What’s the secret of building long-lasting relationships with your visitors? You are probably going to say time, money and resources. What if there is a better way? You can now considerably increase your number of communication touchpoints in just a few clicks with email automation. Interested? Keep reading while we deep dive into the benefits of marketing email automation. But first, let’s put everyone on the same page by defining what it is.

What is email automation?

Email automation is a way to create emails that reach the right people with the right message at the right moment - without doing the work every time. You create a workflow including one or more personalised emails that will automatically be sent based on triggers that you have defined in advance. Triggers are events or behaviours such as purchases, birthdays, abandoned baskets, etc. that begin the automation process.

According to the data you collect, you can target people based on various variables - previous sales, preferences or behaviours. Then you can personalise each customer’s experience and increase the relevance of your automated campaigns.

The benefits of having an automated email strategy

Maximise engagement and conversions

Email automation allows you to effortlessly stay engaged with your visitors every step of the customer journey. You simply build your visitor relationship by sending them all personalised “Welcome” or “Happy birthday” emails without having to do it more than once.

Leave one-size-fits-all communications in the past

In today’s digital world, personalisation is key. You have to use the data collected to send personalised targeted communication to your visitors. Data-driven personalisation goes from personalising the content like calling your visitors by their first names or wishing them happy birthday to customising technical aspects such as when a communication is sent, through which channel, etc. 

Turn website visitors into paying customers 

Do you know that about 70% of attractions' visitors do not go through their purchase of tickets on your website? (Baymard Institute) By retargeting them with email automation, you can reduce the number of abandoned baskets on your website by up to 6.5% while increasing your conversion rates. 

Scale your marketing department

Would you believe us if we said that with email automation, you would achieve the work of 3 marketers? On top of that, you reduce manual work and focus on what really matters: building true relationships with your visitors.

Grow your visitor average value

Email automation is the perfect tool to send targeted cross-sell and upsell recommendations before and during the experience  - snacks, souvenirs, fast-pass, etc. can be sold as add-ons for example. Smart cross-selling based on Artificial Intelligence uses previous sales, visitor preferences and behaviours to personalise the recommendations. Get started to grow your visitor average value and your sales by up to 20%. 

Enhance your visitor satisfaction

What does matter more than knowing what your visitors like or don’t like about your attraction? We truly believe that visitor satisfaction is the key to customer retention and with automated emails you can send feedback or satisfaction surveys to your customers as well as re-engagement communications to ensure they come back and become loyal.

How to get started with email automation

Find your ally: to ensure email automation is efficient, you need to use the right solution for your business. Choose a CRM that is integrated in your ticketing solution to access all your data easily without the need for an integration with an external CRM. It will be less cost- and time-efficient. 

Set up your main communication touchpoints along the customer journey: Here are 10 email automation ideas for visitor attractions you should not miss 

• Welcome emails for new subscribers
• Promotional emails for special offers and promo codes
• Abandoned basket emails to retarget potential customers
• Confirmation emails post-bookings
• Cross-sell and upsell emails before, during and after the experience
• Reminder emails for the upcoming activity
• Occasional emails, like celebrating birthdays with special offers
• Special event emails for Halloween, Easter, Christmas, etc.
• Satisfaction survey emails 
• Re-engagement emails for existing customers

Trust Artificial Intelligence to personalise the visitor experience: 91% of consumers say they are more likely to buy from brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them. By trusting Artificial Intelligence to hyper-personalise your visitors' experience, you let your data and automation do the work for you. You communicate with visitors at the right time, through the right channel, and with the right message based on past behaviours, preferences, and other relevant variables that will make your business more effective and your customers more engaged.

Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level?

Smeetz is the first unified commerce solution powered by Artificial Intelligence for visitor attractions, offering an integrated CRM and email automation solution. Get in touch with our team to learn more about our email automation feature. Our team would be happy to discuss your marketing strategy with you.