Automated Email Campaigns: A Beginner’s Guide (2025)

Find out how automated email campaigns can benefit your business and save you time. Get tips on how to choose, set up, and optimize your email automations.

There’s no doubt email marketing can be a powerful tool for ecommerce companies: It has an average return on investment (ROI) of 36 times. That means for every dollar you spend on email marketing efforts, you can expect $36 in return. 

But the process of drafting the perfect email and finding which customers to send it to can be time-consuming. That’s where automated email campaigns come in. 

Ahead, learn how automated email campaigns can benefit your business, how to choose and optimize automations, what to look for in email automation software, and how to set up email automations for your small business in just a few steps.

What is email marketing automation?

Email marketing automation is a technology that automatically sends emails from your email service provider (ESP) based on specific behavioral triggers. Within ecommerce, those triggers often include signing up for a newsletter, abandoning a cart, or making a purchase.

The benefits of email automation 

1. Personalizes the customer experience
2. Improves customer retention
3. Helps scale email marketing strategy

Most businesses turn to marketing automation for efficiency. But beyond saving you time, email automation can also:

1. Personalize the customer experience

Personalized email automations like welcome and thank you messages show your customers that you’re willing to meet them wherever they are in the customer journey. Automated emails like personalized product recommendations based on browsing history and back-in-stock notifications show customers that you care about their individual preferences, which can help you develop brand trust over the long run.

This personalized messaging can also help you in the short term: When you send tailored messages based on user behavior, you’re more likely to reach your customers when they are more likely to act. For example, let’s say a customer buys a winter jacket. If you send them a personalized email recommending a pair of winter gloves, you can ensure your gloves are getting in front of the right audience at the right time (people who need winter gear).

2. Improve customer retention 

Automated email campaigns are a great way to stay in touch with customers after they’ve made a purchase and encourage them to buy from you again. 

Sending post-purchase emails like thank you messages and customer surveys can help you show customers you care about their experience with your company. Win-back emails like repurchase reminders can help you secure that next order, as can automated emails promoting sales and discounts. 

3. Helps scale email marketing strategy

One of the top benefits of email automation is scalability—no more manually sending every email. 

The idea is: As your email list grows, the effectiveness of your email campaigns don’t suffer from having “too many” ecommerce customers. Since automation lets you personalize your correspondences, your strategy will work the same whether you’re sending emails to 10 people or 100,000 people. 

9 automated email campaigns every ecommerce business should send 

1. Welcome emails
2. Abandoned cart emails
3. Email nurture series
4. Thank you emails
5. Post-purchase emails
6. Customer feedback emails
7. Win-back emails
8. Inventory updates
9. Sale notifications for wishlist items

Platforms like Shopify Email make launching email automation easy with templates. You can also design automated email workflows from scratch using tools like Shopify Flow. 

Here are nine automated email campaigns you can build for your ecommerce business today:

1. Welcome emails

A welcome email is the first email someone receives after they join your mailing list. It’s important to automate your welcome email so new subscribers receive it the moment they join your list. “Make sure that when someone decides to take that step and gives you their email address, you’re ready to welcome them,” says Desirae Odjick, a product marketing lead who works on Shopify Email and Shopify Forms. 

“There should always be some kind of offer for signing up for your email list,” Desirae says. That could be a discount on a customer’s first purchase, early access to product drops, or access to exclusive content. Whatever it is, make sure your welcome email provides new subscribers with the details they need to utilize your sign-up incentive. 

You can also use your automated welcome email to let new subscribers know what to expect from you and encourage them to follow your brand on other marketing channels—like social media—to see even more content. Desirae explains that these are some of the most-opened emails. “People just took action, they’re expecting to see it, they’re probably going to open it,” she says. 

Here’s an example from sunglasses company Crap Eyewear:

Crap’s welcome email includes a discount code (its sign-up incentive) plus a preview of what new subscribers can expect from the brand: “new shades, radio updates, sales, fam content, parties & more.” There’s also a clear call to action (“Shop Now”).

2. Abandoned cart emails

More than 70% of shopping carts end up abandoned. Abandoned cart emails give you a chance to re-engage customers that fall off the purchasing journey.

“You can automatically email them to try to bring them back by showing them specifically in the email what they left in their cart,” says Desirae. You can also send abandoned check-out and abandoned product browse messages, both of which are supported in Shopify Email.

To send cart abandonment emails, you’ll need to make sure your customers have opted into your website’s cookies. This allows you to track their activity across your site. 

Shopify Email’s abandoned cart email automation includes a link to the customer’s cart, making it easy for readers to quickly complete their purchase. This example from Crap Eyewear features a photograph of the product in the cart and a link to return to the cart:

To maximize effectiveness, consider sending a sequence of cart abandonment emails. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for when to send each email, but research from the email marketing company Rejoiner found the following timeline to be effective: Send the first email 60 minutes after the customer’s last interaction with your site, send the second one two days later, and send the last email three days later. 

Here’s a breakdown of that automated abandoned cart email timeline, along with recommended content for each message:

	When to send	What to include
Email 1	60 minutes after the customer’s last interaction with your site	Remind customers of what they left behind with a photo of the product and a link back to their cart.
Email 2	2 days later	Respond to possible objections to buying the product. For example, you might list what makes your product better than its competitor, or add customer testimonials.
Email 3	3 days later	Offer a discount to encourage the customer to purchase.

Over time, look at data like email conversion rate (which you can see with Shopify Email’s analytics) to determine if and how you need to adjust your content and timing.

As you experiment with different cart abandonment emails, consider adding social proof: Seeing that other customers were satisfied with their purchase can help potential customers decide to complete theirs.

3. Email nurture series

Companies use lead nurturing campaigns, also called drip campaigns, to turn prospects into customers. These can be triggered by a variety of behaviors.

Josh Rosenblat, a senior editor at Shopify, says you can start a drip campaign with your welcome email. For example, let’s say you sent a welcome email with a sign-up discount code. 

“Within two days, they’re going to get a second email saying, ’Hey, nice to meet you,’” says Josh. “You would introduce yourself as the founder of the company and make it a little bit more personable. Then you would continue that series of emails to the point where you would eventually want them to make a purchase.” 

Instead of inundating subscribers with promotions and focusing mostly on discounts, use your drip campaign to convey how your products can add value to your customers’ lives. Doing so can help strengthen your brand story and differentiate your brand from competitors.

The length of your drip campaign will vary, and you can experiment with different structures until you find a model that works for you. 

Here’s an example of one drip campaign method:

• Email 1: Educate your audience on your products.
• Email 2: Introduce your brand with a founder’s note.
• Email 3: Share tips for getting the most out of your products, with an invitation to reach out to customer service with questions.
• Email 4: Send an email based on the subscriber’s behavior, like an abandoned product browse email.

“Sometimes that drip campaign can be just one or two emails,” says Josh. “Other times, it can be a longtail series of up to a dozen emails.”

4. Thank you emails

A post-purchase thank you email is “a really powerful moment to build that relationship [with your customer] and acknowledge that you appreciate their business,” Desirae says. Automations make it easy to send personalized thank-you emails for a customer’s first and second purchase.

“The first purchase is, ‘Hey, we really appreciate your business. Thank you for taking the leap of faith by ordering. We really are excited that you’re here,’” says Desirae. For the second purchase, Desirae recommends thanking repeat customers for their loyalty and expressing your appreciation for them. 

5. Post-purchase emails

Automated post-purchase emails provide customers with necessary information, like a tracking number and an estimated delivery date. They also present an opportunity to showcase your brand personality and encourage customers to take additional action.

Here are the post-purchase emails you’ll be able to automate, plus what you might want to include in each one:

• Order confirmation. Include the order number, name and photo of the purchased product, shipping details, how to contact support, payment information, and return options. You could also add in extras, like links to suggested products or your social media profiles.
• Shipping confirmation. This is triggered whenever a purchase order has been fulfilled. You might include additional information like how to contact support.
• Shipping update. This is triggered once tracking information is added or updated as the product makes its way to the customer. 
• Out for delivery. This email is triggered when the shipping carrier marks the product as out for delivery. This is a good place to incorporate copy that gets your customer excited about their product. If applicable, you could also include useful educational materials about product assembly or product care best practices.

• Delivered. This is the last email in the product update series, marking the completion of the product’s journey to the customer. This is a good place to reiterate your return policy and ask customers to leave you a review. 

It’s best to include your business’s contact details in each of these emails, so customers can easily contact you with any questions and concerns.

💡If you’re a Shopify merchant, you can quickly set up automated order confirmations and order status updates from your Shopify Admin. 

6. Customer feedback emails

Feedback or customer satisfaction survey emails are another type of message that lends itself to automation. While these emails might not have an immediate impact on sales, they’re important because they show customers that you care about their voices and experience with your company. 

You can also leverage positive customer feedback as a form of social proof, which can encourage prospective customers to make a purchase. You might consider offering an incentive, like a discount, in exchange for customer feedback.

Consider sending a customer survey shortly after a customer completes their purchase. Popular survey formats like Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction score (CSAT), and customer effort score (CES) can help you measure a customer’s experience with your store.

After a customer receives their product, consider asking them to leave a review about four to five days later. At this point, the customer will likely be excited enough about their new item to take the time to leave a review. 

You can create these automations with Shopify Forms by establishing a purchase or delivery trigger, then timing your survey and review requests from there.

7. Win-back emails

Repeat customers account for an oversized share of sales: On average, the top 5% of loyal customers generate 35% of an ecommerce store’s revenue, according to data from loyalty program company Smile.io. But sometimes, time goes by and a customer might forget about the product they purchased and loved. This is where customer win-back automations come in. 

To create an effective automated win-back email, you’ll need to send targeted emails to customers who purchased specific products but haven’t made another purchase since then. This requires creating audience segments based on purchase history and ensuing behavior. 

You’ll then need to determine how long after a purchase to send your automated win-back email. “With win-back, you have to do a little bit more thinking,” says Desirae.

For example, take a look at this automated email from beauty brand Ilia. It reminds the customer to repurchase the company’s True Skin Serum Foundation, which by Ilia’s estimate, the customer is probably running low on. 

Source: Klaviyo

In another example, the hair care brand Briogeo reminds the customer to repurchase its Scalp Revival serum. Briogeo incentivizes the subscriber to repurchase by offering them 10% off.

Source: Klaviyo

8. Inventory updates

When an in-demand item in your store comes back in stock, let your customers know so that they can purchase it before it sells out again. 

In addition to sending general restock emails for your most popular products, you can optimize inventory update emails according to customer preferences and behavioral triggers. For example, if a customer adds an item to a wish list or they select to be notified when an item is back in stock, you can send them a personalized email letting them know. 

There are a number of apps that help you integrate this functionality into your Shopify store, including Seguno.

9. Sale notifications for wish list items

For a more specific type of inventory update, consider creating an email automation that notifies customers when a product they added to a wishlist goes on sale.

A wish lists feature can be useful for your customers—and you—in a variety of ways. For example, wishlists can help consumers track prices until they’re sure they want to make a purchase. They can also help customers easily share products with other people. For your small business, they can ensure customers don’t forget about products they saw and loved.

As a Shopify merchant, you can use a number of wish list apps to add this functionality to your ecommerce site. Then, use Shopify Flow to initiate email automations when products on wishlists go on sale.

Tips for making email marketing automation effective

• Start simple
• Use—but don’t overuse—segmentation
• Experiment with follow-up offers

Once you’ve decided which email marketing automations to implement, follow these tips to help them be effective.

Start simple

With so many options for automated email campaigns, it might be tempting to jump in head first by establishing a bunch of automations at once. Instead, start with the basics (welcome, abandoned cart, and order confirmation and status updates), and work out from there.

This will allow you the time to track these emails’ performance and refine them based on what you learn. It will also give you time to collect enough customer data to create effective automations in the future. For example, maybe you learn that one of your products sells far better than any other, so you decide to set up a back-in-stock automation for that item. You might also add a module cross-selling that item to other automated emails. 

Use—but don’t overuse—segmentation

Audience segmentation lets you tailor your emails to specific customer groups, helping you ensure your messages are relevant to your audience. 

“The powerful thing is that Shopify has all of the data of what someone has bought from you,” says Desirae. “You can create segments based on basically any customer data that you have in Shopify.”

For example, you could create segments for customers who are engaged but haven’t purchased yet, customers who’ve purchased a particular product, and customers who made their first purchase on a certain date.

While segmentation can help you make sure you’re reaching the right audience, hyperfocusing on segmentation can take up too much of your valuable time.

“You could get almost too granular—which is a warning,” says Desirae. “If your segment is 10 people, don’t spend time writing them a custom email. Aim for a slightly larger segment that will still include the right people that you want to reach.”

Experiment with follow-up offers

Sending follow-up discounts can help you convince price-sensitive customers to complete their purchase. However, if you send a follow-up offer every time you send an automation, clever customers might catch on and start waiting for a discount.

To avoid this, try to send a follow-up email around 20% of the time. You can also utilize segmentation to make sure you’re sending your discounts to the right people. For example, you might create a segment for customers who haven’t used a discount in the past year, then send your follow-up offer to those customers only. 

Best email automation tools

• Shopify
• Klaviyo
• Mailchimp
• Seguno

Let’s look at a few top marketing automation softwares: Shopify Email, Klaviyo, and Mailchimp.

Shopify Email

Source: Shopify Email

Native to the Shopify platform, Shopify Email lets you craft automated email campaigns from scratch or via email templates. Shopify Email has a drag-and-drop editor and AI-content generation features to help you draft effective marketing emails quickly. 

“When you go to create a campaign in Shopify Email, there’s a lot of templates that give you a strong starting point,” says Desirae. These include customization options for your brand assets as well as preset suggestions for possible content you can include.

You can fine-tune your automations by adjusting behavioral triggers, and you can improve your automations by leveraging data from Shopify Email’s analytics. Shopify Email also works with Shopify Flow, a marketing automation platform that lets you create automations across your store from a single software. 

“It’s really well integrated,” says Desirae. She points to a few helpful functionalities, like creating email lists based on form responses. “You can request any data you need,” says Desirae, like “‘What’s your favorite color? What’s your birthday?’” Then you can add those details to your email list.

If you’re a Shopify merchant, using Shopify Email can streamline your automated email marketing strategy because your product and customer data will be imported straight from your store. This includes customer segments. For example, you could create a “VIP” segment for customers who hit a set spend, then add that segment directly into the “To” field on Shopify Email.

💡You can send up to 10,000 emails per month with Shopify Email for free.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo integrates with Shopify, so you can easily access product and customer information as you design your automated email campaigns. Like Shopify, Klaviyo offers automation tools like self-sending messages and audience segmentation based on shopping behaviors. It also includes functionality that will notify shoppers when an item they like is back in stock. That said, Klaviyo costs extra: It starts at $45 per month and becomes more expensive the more subscribers you have.

Mailchimp

The email marketing tool Mailchimp integrates with Shopify, so you can access your store and customer data as you create your email automations. Mailchimp provides email templates for easy email drafting and analytics that can help you track which automations work, and which you should adjust. 

Mailchimp is free for businesses with up to 500 subscribers, costs $45 per month for 1,500 subscribers, and becomes more expensive the more subscribers you have.

Seguno

Source: Shopify App Store

Seguno is a built-for-Shopify app with basic email automation features, along with additional functionality when you use it in conjunction with Shopify Email. 

One highlight of Seguno: The app lets you send product restock emails to customers who requested restock alerts. You can implement this tool by adding Segundo’s restock alert request to your product pages, then using the software’s workflow to set up your email. Seguno will automatically consider your store’s inventory, so you won’t need to manually enter out-of-stock information.

Seguno is free for business with up to 250 subscribers, jumps to $35 for up to 2,500 subscribers, and increases as your subscriber count grows.

How to create automated email campaigns with Shopify

• Create using a template
• Create from scratch
• Edit your marketing automation
• Track your automated email campaigns
• Develop your automation strategy

Creating automated email campaigns works hand in hand with developing your email list, and it’s something you should think about from the moment you start crafting your email marketing strategy. Desirae suggests setting up a welcome automation before you even start collecting email addresses.

“Step one is to set up all your automation to make sure that when people sign up, there’s something there to greet them,” says Desirae. “Step two would be to make sure you have those forms and pop-ups,” says Desirae. Shopify merchants can create these with the free lead capture tool Shopify Forms.

Here’s how how to create and edit your email automations:

Create using a template

Get a headstart on your automated email campaigns by using a template:

1. From your Shopify admin, navigate to “Marketing,” then select “Automations.”

2. Select “View templates.”

3. Click on the automation you want to create, like “Abandoned cart” or “Abandoned product browse,” for example.

4. Select “Use template.”

5. Click “Edit,” then “Edit email.” This will let you start adapting your template in Shopify Email.

Create from scratch

If you want to fully customize your automated email campaigns, you can build them from scratch:

1. From your Shopify admin, navigate to “Marketing,” then select “Automations.”

2. Click “Create custom automation.”

3. From here, you’ll be able to organize the flow of your automation and design the email itself.

Edit your marketing automation

Here’s how to change the flow of your template (or how triggers activate emails):

1. Navigate to “Marketing,” then to “Automations.”

2. Select the automation you want to change, then click “Edit workflow.”

3. Make your changes, then select “Apply changes”

Here’s how to change the design of your emails:

1. Navigate to “Marketing,” then to “Automations.”

2. Click the “…” on the automation you want to change, then select “Edit.”

3. Make your changes, then click “Save.”

Track your automated email campaigns

Measuring the effectiveness of your email automations can help you figure out what’s working and what you need to change. Navigate to “Automations,” then “Results from marketing automations.” 

Here, you’ll see:

• Reach.The number of people you sent the automation to.
• Sessions. The number of sessions on your online store that came from your automation.
• Orders. The number of orders attributed to your automation.
• Sales. The net sales (gross sales minus discounts and returns), plus taxes and shipping, from your marketing automation.

You can view more detailed metrics about your automations, like conversions, by clicking “View report” in the “Automations” section of your Marketing page (which you can access through your Shopify admin).

Develop your automation strategy

While email automation is an important part of an email marketing strategy, it shouldn’t be the only thing you focus on.

“Make sure that you’re sending content,” says Desirae. “Don’t just rely on automation.” 

You can do this by sending messages that include everything from glowing customer testimonials to deep-dives into how you developed a product. You can also create an email newsletter, which you can use to share everything from gift guides to recipes to long-form narrative articles.

Automated email campaigns FAQ

Why is email automation important?

Email automation is important because it helps you convert sales, build brand trust, and scale your email marketing strategy. It also allows you to focus on other aspects of your business, like growth: Without email automation, you’d be stuck at your computer all day sending out emails instead of getting on with the important tasks your business demands.

How do you use email automation?

You use email automation to automatically send messages based on behavioral triggers—like when a user signs up for your email list or purchases a product for the first time.

To create automated email sequences you need to have an email service provider (ESP) that includes automation features (such as Shopify Email, Klaviyo, or MailChimp) and a subscriber list to send your emails to. With these two things in place, you can set up email sequences that send based on those specified behavioral triggers.