give your lead 1 point for opening the first email. This is how it looks now:
Additionally, you can now give points for your lead to click on the call-to-action in the email. To do this, click again on the gray plus below email 1 and select the action "Clicks email":
In the popup again enter a meaningful name, for example "Clicks email 1: Welcome" and click "Add". Drag-and-drop the decision box to a good place, for example to the right of the email action.
Click on the small green plus below the decision and select the action "Adjust contact points" again.
Award 2 points for clicking on the email. This is how it looks now:
You can repeat these actions for all emails.
Campaign Step 5: Assign tags
It gets interesting when you also assign tags. This allows you to continuously store information about the interests of your leads, which you can use later to personalize your communication more effectively. In other words, you create more profiled personas.
Let's say in "email 3: interests" you give two different calls-to-action on two different offer areas, such as "crime fiction" and "cookbooks." You can assign specific tags to your leads depending on which link they click.
To do this, click again on the small gray plus below the corresponding email and select the "Clicks Email" decision again:
Again, in the popup, enter a descriptive name. Now you specify which link is to be evaluated: Click on "Add a value" at the bottom. An input field appears. Enter the part of the URL that uniquely identifies the link to the corresponding topic and click on "Add".
Drag the decision box to a good place, for example to the right of the email action. Click on the green plus and select "Modify contact’s tags".
In the popup, give a good title, for example "Add tag: Crime Fiction Interest", select or create the tag "Crime_Fiction_Interest" and click "Add".
This will give your lead a tag for clicking on the specific link. This is how it looks now:
In the same way, you can create another decision for the second area of interest. Then it looks like this:
With this you know everything to create a first successful campaign! In a campaign you can now:
- Send emails
- Insert waiting times
- Evaluate opening of emails and clicks on emails
- Assign points
- Assign tags
You can combine these elements in any way you like to create a whole range of other creative campaigns.
Or send one email or the other, depending on which topic your lead responds to. You have countless options here.
Your complete Nurture campaign
Here you can see what the full welcome campaign might look like:
Not bad for a first campaign, right?
Test your campaign and go live
Before you go live with your campaign, be sure to test it. It makes sense to change the waiting time between sending the emails to a shorter time, for example 2 minutes. To do this, click on the blue pencil icon on the corresponding email action in the campaign builder and adjust the waiting time.
Close the campaign builder and publish the campaign by clicking the "Published" switch on the right. This will activate the campaign. Then save and close the campaign.
Now you can test it! In Friendly Automate, click on "Components" on the left, then "Forms", and then on the trigger form for your campaign. Again, make sure the form is published (green switch).
Click on the small arrow in the upper right corner of the form overview and then on "Preview".
A (functioning) form preview will open in a new browser tab. Enter your own contact details here (or those of the test person) and submit the form.
Now you can check if you receive the campaign emails in your inbox, if they are displayed correctly, and if you get the defined points and tags.
Once you are satisfied with your campaign, you can change the waiting times back and make the campaign live by embedding the trigger form on your website. If the trigger is a segment, all you have to do is put the correct segment back in as the campaign trigger.
Evaluate your welcome campaign and continue to develop it
You can evaluate the success of your campaign on several levels. You can see
- which form inputs you have received
- what actions and decisions were triggered from the campaign
- and what happened for each individual contact.
To evaluate your form, click on "Components" again in Friendly Automate on the left, then "Forms", and then click on the trigger form of your campaign.
The dashboard shows you when the form was submitted and how often. You can get a detailed analysis by clicking on the small arrow in the upper right corner and then on "Results":
This is what the form submission overview looks like:
For the campaign evaluation click on "Campaigns" on the left side of Friendly Automate and then on your Nurture campaign. The dashboard will give you an overview of contacts added, emails sent and opened, and points and tags awarded.
Scroll down to see the detailed evaluation:
Here you can see all campaign statistics for your campaign. You can see
- which contacts have gone through the campaign,
- which decisions were made and
- which actions were executed.
The numbers on the left give you detailed information:
- Red numbers: Failure in percent
- Green numbers: Success in percent
- Yellow numbers: Number of actions completed
- Gray numbers: Number of pending actions
To evaluate individual contacts simply click on a contact card in the campaign evaluation (or open a contact card directly in the CRM):
At the bottom of the contact card you can see which emails the customer has received and opened. On the right you can see how many points and which tags the customer has received. In our example, the customer has opened all 5 welcome emails (5 points) and successfully completed the campaign (+10 points) and she has received the tag "Newsletter" for it.
Monitor the success of your campaign in real time! By evaluating which actions were particularly successful, you can tailor your campaign even more precisely to the needs of your leads.
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