Automate your Email Marketing with Workflows and Autoresponders

We received these questions from our customers recently:

“How do I send follow-ups to all leads who have clicked on a specific link in my email?”

“I want to add users to a new list whenever their potential/opportunity status changes in Zoho CRM.”

In Zoho Campaigns, it is possible to send out these follow-ups from the results of an email campaign. There are a couple of barriers, though:

  • The process is manual.
  • It has to be done for each and every campaign separately.
  • There is no way to automatically move recipients between marketing lists when they move from one stage to another in the buying process.

For a growing business, this is not a scalable solution. Our customers also wanted to move from sending batch-and-blast emails to sending targeted content based on recipients’ behavior in an email.

This made it very important that we quickly moved from providing email marketing features to email marketing automation where our users could create multi-stage automated campaigns.

And that’s exactly what we introduced in a recent update with Email Workflows and Autoresponders.

Behavior-based emails with Autoresponders

Let’s start with Autoresponders. This is not new, but with this update we introduced two new types that let you create follow-ups based on recipients’ behavior in an email.

So, let’s say you want to send follow-ups to those subscribers who have clicked a specific link in your email. You can create an email-action based autoresponder that lets you do this.

blog-email-action-1

Calendar-based autoresponders let you send emails based on specific dates in a year. For example, if you run a store, you can send a “Business is Closed” message to go out a couple of days before every holiday in the year. And the best part, you can schedule these messages right at the beginning of the year. You’re sure that your message will reach your audience.

Calendar Based

 

Send targeted campaigns with Email Workflows

Email Workflows let you define rules for your email marketing process based on subscriber information. These rules let you move subscribers between mailing lists so that you can send targeted and relevant content to them.

The best example of an email workflow is to create one for your buying process. As your leads move through the different stages, you can add them to mailing lists and send content with a relevant calls-to-action.

blog-workflows-1

Zoho Campaigns is also integrated with Zoho CRM, which makes it easy to setup workflows based on any data that you have about your leads and customers.

So, is there a right time to start using Email Marketing Automation?

Well, it depends on your business. But, here are a few questions that you can ask yourself. If you answer ‘Yes’ to any of these, it’s the right time for automation.

  • Do you stop after sending a single email to all new leads?
  • Do you have valuable information about your leads that you’re not using for segmentation?
  • Are you sending follow-up emails to your leads manually?
  • Do you send promotional emails on holidays and occasions?

Here’s detailed documentation on this latest update that can help you get started.

We’re really excited about this first step in automation and how you can benefit from the different possibilities. Do share any feedback and specific scenarios that we should consider as we continue to build upon this feature.

Comments

6 Replies to Automate your Email Marketing with Workflows and Autoresponders

  1. I want to send mails on a specific dates to customers, like a birthday or when they have a event to wish them good luck. I have these dates. Were do i store them and how to i create this automation?

  2. Hi, I'm wondering if there is a way for Zoho to automatically separate contacts into lists? For example; I send a campaign out, 50% of recipients click a link in my campaign which takes them to a web form which they then fill out, the other 50% click the link but don't fill out the web form. Is there any way I can set Zoho to put those who DID fill in the form, and those who DIDN'T into two separate contact lists? This is so I can then send 2 different follow up emails to the 2 different contact lists. Or Am I asking too much of Zoho? Hope this question made sense? Thanks!

  3. I have created a series of emails and would like to send them out using the auto-responder but I'm not sure which to use. Is there someone I can talk to or chat with?

  4. Hi Sharanya I have created a QR code that when scanned will open up the email client of the scanners mobile and create a pre populated email with my email address to send to, subject and body. When I receive this email I want to know how I can set up an auto responder and have the details loaded into my CRM. Is this possible in Zoho? Regards Salim

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

The comment language code.
By submitting this form, you agree to the processing of personal data according to our Privacy Policy.

Related Posts