Email Automation for SMBs: The Complete Guide
Automated emails that send the right message at the right time — without you having to lift a finger. Here is how to set it up.
<p>Imagine this: a visitor fills out a form on your website. Within a minute they receive a personal welcome email. Three days later they get an email with useful tips. After a week comes an offer that perfectly matches their interest. All of this happens automatically while you focus on your work. That is the power of email automation.</p>
<h2>What is email automation?</h2>
<p>Email automation means setting up emails in advance that are automatically sent when a specific action occurs. A visitor signs up for your newsletter? Automatically send a welcome email. Someone downloads your e-book? Start an email sequence that guides them step by step toward a conversation. This is also called workflows or drip campaigns.</p>
<p>The difference from a regular newsletter is timing and relevance. A newsletter is sent to everyone at the same time. An automated email is triggered by the individual recipient's behavior — making it much more relevant.</p>
<h2>The welcome series: your first automation</h2>
<p>The welcome series is the easiest and most effective automation to start with. When someone signs up through your website, you send a series of three to five emails over a period of two weeks. The first email welcomes the visitor and delivers the promised content. The second email shares your best blog article or a customer case study. The third email introduces your service or product.</p>
<p>Welcome emails have an average open rate of 50% — more than double that of regular emails. It is the moment when your new contact is most engaged. Take advantage of it.</p>
<h2>Lead nurturing: from contact to customer</h2>
<p>Not every lead is immediately ready to buy. Lead nurturing is the process of gradually warming up contacts with valuable content until they are ready to become customers. Segment your contacts based on interest or behavior. Send a series of educational emails that build trust. Close with a concrete offer or invitation for a conversation.</p>
<p>The key is patience. A lead nurturing campaign can take weeks or months. But the contacts that come through are qualitatively much better than cold leads.</p>
<h2>Setting up workflows in Webey</h2>
<p>With Webey's workflow engine you can visually set up email automations. Choose a trigger (form submission, tag added, date reached), set a wait time, and choose which email template is sent. You can chain multiple steps together and add conditions so contacts follow different paths based on their behavior.</p>
<p>Use the predefined templates as a starting point: welcome series, lead nurturing, and re-engagement. Customize the copy to match your own tone of voice and you will have a working automation within an hour.</p>
<h2>Measuring and optimizing</h2>
<p>Every automated email generates data. Look at open rates, click rates, and unsubscribes. If an email in the series performs poorly, test a different subject line or content. Optimize step by step until your series is a well-oiled machine that consistently converts leads into customers.</p>
<p>Start small: one welcome series with three emails. Once that runs well, expand with nurturing, re-engagement, and seasonal campaigns. Email automation is not a project but an ongoing process that keeps getting better.</p>