What You Need in an Automation Template: Examples and Ideas

Wondering what makes a high--converting automation email? It's all in the template. And we've got examples and tools to help you choose the best template for your automated email messages.

Kate Neuer
February 22, 2022

 

What Are the Benefits of Automation Emails and Templates?

Automation emails can be a series of emails or one email that responds to a contact once an occurrence is triggered. These emails are automated, for example, to wish a happy birthday to a lead or customer on a certain date or send a welcome message to a new user who has just subscribed to a list.

We will not only go over the different types of automated emails you can send to customers, but we will discuss the templates most useful for these automations and which email messaging software you can choose for your marketing teams.

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What You Need in an Automation Template

We'll largely cover automated email templates in this article since there are numerous types of automated emails for different purposes. The purpose of an automated message is to largely give your marketing team time to focus on other email marketing campaigns. 

But did you know the other purpose relates to customer and lead relationships? Automating messages will release an email immediately to a customer when, for example, they need their password reset. Customers and leads alike appreciate that there is little room for error when they receive and automated email message. 

But what makes automating an email so easy? Overall, customization is key to any template and to any feature in the template. Here's a few tools you need to make sure your email product can provide in its templates.

Conditions and Triggers

Does your email messaging app have a field to enter what triggers or conditions will automate a message to a contact?

A condition is something, like an occurrence, that connects to triggers. For example, a condition to have a certain email to be sent could be the activity of a new lead who entered an email address. 

A trigger is what is signaled to send the corresponding email to the contact. So, there is a formula for this thought process in your email software. It should be: "when x occurs, send x email". For example, "When a leads enters his birth date, send a happy birthday email on that date".

Segmentation

Segmenting will help the automation process run smoothly. Your email software should be able to connect whatever automated email template to only a certain group of contacts. 

It's important to separate select contacts from others, such as current customers from leads, because the message or link you send to each will be different, according to your email messaging or marketing goals. 

Want women to get the same face shaving cream ad as your male contacts? Probably not. Make sure you automate email templates to go out to the right audience when a contact makes a certain action. You may have leads read and fill out a form when subscribing that asks for their gender or sex, and this will signal to your email setup which message to send and when. How easy is that? You don't have to monitor your leads every second of every day!

Interactive Buttons

CTA buttons are call-to-action buttons that your contact can interact with. Whether it's automated or not, your email template should be able to have this function where you can link any button to your website or other product page. 

This is one of the top converting features that help turn a lead into a customer if they are directed to a great landing page or product page that's targeted for them.

A/B Testing Capabilities 

Want to test if your automated emails are getting the opens and clicks it needs? You should be able to compare emails with easy management tools.

Yes, we know this is less what you need in an automated template and more of what you need in a software as a whole. But this feature is especially important when sending automated messages by the hundreds or thousands.

Ability to View/ Analyze Data

Management of your email templates is vital for organization, especially for your marketing team. Again, this may be a feature to watch out for in an email software as a whole, but you cannot send messages without the ability to view how well certain messages are doing.

Is your Valentine's Day content doing better than your regular automated campaigns? This is what you need to take note of for your business.

The Types of Email Automation Templates

There are probably more email automation templates out there being created every day. We don't have the bandwidth to cover every single one, but the following categories encompass the most common email automations.

Campaign Templates

Drip campaigns or drip emails are a great way to build lead and customer relationships. These may email campaigns surrounding the holidays. The condition triggering these emails to be sent can be anything from "a visitor is on the site for a few minutes" to "a new lead clicked on a x product or products".

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Templates for General Marketing 

You can automate, or schedule, any number of types of emails. This a popular technique marketers plan out months in advance for the biggest holidays of the year, such as Christmas, Valentine's Day, and even Easter. 

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Templates to Market a Product

A lot of different emails can go under this category. Even cart abandonment reminder emails can go here if the message is about a specific product. 

Let's say a customer went to your website and left an item in the cart but never checked out. You can automate an email after having the product int he cart for so many days (or hours) to remind the person that they haven't checked out. 

And these emails are worth investing in. Did you know about 45% of cart abandonment emails are opened?

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Welcome and Onboarding Templates

These automated emails have very clear conditions and triggers. They're often used for Saas companies but can be utilized for employers who want to onboard employees easier.

Have a customer just download a video editing software from your business? You can automate emails every time the customer completes a tutorial or course. When they are finished with the tutorial, send them another email.

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Ad courtesy of TechSmith.

Did we mention that you can also try to upsell an add-on or other product or service in these emails with already great valuable content?

Top Software Choices for Automation Templates

These are our top software choices that have great templates for your automated emails.

TruVISIBILITY

TruVISIBILITY, though newer to the market, has proven that their email automation templates are easy to customize. The affordability can't be beat either. There is an option for a free account. This makes it easy to automate any email you put together.

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Klaviyo

We chose this software because it's reasonably priced and gives the user freedom with multiple templates that can be automated. 

ConstantContact

Though a little pricier, depending on what your email marketing needs are, this software is a classic. It gives templates for not only email automation but also every holiday or sales campaign strategy in the book.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue only charges for the emails you send instead of giving you a quota each month or a package deal. What's great about their templates is the fact that you can schedule when emails will be sent on top of automating them easily by setting triggers and conditions.

What's Next?

We not only covered our top email apps to consider for the best automated email templates, but we also gave you features to include and watch for in these automation templates. 

If you're still debating on what software to choose for email marketing in general, check out our other articles here and check out what our email app, Messaging, can do for your business.

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