Email automation is the process of sending pre-determined content to your subscribers based on their preferences and actions. In FeedBlitz, this takes place through the use of funnel campaigns.
Looking at the preferences and actions of your subscribers, and tracking these two important details, creates the path for a highly targeted email marketing strategy.
Groups offer an excellent way to boost your email automation by allowing you to automatically add subscribers to designated groups, based on actions taken within a funnel campaign. Once your group is in place and is being populated automatically, you can then easily use this group to shape future mailings to targeted subscribers.
There are two main ways to automate group memberships through your email marketing: Triggers and Subscriber Activity. We'll take a look at both and offer suggestions on how to incorporate these capabilities into your email automation strategy.
Add Subscribers to a Group Through Triggers
Triggers are set rules that state when one action takes place, another action will be triggered by it.
For example, when someone subscribes to an email list, they are automatically added to another email list. Another case is when someone unsubscribes from a mailing list, they can automatically be removed from any other mailing list they are on.
This same capability is available for adding or removing members from groups. For mailing lists, the actions are only subscribes / unsubscribes, however, with funnels, a new action has been added: Finishes this Funnel Sequence.
To add a trigger to your funnel campaign, select Automation > Activity-based Triggers from the campaign's dashboard.
Your trigger editor will then appear where you can add new or edit current triggers in place for this campaign:
The three initiating actions for funnel campaigns are: Subscribes, Unsubscribes and Finishes this Funnel Sequence.
Once the initial subscriber action has been set, then decide if the subscriber will be added or removed from a group.
When you're all set up, subscribers will then be automatically added to or removed from groups based on the triggers in place for your funnel. This is a great and simple way to easily track email subscribers who have completed a particular funnel, to re-target with future mailings of related information or products.
Add Subscribers to a Group Based on Subscriber Activity
By adding a new condition to an entry in your funnel, you can add or remove a subscriber based on whether they open or click a link within an email of your funnel sequence.
We'll start from the sequence editor of our single email Welcome campaign. (Campaigns > Active, select your funnel, then choose Edit Articles and Sequencing)
You'll see from your sequence editor, you can add a new condition of Add or Remove from a Group from the following drop-down menu:
Selecting Add or Remove from a Group will then trigger the Group Action Editor where you will select Add New Group Action:
The editor will update allowing you to select add or remove, then the group to be affected:
Next, select New Condition and choose Subscriber Activity to work with subscribers who have opened an email or clicked a link:
This will bring up a new set of options where you'll select either opened or clicked (or did not open or click, if you prefer).
For this purpose, we'll use the activity Clicked. Enter the URL of the link in your email and hit Save Changes.
Your new activity-based condition will then show on your sequence editor dashboard:
You can add as many conditions to the emails in your funnel sequences as you choose, automating your group membership with each campaign send.As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let us know. You can find all of our great support resources and how to get in touch with us via email, chat or phone on our Support Page.