The goal of any marketing effort is to get the right message to the right person at the right time. Personalisation matters, too. But as your lists grow, giving every subscriber individual attention becomes harder to manage.
That is where email automation comes in. You set up customised, relevant email workflows once, and the platform sends them automatically when a subscriber meets the criteria you define. TouchBasePro's visual journey designer makes building those workflows straightforward.
What is email automation?
Automated emails work differently from regular broadcast campaigns. With a standard campaign, you build it and send it to your whole database in one go. With automation, you build a workflow of emails that fires for individual subscribers when they meet a specific trigger.
Take a welcome email. Instead of manually sending one to every new subscriber, you set it up once. The moment someone joins your list, the email goes out automatically. The trigger is met, the email sends, and you did not have to touch a thing.
Why does email automation matter?
Generic emails no longer cut through. Staying relevant in a crowded inbox means sending messages tied to what your subscribers have actually done or what they care about. Automation makes that possible at scale.
The numbers back this up. According to research by MarketingSherpa, automated emails consistently produce some of the highest engagement rates across all email types.
What kinds of automations can I set up?
Welcome
A welcome email, or a short series of them, is ideal for onboarding new subscribers. Thank them for signing up, introduce your brand, and consider offering an incentive while your name is fresh in their minds.
Specific date
Use a specific date to send reminders leading up to something your customer needs to act on, such as a membership renewal or an upcoming event. Timely context makes these emails genuinely useful rather than just promotional.
Date anniversary
Reach customers on a meaningful date, whether that is a birthday or the anniversary of when they joined. Keep the content personal. An anniversary email that reads like a generic promo wastes the moment.
Content updates
Every time you publish a blog post or update your site, you can push a notification automatically. Prefer a digest? Collate your updates and send them daily, weekly, or monthly. The frequency is yours to set.
How should I plan my automations?
Setting up an automation is straightforward, but it pays to have a clear plan before you start building.
Here is a four-step approach:
Step 1: Plan your strategy
Before you build anything, be clear on what you want the automation to do. A few questions worth answering first:
- What is the goal? Are you rewarding customers, educating them, or moving them through a sales cycle?
- Are you sending a single email or a series? If it is a series, how often will you send?
Once you have answered those questions, sketch out the flow. Start simple. You can add more emails and branches later, but a clean, focused automation outperforms an overcomplicated one every time.
Step 2: Get the right data
Your automation is only as good as the data behind it. If you plan to send birthday emails, you need to collect birthdays. If you want to segment by interest, you need to capture that when subscribers sign up.
TouchBasePro makes this easy. Set up custom fields on your database for any extra information you want to collect, and include them in your sign-up forms. Whatever you need from subscribers, capture it upfront.
Step 3: Set up your journey
With your strategy defined and your data in place, head to the Automations tab in your TouchBasePro account. If you do not have an account yet, sign up for free. From there, use the visual journey designer to build your automation series. You can start from a prebuilt template, design something from scratch in the drag-and-drop editor, or import a template of your own.
Step 4: Track your results
Do not set automations running and forget about them. Check your reports regularly. A drop in open rates or click-through rates is a signal to revisit your content or your sending frequency. Small tweaks based on real data make a meaningful difference over time.
Getting your message across
Email automation is one of the most effective tools a marketer has. Build relationships, drive conversions, and keep your brand relevant, all without manually sending a single email.
If you need help getting your automation set up, email our team at support@touchbasepro.com. We are happy to help.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between an automated email and a regular email campaign?
- A regular campaign is sent to your whole database at once, on a schedule you set manually. An automated email fires for individual subscribers when they meet a specific trigger or condition, such as joining your list, reaching a renewal date, or celebrating a birthday.
- What types of email automations can I set up in TouchBasePro?
- TouchBasePro supports welcome emails, specific-date triggers, date-anniversary emails, and content update notifications. Each can be a single email or a series, depending on your strategy.
- What data do I need to collect before setting up automations?
- It depends on your automation type. Date-based automations need dates such as birthdays or renewal dates. Interest-based automations need preference data. Set up the relevant custom fields on your database and capture that information at sign-up.
- How do I know if my email automations are working?
- Check the reports in your TouchBasePro account regularly. Watch open rates and click-through rates. If either drops over time, review your content, your sending frequency, or both.