Setting Reminder Emails In Campaign Monitor: A Quick Guide

Campaign Monitor is a powerful email marketing platform that offers a range of tools to create and send effective email campaigns. One of the key features of Campaign Monitor is its ability to set up automated reminder emails, which can help brands engage with their subscribers and improve their overall email strategy. In this article, we will explore the steps to set up a reminder email in Campaign Monitor, including defining triggers, creating automated journeys, and measuring the success of your reminder emails through KPIs such as open rates and click-through rates. We will also discuss the importance of reminder emails in re-engaging inactive subscribers and provide examples of effective reminder email strategies used by other companies.

Using email automation to your advantage

Email automation is a powerful tool that can help you create targeted, efficient, and engaging email campaigns. By using predefined rules and triggers, you can send personalized messages to your subscribers at the right time, without having to manually craft each email. Here are some ways you can use email automation to your advantage:

Save Time and Resources:

Email automation takes the repetitive task of sending individual emails off your hands, freeing up your time for other valuable work. Instead of manually sending reminder emails, you can use tools like list segmentation and customer journey mapping to automate the entire process. This way, you can focus on growing your business and responding to customer inquiries.

Improve Personalization:

Email automation allows you to send personalized messages to your subscribers based on their behaviour, preferences, and previous purchases. By linking your website analytics to your email platform, you can target individuals with relevant content, improving their experience and increasing the likelihood of a purchase. This level of personalization has been shown to be appealing to customers, with 90% of consumers finding personalized content very or somewhat appealing.

Nurture Leads:

Automated emails help nurture leads by sending relevant and specific information that engages them with your brand. Instead of a generic welcome email, you can send targeted messages that provide value and build a relationship with your subscribers. This makes them more receptive when your sales team reaches out.

Increase Efficiency:

With email automation, you can create a consistent and simple sending workflow. By automating emails to be sent to specific segments of your subscribers, you save time and effort, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your campaign and keep your subscribers happy with effective messaging.

Enhance Customer Experience:

Automated emails can be used to create a positive customer experience. In addition to payment reminders and deadline warnings, you can send onboarding series, incentives, and other useful content. This helps build better relationships, attract new subscribers, and increase click-through rates and conversions.

Re-engage Disinterested Subscribers:

Email automation allows you to easily reach out to disengaged subscribers with targeted messages. Instead of manually tracking down and emailing each individual, you can use re-engagement emails as a form of marketing automation, helping you retain customers and analyze their feedback.

Optimize Sending Frequency:

Email automation helps you strike a balance in your sending frequency. By automating sends, you can promote product awareness without overwhelming your subscribers. Additionally, you can save resources by populating existing templates and sending emails without manual monitoring.

Improve List Segmentation:

Email automation enables you to segment your subscribers based on their behaviour patterns, attributes, and engagement levels. This allows you to send targeted emails to specific groups, increasing your open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall engagement.

Enable Detailed Reporting:

Email automation services provide detailed logs and analytics that help you track the performance of your campaigns. You can monitor metrics such as deliverability, open rates, and click-through rates to optimize your email strategy and improve your marketing efforts.

Setting a trigger for your reminder email

To set up a triggered email campaign, you will first need to create an automated journey. Once you have started building this journey, you will select a trigger type. There are several options to choose from, including 'subscriber joins a list' and 'segment-based triggers'.

For reminder emails, the best trigger options are the condition and email triggers. The condition trigger allows for further segmentation of your subscribers. For example, a subscriber could choose a standard or VIP membership, and then be sent relevant reminder emails based on this condition.

Email triggers are also useful for reminder emails. For example, if a subscriber signs up for an event newsletter, they can then be sent emails reminding them about the event.

Triggered emails are a great way to save time and resources, as they are automated and personalised. They can also help to reduce the number of people unsubscribing from your emails, as the content is relevant and interesting to the recipient.

Permission reminders and how to personalise them

Permission reminders are a short statement in your email that reminds your subscriber how you got their email address. They are usually placed in the footer. A vague permission message can seem lazy and suspicious, so it's important to be as specific as possible. This will help people remember how they actually did ask to receive your emails. This is particularly important for lists that grow regularly, as new subscribers have no background of newsletters to remember you by.

A great technique to make your reminder messages more specific is to keep track of exactly where addresses came from and refer directly to that. For example: "You are receiving this email because you gave us your address at the Widget Summit in September." With some smart use of custom fields, you can personalise that message for each subscriber. The first step is to keep track of where people came from. You can do this by creating a custom field for your list called "source" or something similar. You’ll then need to fill in a value for "source" for each person. If you’re importing a file of new subscribers after a trade show, use “gave us your address at the Widget Summit in September” as the source column for each subscriber record, for instance.

For your online subscribe forms, make sure you have a hidden “source” field pre-filled with “subscribed on our website” as the value, so that each time someone signs up using the form, the right value is set. Now, in your campaigns, you can just insert something like this: "You are receiving this email because you [source]. If you are no longer interested, you can unsubscribe instantly."

It’s that easy. Now your permission reminder messages are much more specific, and they will be much more effective in showing people you are legitimate and serious about having their permission. You can also use that same source information to start segmenting your list and offering different things to different groups.

Permission reminders are also a great way to build trust with your subscribers. Be transparent about how you’ll store and use your customers’ data. Outline a few major points in your confirmation email and include a link to your complete privacy and transparency policy on your website within the email. Let subscribers know how often you will be emailing them and what the emails will be about.

Testing your campaign before sending

• Send an email preview to up to five email addresses so that your team members can review it. This way, you can gather feedback from your team and make any necessary changes before sending out the campaign.
• Run a Design & Spam test to check how your email appears in over 20 email clients, including mobile devices. This test ensures that your email is easily readable and accessible on various platforms, such as mobile devices, Gmail, Apple Mail, and other commonly used inboxes. It helps you understand how your email will render across different email service providers and devices, allowing you to make any necessary adjustments for a consistent appearance.

Once you are satisfied with the appearance of your email, it is essential to proofread your copy and test every link to ensure accuracy and functionality. After completing these steps, you can proceed with confidence to send your campaign, either immediately or by scheduling it for a future time and date.

Additionally, after sending one or more campaigns to a list, Campaign Monitor provides the option to optimize your send time based on subscribers' previous engagement or time zone, allowing you to further refine and improve the timing of your email campaigns.

Using the email builder

The Campaign Monitor Email Builder is a quick and effective way to build mobile-optimised email campaigns. The builder is rich with tools, flexibility, and functionality, allowing you to create beautiful, effective emails.

To start, you can select a pre-designed template, which can be customised with your own content and brand colours. You can drag and drop a logo, adjust its size and spacing, and add a link to the image. You can also add a hero image, which most templates come with. You can replace the sample image with your own, and use the image editor to crop, resize, and apply effects.

You can add and edit text in various regions of the email, including over the hero image, and choose from thousands of fonts, colours, sizes, and styles. The smart colour picker remembers your recently-used colours, giving you quick access to brand colours. You can also add buttons to emphasise your Call to Action (CTA).

Before sending your campaign, you can preview it by sending it to five email addresses for your team to review. You can also run a Design & Spam test, which shows you how your email displays in over 20 email clients, including mobile devices. This ensures your email is easy to read on mobile and popular inboxes like Gmail and Apple Mail.

Frequently asked questions