To grow your business, you need to cater to more customers and to more scenarios.

Sadly, most product coaches overlook email automation and will stop at just the welcome email.

Email automation can do so much more!

Imagine having an army of you that tirelessly work around the clock to deliver the best content to the right people at the right time.

The Mistake: Not leveraging automations effectively

Poor automation setup = unscalable customer acquisition and monetization.

Here are the specific pain points that you’ll face:

1. Wasting money on unengaged subscribers

Having a big email list isn’t always a good thing.

Email Service Providers (ESP) like ConvertKit, BeeHiv, Mailchimp, etc. will charge based on email list size. The more you grow your email list, the more expensive it becomes.

You’re wasting money if your list is filled with unengaged subscribers who don’t:

• Open your emails
• Click links in your emails
• Convert to become a customer/client

Automations can help to identify and remove inactive subscribers to keep your list “clean”.

2. No personalization = fewer conversions

The more specific the value > the more it resonates with the person > the higher the conversion rate (more likely to take action).

Without automation, it’s near impossible to deliver the right content to different segments of your audience based on:

• Interests (topics/content buckets)
• Behaviour (e.g. recent subscribers, frequent replier)
• ​Buyer’s journey (awareness > consideration > decision)​

If you’re not personalizing your emails, you’re missing out on a powerful opportunity to connect with your audience and significantly boost your conversion rates.

3. Missed sales opportunities

Nobody likes to be salesy.

But when done right, email has the potential to become the best sales agent (without annoying your subscribers).

Automation is the key to sending the right offer to the right people at the right time.

The Reason This Happens

Most product coaches are unaware of email automation capabilities and use cases.

And if you’re already using some automation in your marketing funnel, are you sure you’re doing it right? Are you sure you’ve explored all possibilities to maximize your ROI? Are you sure you’re even using the right email service provider?

This is considered the back end of email marketing, so it doesn’t get as much love as a topic.

But there are reasons why product coaches don’t leverage automations effectively:

1. Lack of technical knowledge

Not all of us know how to code (OK some of us know a little).

But due to the nature of the email technology stack, it’s even more alien to most product coaches.

2. Integration challenges

Integrating email automation tools with your existing CRM systems, databases, or other marketing platforms can slow adoption and effectiveness of your automation efforts.

Automation tools like Zapier and Make can make things easier, but it’s still a lot of hours needed to research and tinker around.

3. Fear of breaking your funnel

We’ve all been there.

There are memes about it.

I’m talking about people accidentally screwing up their emails (I’ve been guilty of the last two):

• “Replying to all” instead of just “reply”
• Sending the wrong email to the wrong people
• Resending an email because you forgot the attachment (or links)

Automation can amplify these hiccups even more.

The fear is real.

How to Fix It

Luckily for you, full stack ghostwriters like me LOVE tinkering with email automations 👻

And the first advice I would give is to use ConvertKit as your ESP. Their visual automation tool allows you to build email automations without having to code. I use ConvertKit for building educational email courses (EEC) and running email marketing for myself and my clients.

​You can check out their free plan, no credit card required (disclaimer: I’m an affiliate so I will get a commission if you sign-up using my link, but I only recommend tools that I use 😊).

With that out of the way, here are some email automation use cases that you should apply:

1. Segment your subscribers throughout their journey

You can ask readers which pain point/topic/content bucket they prefer to focus on, like this:

“Hi welcome to my newsletter! In order to serve you better, please let me know which is the biggest problem you’re facing as a product manager:

• Stakeholder management
• Conducting customer interviews
• Using data to make informed decisions”

Each answer can be set as a “link trigger” that will automatically add the reader into a segment after they click. From there you can send each segment specific emails related to the topic. This tactic alone can dramatically increase email open rates!

Depending on the nature of your content, you can also ask for:

• Level of skill/knowledge (beginner, intermediate, advance)
• Level of experience (junior, senior, C-suite)
• Audience size (0-1,000, 1,000-10,000, 10,000+)

Where to place the survey:

• Welcome email
• Re-engagement email (sent to readers after 90 days of inactivity)

It’s like those choose-your-own-adventure books!

2. Send a series of emails based on subscriber preferences

You can automatically send a series of emails based on certain conditions (this is called an email sequence). This is especially powerful if:

• You have a big content archive
• You have evergreen content (topics that is relevant forever/not time sensitive)

Why is it powerful? You get to maximize your ROI (hours spent creating content):

• New subscribers would’ve missed your previous work
• You’re not pressured to keep writing something new every week

Where to use email sequences:

• Send each day of an EEC
• Send evergreen topics after your welcome email
• Send specific topics after segmenting your audience

You can mix-and-match the above examples. The possibilities are endless with sequences.

3. Add “fast forward” button for EECs

EECs typically consist of 5 emails being dripped across 5 days. This avoids overwhelming the reader, giving them a steady pace for learning.

But some people prefer to consume a lot of content in one go (I’m a content-binger myself).

By adding a “fast forward” link trigger at the bottom of each EEC email, readers can choose to receive the next email immediately.

Not only does this cater to the reader’s preference, but it also speeds up the nurturing process.

• insert “why not both🤷‍♀️” meme? *

4. Automatically exclude subscribers from certain emails

Have you ever bought a product online and afterwards you STILL get emails that promote the SAME product you just bought?

This really annoys me and shows how these businesses are not using automations enough to deliver the best experience to their customers. This also impacts their sender’s reputation score since annoyed readers will ignore these emails or worse: mark them as spam!

Here’s how to solve this:

• Automatically tag subscribers who have bought specific products
• Add a rule in to filter/exclude them from promotional emails related to these products

5. Automatically trigger the next sequence after one is finished

I saved the best for last.

This automation turned ship30for30.com into a multi-million-dollar business in just 1 year.

After subscribers go through an EEC, you can trigger a sale sequence that’s strategically designed to:

• Promote your product/service
• Or book a call

This is the single biggest missed revenue opportunity that product coaches are leaving on the table!

Why? Because you’ve delivered a huge amount of value for free through an EEC which “warms up” the subscriber and establishes you as the trust-worthy expert in the topic.

And the best part? There’s a way to do it WITHOUT being salesy.

We’ll dive deeper into this in my next email.

Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help:

I can build a well-packaged, high-value Educational Email Course (like this one) for your business that will:

• Boost your email opt-in rate by 30-50% (and accelerating email list growth)
• Educate leads on their problems before any sale calls (to warm them up)
• Build trust with leads in days instead of months
• Promote your products/services on autopilot

Interested? Book a free call with me.

See you 😁

P.S. In case you missed it, check this out - How to write emails that your readers are dying to open​