At this point, your Lead Capture Tool, should be live on your site and you should have already tested it to make sure the contacts are transferring to your Mailchimp account. If you’re good to go and all those things are true, you can move on to setting up automated reminder emails to go out to customers who have received your discount coupon.
By setting up these automated email reminders, you’re making your art Storefronts account and website do a small piece of your marketing for you. Basically, what you’re going to do is set up a generic outgoing email to remind people to use their discount code. After a specified number of days, the email is going to automatically send to the customer telling them that their coupon is expiring TODAY, and they should go ahead and use it before it expires. This creates a sense of urgency with customers. No-one likes to miss out on discounts, so the idea is that they want that discount and are going to come back to your site to make a purchase.
This is one of the easiest ways that you can make sure you are reaching out to your potential customers and it only requires a little bit of work up front to make sure that you don’t have to do any of this work manually, later.
Table of Contents
Set Up Email Automation
Make sure you are logged in to your Art Storefronts Control Panel. This is sometimes called the Site Manager or even the back-end of the site. All three of these mean the same thing, so just make sure you’re in the right spot.
Now, look at your list of pages and find the one titled Newsletter Sign Up. If you don’t have one titled Newsletter Sign Up specifically, find whatever page you use for your Lead Capture Tool and click on it. You need to get into that page, so you can set up the email automations.
After you’ve clicked on the correct page, you are going to see a list of different tabs and you must click on the one titled LEAD CAPTURE TOOL. If you don’t click on this tab you aren’t going to be able to complete this process and the email automation won’t be set up.
Next, scroll down the page until you see a field titled Start Sending Reminder Emails On and After this Date. Click on the field and select the date you want these emails to start going out on. Art storefronts suggests that you choose the date on which you are setting up the email automation reminders.
After you’ve chosen a date, the next field is Automatically Send Expiration Warning Email in (X) Days. In this box, you need to select how long you want to wait before sending your customer a reminder email. The best practise that Art Storefronts suggests is three days. If you followed all the best practises for setting up your Lead Capture Tool, customers should have received an email saying the coupon will expire in three days. So, in this box, select three. If you changed the text saying it is a different number of days, find that in the drop-down and select it instead.
Please Note: This must be set for the automation emails to be sent to your customer. If you don’t set it, they aren’t going to go out.
Skip the box labeled Type of Expiration Email and instead move on to Expiration Email Subject Text. In this box you should say something like Last Chance to Save 20%. This text needs to be clear and catch the eye of your customer because you want them to open the email and see that their coupon is expiring.
Art Storefronts Recommendation: Any time you are creating a title for an outgoing email, you want to avoid using exclamation points. Exclamation points are notorious for causing emails to be flagged and sent directly to a junk or trash folder. Avoid exclamation points at ALL costs.
When you’re sure that the titled of the email is going to be appropriate, you can move on down to the Lead Capture Expiration Warning Content In this box, you need to craft an email to let the customer know their coupon is expiring and you’ll want to include the coupon code. If you need a basic outgoing email, you can copy the code below:
<div style="border: 2px dotted black; padding: 20px; margin: 20px 30px; text-align: center; line-height: 30px;">Use this code at checkout:<br />
<span style="font-size: 30px;"><b>FIRST20</b></span></div>
<p style="text-align: center;">Use the code above to get <strong>20% off your first order</strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong>Act quickly, because this discount expires today.</strong><b>.</b></span></p>
After you have copied the code, click on the Source This is going to take you into the custom code area of the editor, so you can add the code.
Now, paste the code you previously copied.
Once the code has been pasted, click the Source button again. You should see the text for the body of the email and if you need to make any changes to it (change the coupon code or any of the other wording), now is the time and this is the place.
From here, you should be all done with the email automation process. So, after you double check everything you just did, click the Save DO NOT CLICK THE BACK BUTTON. If you click back, the work you just completed will not be saved and you will have to redo it.
Troubleshooting
My page won’t save.
You likely need to use an approved browser. If you’re using anything other than Firefox or Chrome, you should stop and use either Chrome or Firefox.
If you’re using an approved browser, you may need to clear your cache. Check out how to clear the cache by using the article on How To: Clear your Cache.
My email automation emails aren’t being sent out!
Make sure you’ve filled out the Start Sending Reminder Emails On and After this Date has a date, that is in the PAST in it.
If that box is filled out, check the Automatically Send Expiration Warning Email in (X) Days. This must have a number in it as well. If it doesn’t, things won’t send properly.
I’m getting the expiration emails that should go to my customer!
Those are just copies of the emails your customers get sent. Take it as a good sign that you’re getting these emails. It means everything is working properly.
What do I do next?
Now that you’ve got your email automation set up for your Lead Capture Tool you’ll need to make sure that you have a coupon available to use with it. Art Storefronts provides a default coupon for you, but if you decided to change your Lead Capture tool or the discount code or amount, you’ll need to go in and make the appropriate changes to that coupon. To learn more, check out the article How To: Create a Coupon for the Lead Capture Tool.