Many marketers treat email like a religion. Write a series, stick it in an autoresponder, and pray for opens, clicks, and sales.
But what if there was a more effective way to reach conversion heaven? Enter: AWeber’s click and open automations, a new way to send targeted email.
Automations was our largest feature release of 2017, and it was met with a wave of excitement and a tsunami of questions from AWeber customers. That’s why I hosted two live training sessions to walk users through the benefits click and open automations can deliver for their businesses.
Read on for a list of the 10 most popular questions asked during my live training sessions.
What are click and open automations?
Click and open automations present an easy way to tag your subscribers based on the links they click or the emails they open within your automated campaigns. This empowers you to create dynamic segments of subscribers based on their behavior, which allows you to send more targeted emails later. Sending more relevant and personalized content can greatly increase your sales and revenue.
Click and open automations can also trigger a separate email sequence to be sent to a subscriber, or remove a subscriber from an active campaign, which creates opportunities to build more complex email marketing funnels.
What is a campaign?
A campaign is a sequence of automated emails, sometimes called an autoresponder, created in our email automation platform Campaigns. A campaign can be triggered when a new subscriber is added to your email list, or you can trigger a campaign when a specific tag is applied to a subscriber. There is no real limit to how many emails you can add to your campaign.
What’s the difference between a campaign and a follow up series?
There are quite a few differences between a campaign and a follow-up series. Campaigns is AWeber’s new automation platform. You can create multiple campaigns per list, trigger campaigns when tags are applied, and leverage click and open automations.
A follow up series, built using “legacy follow ups,” is simple and reliable, but lacks many of the features found in Campaigns. For example, you can only have one sequence of automated emails per list if using legacy follow ups, and you cannot leverage click and open automations.
To learn more about the differences between a campaign and a follow up series, read our Knowledge Base article.
How can click and open automations trigger email campaigns?
Click and open automations allow you to apply a tag when a link is clicked, or when an email is opened. Because you can trigger a Campaign based on a tag being applied, you can set up automated emails to be sent based on your automations.
For example, if you set up a click automation to apply the tag “webinar” and you have an active campaign that is triggered by the tag “webinar,” a subscriber who clicks on the link will begin to receive the campaign messages.
How do I link campaigns together?
Linking campaigns allows you to send content to subscribers as they need it. For example, if a subscriber successfully finishes a campaign, you may want to trigger a secondary campaign to occur.
Or if a subscriber clicks on a link, you may want to remove the subscriber from the campaign they are in and trigger a different campaign to be sent.
Linking campaigns can be accomplished with tags. By using the “tag applied” trigger for a campaign, you can set a campaign to send only a subscriber receives a specific tag. There are advanced options that allow you to set different inclusions and exclusions based on tags, as well.
Applying a tag using an automation, or at the end of a campaign that corresponds to a different campaign can allow you to easily link sequences together.
What’s the difference between tags and segments?
Tags and segments are quite different. In AWeber, you can search for subscribers that meet a specific criteria. For example, you can search for subscribers that were added in the past 7 days, or subscribers who opened a specific email, clicked on a specific link, or have email addresses that contain gmail.com.
After you execute this search, you can then save it as a segment. This segment is dynamic, meaning subscribers who are added to your list in the future who meet the search criteria will be included in the segment.
Once you have a segment, you can then send targeted one-time broadcast emails to these subscribers.
Tags themselves are not segments, but they are important building blocks to assist you in creating segments. You can search for subscribers who or do not have certain tags, allowing you to create segments based on tags. Tags have other uses, like the ability to trigger a campaign.
How do I create a segment to send one-time broadcasts to?
To create a segment, simply search for subscribers that meet your segment criteria in Subscriber Management. Save your search as a segment. Here’s a quick tutorial on creating segments.
When scheduling your broadcast, select the segment you would like to send to. Here’s a quick tutorial to send to a specific segment.
How do I create a Campaign?
Creating a campaign is simple using our drag-and-drop interface. To create a campaign, simply select Campaigns from the Messages dropdown in AWeber, and click the button “Create a Campaign.”
Name your campaign, select a trigger (the action that will prompt your campaign to start,) and begin creating using the campaign editor.
For a full tutorial on getting started with Campaigns, refer to this article.
How do I create an automation?
Using automations in AWeber’s Campaigns is simple.
When selecting a message within a Campaign, you’ll have the option to add an automation.
First, select your automation trigger. (We are launching automations with a single trigger – link click triggers – but we’ll be adding more triggers in the coming months.)
Second, choose “Clicks a link” and then select which link you want to apply this automation to.
Now, choose “apply a tag” as your action. Enter what tags you’d like to add or remove if a subscriber clicks this link.
Optionally, you can elect to remove a subscriber from the entire automated campaign if they click a link.
Repeat for other links within your message, as needed.
For more detailed instruction, please visit our Knowledge Base.
How do I copy my legacy follow up series to Campaigns?
There is a feature in AWeber to show your legacy follow up series as a Campaign. This feature does not convert your series to a Campaign, and it does not allow you to take advantage of click and open automations, or triggering the follow up series based on a tag.
To learn more about this feature, please review this article.
If you would like to copy each message from your legacy follow up series to Campaigns, you can copy the messages as drafts and built a new campaign using the copied messages.
Get started with email automation
Getting started with email automation is easier than ever. Sign up for a free trial of AWeber, or hop into your account now, and begin automating your marketing funnel with Campaigns.
Looking for a demo? Watch this recent webinar to see exactly how to set up automations.
Still have questions? Our live customer solutions team is available 4AM-8PM ET Mon-Fri and 9AM-5PM ET Sat-Sun. Contact us by phone, email, or live chat.