Marketing Cloud Engagement: Common Automated Email Use-cases

Once you've completed your Marketing Cloud set up, you should have the following in place: 

• An account and security settings
• Users and roles
• A Data model
• Deliverability best practices (authenticated and warmed domains and IPs, SSL certificates) and,
• Subscribers and subscriber acquisition 

For each of the following email automations, you'll need to: 

1. Determine a data source to trigger the email automation.

2. Plan how you'll automate email sends from Journey Builder.
   a. If you do not have Journey Builder, such as in Marketing Cloud Engagement Professional Edition, automate your email sends from Automation Studio. 

3. Build your content and personalization for the email.

The following is a list of common automated emails to get started with Marketing Cloud:

Welcome Emails

• Purpose: Greet new subscribers and introduce them to your brand, products, and services, ask the subscriber to set up their profile, and/or subscriber preferences. 

• Use: Sent after someone subscribes to your email list or creates an account, e.g.: 1 or more emails sent over 14 days from the point of initial subscription date 

• Key Content: Brand introduction, overview of what to expect, special offers, a call-to-action (CTA) to provide information (profile and preferences) and explore products

• Data triggers: New subscribers added through any acquisition method, such as a sign-up page, point of sale, preference center, content downloads, etc.

Abandoned Cart Emails

• Purpose: Remind customers who added items to their cart but didn't complete the purchase, and makes it easy for them to complete check-out. 

• Use: Automated emails sent after a customer leaves their cart without purchasing, e.g.: sent within 1 day of cart abandonment 

• Key Content: Cart summary, reminders, possible incentives like discounts, and CTAs to complete the purchase

• Data triggers: Ecommerce platform data feed for abandoned cart sessions and subscriber details

Nurture Campaigns

• Purpose: Nurture leads by sending a series of scheduled, automated emails.

• Use: Ideal for onboarding, product and service educational content, or long-term engagement, e.g.: send educational content weekly for complex product purchases 

• Key Content: Educational content, tips, tutorials, or offers extended out over a time period

• Data triggers: Subscriber lead generation records for product educational/demand gen content, white papers, subscriber profile interests

Product Recommendation Emails 

• Purpose: Suggest complementary or related products, based on customer browsing or purchasing behavior.

• Use: Sent after a purchase or based on browsing history, e.g.: promote additional product alternatives (if product is not purchased) and complementary products (if product is purchased) based on browsing interests 

• Key Content: Personalized product recommendations, related product items, and CTAs to encourage further purchases

• Data triggers: Ecommerce browsing and purchase data with subscriber details 

Re-engagement Emails 

• Purpose: Win back subscribers who haven’t opened emails or made a purchase in a while

• Use: Sent to inactive subscribers to re-engage them, or confirm subscribers non-engagement, as per subscriber hygiene best practices, e.g.: send to subscribers who have not engaged for 3 to 6 months, and include a very specific offer to re-engage 

• Key Content: Special offers, surveys, or a “We Miss You” message with an incentive

• Data triggers: Subscriber and engagement tracking data, and Einstein Engagement Scoring automated data 

Customer Feedback or Survey Emails

• Purpose: Gather feedback to improve your products or services.

• Use: After a purchase, interaction, or event, e.g.: request feedback within a few days of the purchase, interaction or event 

• Key Content: Survey links, NPS (Net Promoter Score) requests, or interactive email forms on CloudPages

• Data triggers: Ecommerce, support, service, and/or any interaction or event and subscriber data