There’s no denying that email marketing is one of the most powerful means of reaching an audience and achieving revenue goals. But not all marketing emails are created or intended equally. One of the more significant strategic decisions marketers must consider is whether to use automated email campaigns or stick with scheduled, one-off marketing emails. Each has its advantages during various points of the marketing funnel, budget considerations, and customer life cycle. This article explores the two and helps you choose what makes the most sense for your business.
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Understanding Automated Email Sequences
Drip campaigns automated email sequences are pre-scheduled or triggered email sends that operate over time based on user behavior or time-based milestones. Once established, they somewhat operate in the background and provide support for things like lead nurturing, onboarding, cart abandonment, etc. Drip campaigns are best for slowly transferring people from point A to point B when there’s a clear goal educational, transactional, promotional over time. Using an email deliverability tool alongside your drip campaigns ensures these automated messages reach the inbox consistently and maintain engagement throughout the sequence..
Automation ensures reliable delivery and scalability. It’s a promise; once someone sets the sequence, that every single subscriber will receive every single message at precisely the right time there’s no need for human intervention to remind someone to schedule the next touchpoint. Therefore, it’s a good solution for onboarding new users, educational drip series, or nurturing leads as it may take a long time to convert. Since automated emails are based on triggers from behavior, they convert at a higher rate than general outreach campaigns sent to everyone over time.
The Strength of One-Off Campaigns
One-off campaigns are singular email messages sent to your list during a specific time to encourage a general business need for transaction or marketing value. For example, the general business needs of one-off campaigns include product launches, limited-time offers, flash sales, registrable events, holiday events, etc. This is different from an automated email sequence that is pre-planned and sent based on user engagement or timing. An automated welcome series, for example, would go off without a hitch when someone subscribes to your email list and welcomes them over the course of a few emails sent out across a designated time frame with designated calls to action.
The greatest advantage of one-off campaigns is that they are situational. Marketers have full creative control to create relevant incentives and promotions in real-time for what’s happening in the industry. For example, if a company is hosting a popup event, but it only materializes and solidifies a week beforehand, sending a one-off email to promote it would ease doing such a quick turnaround and time-sensitive information is appropriate.
This kind of fluidity makes one-off campaigns particularly successful for brands that change their content calendars often or need to relay information that won’t be in the budget months ahead. In addition, they’re a good way to create urgency. Many of these campaigns include last-chance sales or new product releases that stir interest and allow for the subscriber to be motivated to purchase immediately. In turn, this boosts sales.
Finally, one-off emails help to keep a brand in the forefront of consumers’ minds as they see them more often in their inbox. As long as one-off campaigns don’t become excessive, they foster ongoing awareness, boost excitement, or help in rebranding. For instance, a fashion retailer can send a one-off campaign to announce the release of their seasonal lookbook, while a tech retailer can send a one-off campaign to update customers on a software upgrade.
However, although the advantages of these one-off campaigns stem from their unscheduled nature and timely offerings, they require much more extensive dedication from your team.
Each campaign will require explicit planning, design, and testing before send-off. There’s no opportunity for long-term automation, which means the sending and execution must be flawless. But for companies with a margin to spare to provide timely content updates or those in fast-paced industries where time is of the essence these one-off campaigns are an essential email marketing arsenal.
Ultimately, one-off campaigns give marketers the chance to reach their audience at the right time, which makes them an essential email marketing tool for authentic, timely engagement and subsequent engagement attempts.
Which Drives Better Engagement?
It depends. Generally, automated email sequences lead to better engagement over time because, with a consistent flow, they’re sent via drip, more curated, relevant, and action-triggered. People feel as though they are more likely to get exactly what they are driven to get based on their journey, and they’re more likely to open, click, and convert.
However, one-off campaigns lead to more engagement. If done properly with urgency and relevance, one campaign can bring in a surge of traffic or revenue in a quick amount of time. For example, a sale that’s only available for 24 hours or an announcement that offers VIP access can compel subscribers to act now, something that an automated drip sent over 7 days may not do in a timely manner. Therefore, engagement is less about being clicked on in the moment and more about trusting over time.
Resource Considerations and Scalability
The only problem with automated email campaigns is that setting them up is the most complicated, tedious process since it requires planning, copying, and strategizing. Even if it takes a while to create a sequence that sounds like you and follows your customer/user journey, it will save so much time in the future that it’s worth it. Once established, they require little upkeep and can quickly transfer from product to product, service to service, audience to audience.
This is not the case with one-off campaigns. This is an ongoing process where ideation is necessary constantly; copy, design, and segmentation are continually needed. For small teams, this might drain valuable resources; for large teams, this might be palatable. Yet when those teams have the bandwidth and resources to utilize one-off campaigns, the flexibility and creatively based process make it all worth it.
Where automation reigns supreme is the scalability of it all. The larger your audience, the more consistent messaging you seek to prevent everyone from being overwhelmed (albeit unintentionally). Automated emails save your team the extra effort needed to ensure every user aligns with the same messaging; this is best for SaaS platforms, e-commerce sites, or anyone with a large volume of subscribers and nuanced user journeys.
Combining Both for a Balanced Strategy
Ultimately, the optimal email marketing experience employs both automation and one-off campaigns. Automation can establish a baseline, educating recipients over time, while one-off campaigns can shatter the baseline, create opportunities, and exploit time-sensitive scenarios.
For example, a new subscriber may receive a welcome automation over two weeks as they familiarize themselves with the brand and midway through that automation, a one-off email can go out about a flash sale or a webinar happening on that Saturday. This way, you’re addressing your long-term nurturing goals but also remaining present as a continuously active entity.
Those who adopt the automated approach to email marketing while also throwing in one-off campaigns enjoy the best of both worlds loyal connection and timely urgency. Together, they help keep people informed, engaged, and interested in taking action.
When to Prioritize Automation
Should your business require ongoing onboarding, customer training, or lead nurturing that must occur within certain budgets and timeframes SaaS products, virtual classrooms, subscription services and automated email funnels are a necessity. You can create the perfect, pre-determined, and scalable experience that fosters leads or customers from discovery to engagement and ultimately conversion without the incremental cost needed for every customized touch. You need this, really, for consistency across the thousands of touches your team would otherwise overwhelm customer service or marketing efforts.
Automation is ideal for any type of company that can establish the controlled flow of information. Automated sequences keep users on a specific path with specific information sent at specific times. If your company is based in an industry where someone needs to make a decision over multiple touchpoints comparing options, understanding pricing, testing opportunities, consuming available content, automation helps link the follow-up conversations that may otherwise extinguish interest. For example, a SaaS company can have a new lead receive an automated welcome email, a day later receive a tutorial of the product, two days after that a case study of another company that utilized the product with successful results, and then a week later an invite for a limited time upgrade for a trial each coming in with logical transitional ease.
In the same way, companies that experience high traffic or lead generation on their platforms can see better results through automation. Companies that get hundreds or thousands of new leads per week will find it virtually impossible to manually onboard, train, or follow up with new leads. Therefore, automation ensures that no opportunity is missed or left loose. Each new subscriber or lead is funneled into an appropriate sequence immediately upon entry. Therefore, they seem timely and relevant for action. If someone registers for a webinar to learn about a product, they’ll get an email about the webinar, a follow-up with a replay if they attended and another down the line offering them a demo.
Ultimately, this is a possibility for improvement afforded through automation. Keep in mind that email sequences create an ever-evolving relationship with an audience based on consistent touch points that not only educate but empower trust and deeper relationships over time. Automation makes it easy to segment by interest, action, or the specific stage in the lifecycle and send appropriate information successfully at various points along the customer journey. This deliberate attention to detail fosters engagement and makes conversion much easier and more likely to occur.
Furthermore, automation gives you access to metrics that assess, project, and improve your campaigns over time. Open rates and drop-offs, click-throughs, and conversions can all be evaluated to constantly improve the efficacy of such sequences. So you’re not just saving time that would otherwise be spent on a repetitive process by constantly doing the same thing over and over again, but instead imparting learned endeavors that mean so much more.
Therefore, automated email sequences are essential to this reliable, scalable effectiveness. They take email marketing from a participatory process where constant reaction occurs to an endeavor of being proactive through educated endeavors that ensure sustainable effectiveness for both brand and audience moving forward.
When One-Off Campaigns Make More Sense
One-off campaigns suit your company if you frequently run promotions, flash sales, or seasonal products. You have the freedom to create on the fly and develop topical messages based on breaking news, newly launched products, and cultural happenings. Many brands in the fashion, entertainment, or live event industries operate with a campaign of one-off efforts since they must stay top of mind for quick turnaround purchase opportunities.
Additionally, campaigns work well for re-engaging inactive subscribers or enhancing your standard email strategy. An unexpected, unforeseen one-off email can capture a user’s attention and re-engage inactive users who went cold before a more prolonged automated flow sets in.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Fit for Your Business
An email marketing program needs both automated email sequences and one-off campaigns to succeed. Rather than setting the two practices up for failure competition it’s important to acknowledge that each delivers something a little different to your comprehensive email marketing toolkit. Automation offers reliable, personalized, long-term experiences while one-off campaigns offer reliable, urgent, time-sensitive experiences with a dash of flexibility.
The industry leaders utilize automation for the standard, expected touchpoints and one-off campaigns for the unique, limited engagement opportunities. Blending the two creates a more comprehensive, timely, relevant experience for your subscribers, an experience that promotes long-term growth of sales and loyalty generation.
