A premium homewares brand built on craftsmanship, design, and customer trust

Wallace Cotton is a New Zealand lifestyle and homeware brand known for its approach to everyday living – blending timeless design, natural fabrics and effortless luxury across premium bed linen, home textiles and sleepwear.

Founded in 2005, the brand has built a loyal following through its considered aesthetic, quality craftsmanship and commitment to creating pieces that feel as beautiful as they are lived in. With a strong retail footprint across New Zealand and a rapidly growing ecommerce presence, Wallace Cotton continues to cultivate long-term relationships with more than 95,000 customers who value comfort, style and thoughtful design.

A Dotdigital customer since 2023, Wallace Cotton expanded its partnership in 2025 with the addition of Dotdigital Personalization, helping translate the same curated, on-brand experience customers love in-store into every touchpoint of the online journey.

Translating a premium brand promise into an efficient website experience, without resorting to discounts

Wallace Cotton has built its reputation on thoughtful design, premium quality, and timeless homewares. Customers come to the brand expecting a considered, considered, on-brand experience – one that reflects the care and craftsmanship behind every product. However, this premium positioning was not fully carried through to the website experience.

Without website personalization, every customer was met with the same generic journey, regardless of browsing behaviour, preferences, or purchase intent. This limited Wallace Cotton’s ability to guide customers toward relevant products, curate meaningful experiences, or increase average order value in a way that felt natural and on-brand.

Compounding the challenge, revenue growth could not rely on traditional retail levers like discounting. Protecting price integrity was critical to maintaining the brand’s premium perception, leaving little room to drive performance through promotional tactics without risking long-term brand value.

Turning the mini cart into a personalized styling experience with Dotdigital Personalization SmartBlocks

To create a brand world that communicated the premium brand promise and aligned it with the website shopping experience, Wallace Cotton partnered with Dotdigital Personalization to introduce website personalization – starting with a strategic focus on the mini cart.

In 2024, the team was first introduced to Dotdigital Personalization at a Dotdigital Masterclass in New Zealand. They were a perfect candidate – with Dotdigital already directly integrated, and a tech stack spanning Shopify & OnTempo, the decision was straightforward: one connected platform that could power email, SMS and website personalization without adding integration overheads. Dotdigital stood out in the selection process, offering a frictionless direct integration between 2 platforms.

The experience uses real-time behavioural data (e.g. products viewed, items added to cart, and previous browsing patterns) to intelligently recommend complementary and higher-value items aligned with each shopper’s interests.

The real time personalization opportunity allowed Wallace Cotton to move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and instead guide customers toward thoughtfully curated product combinations – such as coordinating bedding, cushions, and accessories – that felt natural, considered, and true to the brand.

The mini cart became more than a transactional touchpoint; it evolved into a personalized styling moment that reflected Wallace Cotton’s attention to detail, craftsmanship, and customer-first philosophy.

Importantly, this level of personalization delighted their audience, allowing Wallace Cotton to increase average order value and drive incremental revenue. Rather than incentivizing customers with discounts, the brand used relevance and inspiration as its primary growth lever – reinforcing its premium positioning while delivering measurable commercial impact.

Dotdigital Personalization, has helped us create more personalized recommendations and experiences that resonate with our customers. We’re already seeing the value of using our customer insights in a more considered way, and with a strong roadmap ahead, it feels like we’re only getting started.

Ben Harris – Ecommerce Manager

The results highlighted the commercial impact of relevance-led website personalization, demonstrating that meaningful revenue growth can be achieved without relying on discounting.

• Average order value 20% higher than the site-wide average
• Measurable ROI over 800% in first 6 months
• SmartBlocks contributed 6% of total website revenue

Dotdigital SmartBlocks turned website personalization into a significant performance driver. Within six months, SmartBlocks contributed 6% of total website revenue, with customers engaging in personalized content consistently achieving an average order value 20% higher than the site-wide average.

Beyond topline revenue uplift, the programme delivered a strong commercial return, achieving an estimated ~800% ROI over the measurement period, driven purely by personalized experiences rather than promotional incentives.

Crucially, these results were achieved without compromising price integrity. By focusing on thoughtful, relevant product recommendations at moments of high purchase intent, Wallace Cotton was able to grow conversion and order value while reinforcing its premium brand positioning and long-term brand value.

Multi-platform expansion of personalization

Building on its success, Wallace Cotton plans to expand personalized product recommendations across the website and into email, delivering a more cohesive end‑to‑end customer experience. Key next steps include enhancing abandoned cart and re‑engagement emails with personalized product recommendations to drive relevance, re‑engagement, and conversion.

Millie’s Cookies has spent more than 40 years living off a single, reliable moment: the smell of fresh cookies pulling shoppers in on impulse as they walked through a shopping center. That moment built the brand. It also meant the business had almost no relationship with its customers beyond the till. As footfall declined and store count fell from around 150 to 45, that impulse-driven model stopped being enough to build a business on, and Millie’s had to become a brand people could find, join, and buy from without ever walking past a store.

10x+ return on investment

Dan Hall joined Millie’s in 2025 to lead that shift. “Our natural place in the market was in decline,” Dan says. “We had to pivot from a one-size-fits-all, in-store approach to something built around an actual, ongoing customer relationship.” The clearest proof that the shift was working wasn’t a big campaign. It was a free cookie.

Awareness was the real barrier, not appetite

Millie’s had run an online business for about a decade already, but most customers didn’t know it existed. “A lot of people still think you have to go into town to get a Millie’s cookie,” Dan says. “Even after ten years online, we’re still working against that assumption.” The challenge wasn’t convincing people to like the brand. It was convincing them the brand existed somewhere other than the shopping center.

Building a reason to go online

The team’s answer wasn’t a discount blast. It was the free birthday cookie: sign up to the database, get 10% off a first order, and a QR code lands on your phone good for a free cookie in any store within 30 days of your birthday. “On paper, giving away a free cookie isn’t particularly massive,” Dan says. “But it’s been one of the sharpest, lowest-cost moves we’ve made toward getting people to actually engage with us online instead of just walking past us in a shopping center.”

“It’s not the flashiest thing we’ve built, but it’s the one I’d point to first if someone asked what actually got customers to make the leap online.”

It worked because it gave people a real reason to sign up. Every redemption meant another verified, opted-in contact, captured and managed through Dotdigital, and another customer who now had an online relationship with Millie’s that didn’t exist a year earlier. Email, SMS, and WhatsApp all sit in one place for the team now, rather than stitched together across separate platforms, which Dan says makes it easier to actually build the journeys instead of managing the tools.

Proving the shift to the business

Getting a traditionally in-store business to invest further online meant proving the case first. “You show up with a small idea, a clear result, and you let the numbers do the arguing,” Dan says. Once redemptions started tracking alongside real online sales, the internal conversation changed. “The moment finance can see a straight line from a free cookie to online sign-ups to repeat online revenue, you stop having to sell the shift. You’re just reporting on it.”

Dotdigital has been the engine behind a 10x return on our CRM investment. It’s not just a platform, it’s how we finally built a real relationship with our customers.

Dan Hall, Millie’s Cookies

The numbers tell the story

The CRM program, run through Dotdigital, now returns more than 10 times what’s invested in it, evidence Dan points to whenever the business questions further investment in online channels over physical retail. “I feel as though Dotdigital has kind of been the engine behind that activity,” Dan says. More than a year on, roughly three-quarters of the online database remains actively engaged, well above what a typical reactivated list tends to hold onto, proof that the online relationship is sticking, not just spiking around a single campaign.

Looking ahead

Dan sees the biggest opportunity as still being awareness, not tactics. “Even after ten years of having an online business, we’ve still got a huge way to go in getting people to realize they don’t need to go to a shopping center for this,” he says. The plan is to keep building simple, low-cost reasons for offline customers to engage online, the way the birthday cookie did, while widening into SMS and WhatsApp, both a natural fit for a customer base that buys last-minute.

Co-branded partnerships, with the likes of Jet2, and conversations underway with other retailers, are stacking on top of that same goal: reaching people where they already are, and giving them a reason to find Millie’s online instead of waiting to walk past a store. “We’re still just scratching the surface,” Dan says. “The brand’s been around 40 years in people’s memories. Now we’re building the version that lives in their inbox.”

Warners Group Publications connects people with their passions, in print, digital, live shows, audio, travel, and education, across 25 brands and more than 5 million people. Running that many brands with a lean team means constant pressure to do more without more budget, more headcount, or more hours in the day.

Ben Romaine, Marketing Manager, and Katherine Brown, Head of Marketing and Advertising for BirdGuides, opened their Dotdigital Summit session by asking the room a simple question: who in here feels time poor, under pressure, and expected to deliver more with less? Every hand went up. It set up exactly the problem they’d spent the last year solving. Not by doing more, but by finally using the data they already had.

The same problem, showing up twice

For years, Warners Group leaned on paid advertising to reach interest-based audiences, and it worked, but it wasn’t cheap or precise. “Historically we’ve been paying a premium across paid advertising channels to reach those interest-based audiences,” Ben explained, “mainly because we have no control over these audiences.”

Meanwhile, the data that could have fixed this was sitting right there, just disconnected from anything useful. The shows team had rich purchase data from ticket sales running through Eventbrite. BirdGuides had web behavior data clearly showing which visitors were spending time in its most valuable membership-gated feature. In both cases, the signal existed but nobody was acting on it.

“We had the data but we weren’t using it where it mattered most,” Ben said of the shows business. Katherine put the BirdGuides version of the same problem more bluntly: “We had the data and an opportunity to convert, but we just weren’t doing it.”

Building one connected data foundation

The fix started the same way in both cases: making Dotdigital the central hub for customer data rather than a bolt-on email tool. For the shows team, that meant syncing Eventbrite ticket sales so every purchase became order insight against the customer record, then layering in subscription, membership, and ecommerce data on top. The result was what Ben called “a rich profile of that user,” a genuinely holistic view instead of scattered fragments.

From there, the real shift was exporting those segments straight into Google and Meta instead of keeping them siloed in email. Past show attendees got excluded from campaigns advertising that same show. High-value segments got prioritized for spend. Email and paid social stopped being two separate channels and became one connected story, powered by the same first-party data.

“So why guess when the data is already telling us who matters?” Ben asked the room. That line is the whole session in one sentence, and the shows team’s numbers back it up: total ticket purchases up 56% year over year, return on ad spend more than doubled, and cost per purchase down roughly 7%.

We stopped guessing and started letting Dotdigital tell us exactly who mattered. Ticket sales, membership conversions, ad spend, all of it got sharper the moment we connected the data properly.

Ben Romaine, Warners Group Publications

Turning intent into memberships

BirdGuides took the same foundation and pointed it at a more specific problem: converting the anonymous intent from those sightings-page visits into paying members. The team built an automation that enrolled those visitors, minus existing members, into a series designed to educate first and sell second, then extended the same segments into paid social so the message followed people across channels, not just their inbox.

For the free trial specifically, sign-up stayed deliberately frictionless, just an email and a phone number, and they ran a 54-day, seven-email journey using Dotdigital. The tone shifts on purpose as the trial progresses. No mention of pricing in the early welcome emails. A soft upsell once a week remains. A clear reminder of what’s about to disappear once the trial ends.

“It works because it’s simple, it works because it’s replicable, and it works because it’s proof.”
Katherine Brown Head of Marketing and Advertising, BirdGuides

The program converted at 12.3%, against an industry standard of 5 to 10%, and generated £10,000 in revenue in year one. Two emails alone, the seven-days-to-go message and the expiry-date message, accounted for 68% of that total. A related automation targeting high-intent, non-member visitors added another £6,000 in direct revenue on its own, converting 70 new memberships at an average value of £82 each, with lifetime value still to come on top.

Backing instinct with proof

Both teams tested their way to certainty rather than relying on gut instinct. When BirdGuides A/B tested send day, midweek against weekend, weekends won clearly. “Rather than relying on our gut,” Ben noted, they had the data to support the call instead of just a hunch about what people do on their days off.

Looking ahead

Warners Group has recently onboarded Dotdigital’s Personalization, and because the business is fundamentally about content, that means recommending the right article, video, or podcast to the right reader, not just the right product. The next step is extending the shows team’s Meta and Google integration into the BirdGuides free trial programme, so every touchpoint tells the same story no matter where a customer encounters the brand.

“Get the fundamentals right,” Ben told the room. “Good use of data beats complicated automation.” For Warners Group, that’s meant one platform, one connected data foundation, and two very different problems solved the same way.

But if that’s the case, why do 49% of people only consider marketing messages to be “somewhat relevant”? If personalization is hitting “just right,” shouldn’t messages be “very relevant”? 

Yet, only 15% of shoppers across Australia, Singapore, the UK, and the USA think marketing is “very relevant” to them. 

Of course, being “somewhat relevant” is better than not being relevant at all, but there’s a big opportunity for brands to close the relevancy gap. Sharing genuinely relevant content with your audience will set you apart from the brands that are just doing alright. 

What do you mean by relevance, and how is it different from personalization? 

That’s a very good question, too. Here’s how we break it down: 

• Personalization is knowing who someone is — their name, location, preferences
• Relevance is knowing where someone is now — their needs and intent in the moment 

A customer who bought running sneakers ten months ago gets a personalized email when you use their name in the subject line. The message is relevant when you send them a “how’s the mileage going?” check-in just as their soles begin to wear thin. It’s a message that feels like it came from a brand that pays attention and cares about its experience. 

In this article, we’re going to show you how you can take your marketing from kind of relevant to unforgettable. We’ll dive into the specific automation flows and experiences that will help you close the relevancy gap and create an audience that loves your brand. 

5 automation flows that meet customers in the moment

Flow 1: Abandoned browse (not just abandoned carts) 

Abandoned carts are super-popular and for good reason, too. There are many marketers’ first taste of automation, and they have the power to generate some serious money. But they need an action, where an abandoned browse simply needs a customer to look. 

The trigger for this automation flow needs web tracking that speaks to your automation platform, so you can turn page visits into relevant marketing moments. Some moments to think about:

• Repeat page visits 
• High-intent page visit (like pricing or demo)
• High-ticket product pages 

Including reviews and product recommendations can do a lot of good work here. AI product recommendations, like showcasing lookalike items or items ‘also bought’ with the product they viewed, make content feel genuinely tailored (read: “just right”), rather than just pulling in a product image from the browsed page. 

And reviews are a big driver of conversion, especially for spontaneous purchases. A subject line like “Still thinking about it? Here’s what other people are saying,” paired with an email that pulls in your latest reviews, helps convince browsers that you can be trusted to meet their needs.

Flow 2: Replenishments, renewals, and reminders

Replenishment, renewals, and reminder flows are an underused goldmine for creating unforgettable moments in the customer journey. They say to your customer, “We see you, and we’ve got what you need.”

Reaching out to customers before a product runs out or a contract expires is relevant in its purest form. It’s the right message at precisely the right moment in the customer lifecycle, not just a reaction to an action in the purchase journey. 

To create the perfect flow, you need to know the typical lifespan of your offering. Is it a thirty-day vitamin supply, a three-month subscription, or a year-long contract? Make sure you build in enough time to be seen and connect with your audience. 

A ten-day heads-up before a vitamin supply runs out gives customers time to reorder and receive delivery. A month before a subscription renews, you have time to check in, communicate the value, and upsell new features.

These flows are working harder than just driving sales; they’re naturally inspiring loyalty. Your customer doesn’t have to remember to come back, because you’re remembering for them. A customer who never runs out of a product because they’re promptly reminded to restock will advocate for your brand in the future. You will be their number one pick, every time.  

Flow 3: Back-in-stock notifications 

When a customer browses an out-of-stock item, it frustrates them and is a missed opportunity for you. But it shouldn’t be. Signing up for a back-in-stock notification is one of the highest-intent moments in the customer journey. They want what you’re selling; all that’s left for you to do is close the loop. 

Back-in-stock notifications should feel like a special heads-up from a brand that cares about giving people what they want. That’s why these messages work so well outside of the inbox. SMS (or MMS), WhatsApp, and mobile app notifications are the channels that take this flow from a helpful message in the inbox to a genuine conversion driver. Emails can be missed, but a notification to a customer’s device is impossible to ignore. 

Short, sharp messaging is a must for these messages. “Go, go, go! Align Leggings are back in stock”. Scarcity and urgency tactics also work great to remind shoppers that popular items sell out fast. “It’s back, but going fast! Jenna, grab your Trip Gummies now”. 

Back-in-stock notifications are triggered by customers explicitly telling you what they want. It’s hard to get more relevant than that. 

Flow 4: Birthday and anniversary moments

To create “very relevant” marketing moments, you’ve got to turn up in the moments customers least expect. Like on their birthday. Or celebrating the day someone joined your loyalty program. These moments are often overlooked, but they’re a top reward 43% of shoppers want from a brand. 

Birthdays and subscription anniversaries are just the start. Adding touchpoints like half birthdays, the day they joined your loyalty program, or the day they bought a high-ticket item opens up even more opportunities to connect. Making those messages feel “very relevant” is all about the personalization. Product recommendations showcasing “items you’ll love” or personalized content that dynamically pulls in localized offers are examples of how you can lift these messages to make them moments customers love and interact with. 

Successful birthday and anniversary flows go beyond the expected. Anyone can offer a 10% discount, but brands that stand out deliver moments that build real loyalty and drive repeat purchases. It’s in these unexpected moments that being relevant creates a long-lasting relationship, because you’ve remembered them when they least expected it. 

Flow 5: Post-purchase care sequences

The post-purchase phase of the customer journey is often neglected by brands. After receiving the order confirmation, customers are returned to the business-as-usual pot. They’ll get newsletters and new product launches, but the personal touch is missing. There’s nothing in their inbox that keeps the relationship going; nothing that makes them want to share the experience with their friends. 

Unlike other flows focused on converting customers, this flow is solely focused on deepening your relationship with a customer. Thoughtful campaigns that share how-to content, usage tips, or care guides show customers how much you care. A check-in message with “4 tips to make your Cassie Bouquet last longer” keeps content relevant and helpful, lifting their whole experience, not just pushing for a sale. 

With AI predictive insights, you can layer in customers’ next likely purchase dates and transition naturally from aftercare to timely next-product recommendations. When every touchpoint after the sale feels considered, customers stop thinking of you as a brand they bought from and start thinking of you as a brand they belong to. They’ll choose your brand every time simply because you care; because they trust that their needs and experience are at the core of everything you do.

The right message in the right place

Relevance isn’t just about what you say, but where you say it, too. You have to be where the customer needs you, when they need you. That means matching the channel to the right moment. 

• Abandoned browse is a gentle nudge back to your website — that’s the kind of message email is built to deliver
• Replenishment, renewals, and reminders are an ongoing conversation with existing customers — WhatsApp is a great place to continue the conversation
• Back-in-stock messages are urgent — app notifications or SMS work perfectly here
• Birthday and anniversary moments need to grab attention — personalized website messages are great to pair with email for a seamless customer experience
• Post-purchase sequences are longer form and designed to build deeper customer relationships — there’s no better channel for that than email

Every audience has its nuances. 45% of Singaporean customers prefer interacting with brands via mobile apps. Gen Z is similarly shaking things up in the US, with 44% engaging with brands on mobile apps. On the other hand, email is the channel of choice for 47% of Australian and UK customers.

Cross-channel marketing is about being where your customers need you, when they need you, and nothing drives relevance quite like that. 

Why being “very relevant” really matters

“Very relevant” marketing isn’t just a nice stat to improve. Brands that are “somewhat relevant” are doing just enough but aren’t making customers feel like you really understand them. And that feeling is what drives the loyalty, advocacy, and repeat purchases.

Every time you capture a customer at exactly the right moment, like when they’re running low on a product, when it’s their birthday, or when something they wanted is finally back in stock, you’re building a reputation for your brand that’s impossible to ignore. The more customers trust you to think about what they need, the more you’ll become the obvious choice when it’s time to make their next purchase. 

If your marketing is landing in that “somewhat relevant” 49%, you’re just a couple of automations away from closing the relevancy gap. 

Want to know what your customers are really thinking?

Relevant marketing is just one piece of the puzzle. Our Customer trend index surveyed 4,000 consumers across four markets to find out how they discover new brands, what makes them click, and what makes them loyal. If you want to know what your customers want from you (from the channels they prefer to the rewards that keep them coming back), the full report reveals it all.

With so many options out there, choosing the right platform can feel overwhelming. But don’t worry, we’ve broken it down into practical steps to give you a clearer picture of how to prioritize your requirements.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to:

• Assess your current setup
• Define your marketing automation goals
• Identify must-have platform features
• Compare pricing and scalability
• Check for ease of use and customer support
• Check integration with your existing tech stack
• Look at security and compliance
• Test platforms before making a final decision
• Ensure your new CRM works for businesses like yours

Step 1: Assess your current setup

Before you start comparing marketing platform features or booking demos, it’s a good idea to review what you already have. If you’re using an existing platform, or even just managing email campaigns manually, document your current workflow and think about:

• What’s working well, and what’s not?
• Which tasks take up the most time or feel repetitive?
• Are there gaps in functionality that stop you from achieving your goals?
• What do you wish your current system could do but can’t?

Step 2: Define your marketing automation goals

Once you’ve reviewed your current setup, have a think about the outcomes that matter the most to you and your team because the right marketing automation platform depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Every platform can look impressive at first glance, and it’s easy to get distracted by flashy features.

Some questions to think about are:

• Do you want to increase repeat purchases?
• Is customer engagement dropping?
• Are you focused on improving retention?
• Do you need to save your team time?
• Are you trying to get more customers/subscribers?

Connect your goals to platform capabilities

Once you know what you want to prioritize, you can map them to platform capabilities.

For example:

• If acquisition is the goal, you’ll need automated email journeys, strong segmentation and data capture popovers
• If retention is the goal, look for behavior-based triggers, personalized product recommendations, and lifecycle automation
• If you want to run coordinated multi-channel campaigns, make sure the platform supports email, SMS, web messaging, and paid media orchestration from one place
• If efficiency matters most, prioritize visual workflow builders, reusable templates, and AI-powered optimization
• If lead nurturing is your focus, you’ll need strong segmentation, automated email journeys, lead scoring, and CRM integration

Think short-term and long-term

It also helps to separate:

• What you need right now
• What you’ll likely need in 12 to 24 months

Maybe today you’re focused on email automation. But if you know you’ll soon invest in SMS, loyalty programs, or advanced personalization, you’ll want a platform that can grow with you.

Step 3: Identify the must-have platform features

Being clear on what you need helps you pick the right tier or package, or spot an all-in-one solution so you don’t end up juggling multiple tools. Think about the ways you want to connect with your customers, then use that to guide your search.

Many successful teams focus on a few core areas:

Segmentation

This is how you make sure the right message lands with the right person, rather than just sending everything to everyone.

Email and SMS automation 

Automated journeys and triggered messages that respond to customer behavior can save a lot of time.

Personalization

People like when messages and product recommendations feel like they’re written personally for them. Using customer data to tailor content, like including their first name or past purchases, can help drive campaign engagement.

Multi-channel campaign support 

Your audience isn’t consuming content in just one place, so it helps when your platform can handle email, SMS, WhatsApp, social, and web campaigns all together.

CRM integration 

Keeping your key systems connected makes workflows smoother and keeps everyone on the same page. But also, it’s best to consider your full tech stack. Instead of focusing only on your CRM, have a think about what other platforms your marketing relies on every day. That might include:

• Your e-commerce platforms
• Review sites
• Donation tools
• Any other tech your business relies on

Reporting and analytics 

Seeing what’s working (and what’s not) makes it easier to tweak your strategy as you go.

Multi-brand / multi-account support

If you’re a small team and need to manage multiple brands, you’ll want to choose a marketing automation platform that’s easy to handle multiple accounts within one account.

Helpful tip:

One way to narrow down your options is to make a list of “must-haves” versus “nice-to-haves” to help you spot the features that will make your life easier and help you hit your goals.

Step 4: Compare pricing and scalability

Platforms structure their fees in different ways. For example, some charge per contact, others charge per feature, and some just have a flat subscription.

When considering your budget, think about how your business might grow over the next year or two. A platform that fits perfectly right now could feel restrictive if your contact list doubles or you want to expand into new channels.

Also, keep an eye out for the hidden extras like:

• Additional costs for add-ons
• Premium support
• Advanced features 

Of course, the goal isn’t to pick the cheapest option – it’s about choosing one that gives you flexibility.

Step 5: Check for ease of use and customer support

Having all the features and capabilities in the world won’t matter if you and your team find it difficult to use the platform.

Take a look at the platform interface and the learning curve, and ask:

• Is it something your team can pick up without endless tutorials? 
• Does it let you build campaigns without constantly needing help?

Having access to helpful customer support makes a big difference, too. The best platforms guide you with things like onboarding, training materials, and an active community where you can ask questions and pick up tips from other users. It’s also helpful when you can contact real people (not bots), and in your time zone, who can walk you through issues, run live demos, or answer questions as they come up.

You can also check third-party review sites like Trustpilot to see how other businesses rate a platform’s usability and support. Dotdigital, for example, has consistently positive reviews from marketers, showing that marketing teams find it easy to get up and running while getting the help they need.

When a platform feels intuitive, and you know help is easy to reach, it keeps your team confident, stress-free, and focused on getting results instead of wrestling with the tool.

Step 6: Check integration with your existing tech stack

Your marketing automation platform needs to work with the tools you already use and rely on. That means things like your CRM, ecommerce platform, analytics software, and anything else you’re using day to day.

When everything talks to each other, your data stays clean, workflows run smoothly, and campaigns perform the way you want them to.  

Step 7: Look at security and compliance

Not every platform makes it easy to stay compliant. They need to help you meet legal data protection requirements across the regions you operate in, whether that’s:

• GDPR in the UK and EU
• CPRA in California
• Other local regulations

Check that the platform has solid security in place and the right certifications. That could mean things like ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications, SSL encryption, regular security audits, or even two-factor authentication for your team. 

Step 8: Test platforms before making a final decision

Once you’ve narrowed down your options, it’s time to try them out. Most marketing automation platforms offer demos or free trials, so you can use them to your advantage.

Play around with things like workflows, check integrations, and see how easy it is to get things done. It also helps if you bring your team into the process, too, if they’re going to be using it most.

Step 9: See if it works for businesses like yours

Check that the platform works with businesses like yours and review things like references or case studies in your sector. Seeing how it’s helped similar companies to yours can give you confidence it will meet your needs.

Why choose Dotdigital for marketing automation

Dotdigital‘s marketing automation platform is built for teams that want marketing automation to work, to be impactful, and to be easy to use. It brings together the essentials you care about, like email, SMS, multi‑channel journeys, and personalization, in a way that feels intuitive instead of being overwhelming.

Here’s why marketers choose Dotdigital for marketing automation

Recognized by the marketers who use it

Dotdigital was recently named a G2 Leader for Marketing Automation Software in the Spring 2026 rankings. Every ranking is based on verified reviews from real customers, so you know you’re in good hands.

It works with your existing tech stack 

Whether you’re syncing contacts from your CRM or pulling in ecommerce data, the integration tends to feel seamless.

The onboarding and support make a real difference

You’re not left to learn everything from trial and error or buried in generic help articles. From the moment you start, you get guidance that’s tailored to your setup and goals. Dotdigital is designed to be easy to use for any marketer, without needing to rely on designers, developers, or data teams. 

Scalability without surprises

As your contact list increases or you expand into new channels, Dotdigital grows with you instead of locking you into confusing pricing tiers. Managing multiple accounts through one platform is easy, and you can add extra child accounts at any time. We also develop new features based on what marketers tell us they need, so the platform keeps evolving alongside your business.

Security and compliance

The platform is designed to help you stay on top of data protection requirements. With robust safeguards and adherence to key regulations, you can feel confident that customer data is protected. If you want a deeper look at how this works in practice, you can explore more here.

It’s one thing to tick every box on paper. It’s another to pick a platform that feels good to use every day, that your team enjoys working with, and that frees you up to focus on strategy rather than troubleshooting.

And there’s a lot worth exploring. Dotdigital was recently named a G2 Leader in 13 product categories in the latest rankings, recognized by the marketers who use the platform every day. So, we’ve rounded up Dotdigital’s top features that often fly under the radar but will help you get campaigns up and running faster.

Get campaigns out the door faster

Keep your messages sounding just like you

Generic AI copy is easy to spot, and marketers are usually the first to call it out. The good news is that Dotdigital’s AI doesn’t have to sound generic. You can train it on your brand‘s verbal identity, so it sounds authentic. All you need to do is upload your guidelines, share examples of content you’re proud of, or just answer a few questions about your writing style, and from there, it writes and checks your campaigns so they always sound like you.

For a brand with a sharp, distinct tone that’s been spending more time editing AI drafts than using them, this is a big turning point. When first drafts start sounding right, the editing gets lighter, and the content actually feels like it came from your team, helping you get campaigns ready to send faster.

Fix links after you’ve sent a campaign

Sending a campaign to thousands of people and realizing something is wrong is one of the most stressful parts of the job. Dotdigital’s link manager takes most of that stress off the table.

With Dotdigital’s link manager, you can:

• Check links before you send: catch any broken or incorrect URLs upfront
• Update links after sending: fix mistakes quietly without bothering your audience
• Keep your links accurate: like CTAs pointing to last season’s sale instead of your new collection

Edit images without leaving the platform

Chasing down a designer to make last-minute image changes can be a real roadblock when you’re trying to get a campaign out, fast. The good news is you probably don’t need to. Dotdigital’s image manager has a full editing suite built right in, so you can crop, resize, apply filters, and add text overlays yourself without leaving the platform.

It also makes it easy to apply big changes without factoring in additional admin time. For example, you can update an image’s alt text in the manager, and it carries over to every campaign where that image appears. So if you’ve used the same hero image across multiple sends, you’re not hunting them down one by one.

And finding the right image in the first place is easier than you’d think, too. The image manager uses AI to search based on what’s actually in your images and not just the file name someone gave it. Search for “Easter,” and it’ll pull up every Easter-themed image in your library, even the ones that got saved as “IMG_4823” and never renamed. So, when a last-minute seasonal campaign lands on your desk, and you need a specific shot fast, you can search by scene, find it, make your edits, and drop it straight into your campaign. 

Turn an email into an SMS in one click

Whether you’re testing SMS as a marketing channel or your boss wants an SMS version of your top-performing email by the end of the day, Dotdigital’s one-click email to SMS tool helps you get up and running faster. 

After all, starting from scratch is the last thing you need when your to-do list keeps growing. Dotdigital’s built-in AI reads your email, strips it back to what matters, and suggests SMS copy that matches your original message, all in a single click.

So, next time your Black Friday email is done and approved, and you need to build an SMS touchpoint to catch anyone who misses the email, AI is on hand to draft it in seconds. All that’s left for you to do is tweak, approve, and move on.

Personalize with confidence 

Skip the awkward merge tag fail

“Hi {First_Name}” is the kind of thing that ends up screenshotted in a very unforgiving LinkedIn post. It happens when personalization data is missing, and there’s no fallback in place. Using Dotdigital’s dynamic content blocks can safeguard your campaigns against this. By adding dynamic content blocks to host your personalized content, you can ensure customers see content when you have the data and skip it gracefully when you don’t. 

That means a repeat customer gets “Hi Jenna,” while a brand-new sign-up whose name you haven’t collected yet gets a greeting that reads just as warmly, without a broken placeholder in sight. It’s a small thing that makes a big difference to how polished your campaigns feel.

Segment without a preference center

Building a preference center takes time, and you’ll have a handful of subscribers who never fill it in anyway. But you don’t always need one to send relevant, targeted content (though, of course, it’s super useful in the long run). Dotdigital’s link groups and campaign tags let you build segments based on what people actually do, like the links they click, the campaigns they engage with, rather than waiting for them to tell you what they’re interested in.

A charity wanting to reach supporters most likely to respond to a fundraising appeal, for example, could group donation links across recent campaigns and build a segment of contacts who clicked more than once. No preference data is needed; it simply uses real subscriber behavior to help you reach the right person with the right message.

Find more customers like your best ones

When you come across a contact who represents exactly the kind of person you want more of, you don’t have to manually recreate their profile in a segment builder. You can generate a lookalike segment based on them with a single click, putting Dotdigital’s AI to work.

So, if your highest-value customer has a specific combination of purchase history, location, and engagement behavior, a segment of customers who share those attributes will be ready to use in seconds. This makes sure your high-value campaigns reach the right people every time.

Reach more people, in more places

WhatsApp: the channel your customers are already on

WhatsApp is available in Dotdigital and gives you more ways to connect with your customers than you might expect. You can reach 180 countries with rich two-way conversations and no character count restrictions, and all managed from the same place you run the rest of your marketing channels.

For brands sending time-sensitive updates, like travel companies, this makes a real difference. Booking confirmations and trip reminders land on an app customers already use every day. Response rates go up, and the volume of inbound customer service queries tends to go down as customers have immediate and easy-to-find access to the information they need. 

Two-way SMS: the conversation doesn’t have to end

Most marketers know Dotdigital does SMS. It’s a powerful channel we’ve been giving marketers since 2017. Fewer realize it goes both ways. You can view and reply to SMS responses directly inside Dotdigital, in the same place you manage your WhatsApp and chat conversations, so you’re not jumping between tools to keep track of who said what.

For example, a retailer running an SMS campaign that asks customers to reply with their nearest store for a personalized offer, that’s a meaningful difference. Instead of responses disappearing into a system nobody monitors, they land in Dotdigital alongside every other conversation. Your team can reply, route, and follow up without ever leaving the platform.

There’s a lot more where this came from

The best way to find your next favorite Dotdigital feature is to get curious and start clicking. If any of the features in this post caught your eye, your customer success manager can walk you through them, or explore the Dotdigital knowledge base to dig in yourself.

But, you might not know what other brands are including within their automated sequences – and what is actually driving results. 

So, we’ve collated 12 real examples from Dotdigital customers (with their permission – obviously) to give you a sneak peek at what’s working across multiple industries. Each example tackles a different stage of the customer lifecycle, from the first hello to winning back customers who have stopped engaging.

What are some real-world examples of marketing automation?

From welcome emails to win-back campaigns, marketing automation can work at every stage of the customer journey. Here are twelve examples from real brands with the results to prove it.

1. Welcome emails

Make a strong first impression: RealNZ – Travel

The window between a customer booking and actually showing up is prime time for marketing. RealNZ, a New Zealand tourism company, knew that, but their previous platform couldn’t deliver the kind of timely, personalized communication that moment deserved.

With Dotdigital, they connected their booking data and set up triggered welcome and post-purchase emails, automatically populated with what each customer had booked and recommendations for extras to make their trip even better.

The results:

• 53% open rate on post-purchase campaigns
• 614% increase in purchases made via email year-on-year
• 13x ROI increase

See how RealNZ did it

2. Triggered emails and reminders

Respond in real time: Essentra Components – B2B

Essentra Components speaks to 1.25 million contacts across 30 countries in 17 languages. That’s a lot of ground to cover with a team of three. By integrating Dotdigital with Microsoft Dynamics 365, data passes from their CRM and website in real time, triggering over 400 automated customer journeys and 1,500+ transactional emails without anyone manually hitting send.

When a customer clicks on a product, the right follow-up lands automatically, whether that’s a relevant alert, a reminder, or a personalized cross-sell.

The results:

• 52% increase in unique email click-throughs
• Over 1,900 active automated campaigns across multiple markets

“Hook Dotdigital up to your CRM, add product and order data, and watch your campaigns fly. Start with abandoned carts, even in B2B, the response surprised us.” – Simon Wade, E-CRM Manager, Essentra Components

See the full story

Respond in real time: Bristol Airport – travel

Bristol Airport used a similar approach to increase parking bookings. Stuck in a data silo where airlines owned all their passenger data, they captured new subscribers via an on-site popup and set up behavioral triggers, automatically following up with customers who clicked on parking links but never completed a booking.

The results:

• 22% of all sales are attributed to email
• Discount code used in 48% of all future transactions

See how Bristol Airport did it

3. Abandoned browse automation

Catch browsers before they leave: Youngevity – Health & Wellness

Someone visits your site, looks around, and leaves without buying. No cart, no transaction. It’s easy to write that off. Youngevity didn’t.

The California-based health and wellness brand built an abandoned browse program using their Adobe Commerce integration and AI-powered product recommendations, triggering personalized emails to customers who browsed but didn’t add anything to their cart. The emails show items related to what they were looking at, with incentives to come back.

The results:

• 7.7% increase in customer conversion rates
• 39% average year-on-year open rate boost

“Dotdigital offers data insights, integrations, and a user-friendly interface. The team’s expertise and guidance have helped us grow email revenue significantly.” – Aliyah Hassan Kent, Director of Digital Product, Youngevity

Read the Youngevity case study

4. Abandoned cart automation

Recover lost revenue: Champion Europe – Sportswear

Cart abandonment is one of the most well-established automations out there, and one of the most valuable. Champion Europe, competing against billion-dollar sportswear budgets with a much smaller team, built a cross-channel abandoned cart strategy combining triggered emails with automatic Meta retargeting. Customers who leave without buying get followed up via email and shown the same items in their Facebook and Instagram feeds.

The results:

• 37% increase in cart abandonment revenue
• Email open rates exceeding 60%

“We have had some truly remarkable results, including a 37% increase in revenue in Italy from our cart abandonment campaigns.” – Irene Zaccarelli, Digital Content & CRM Manager, Champion Europe

See more details

Recover lost revenue: Harvey & Thompson – B2C

Harvey & Thompson, the UK’s largest pawnbroker, takes a more tailored approach. They built category-specific cart abandonment emails with different templates and timing rules for watches, jewelry, coins, and gold bars. That’s because someone shopping for an anniversary gift needs a different experience than someone picking up a pair of earrings.

Emails are personalized with banner imagery relevant to each category, alongside details of products still in the customer’s shopping basket. 

The number of emails a customer is sent is tailored based on product value. Someone interested in a premium watch will receive a multi-stage campaign, whereas only one email is sent for lower-priced items like children’s jewellery.

The results:

• £151,843 in new sales attributed to the strategy within 10 weeks
• Conversion rates almost double the UK retail sector average

“Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance’s combined functionality is helping us to replicate the personal service for which H&T has built its reputation on in-store for more than 120 years, in the digital world.” – Alicja Dela, Harvey & Thompson

Read the Harvey & Thompson case study

5. Price drop and back-in-stock alerts

Stay relevant between purchases: Würth UK – B2B

Not every customer is ready to buy the moment they discover a product. Sometimes they’re waiting for the right price. Sometimes the item they want is out of stock. The brands that stay in touch during that gap are the ones that close the sale when it finally matters.

Würth UK, a B2B supplier of over 60,000 products to the automotive, agriculture, and construction industries, is rolling out automated price drop alerts and back-in-stock notifications as part of their broader marketing automation strategy. Their wider personalization work has already delivered:

• 72.4% increase in revenue
• 12.8% increase in average order value
• Almost £800k in additional revenue from abandoned cart emails alone

“The more we can automate, the more we can focus on the things that matter to our customers and us.” – Reece Smith, Head of E-Business, Würth UK

See how Würth UK did it

Stay relevant between purchases: Snuggle Hunny – B2C

Snuggle Hunny, the Australian baby brand, has seen back-in-stock emails deliver a 1,100% increase in click engagement compared to standard sends. It’s one of their most effective automations for reconnecting customers with products they were already interested in.

Read the Snuggle Hunny case study

6. Lead nurture

Build the case at the right place: Direct Supply – Healthcare

Some purchases take time. When the product is complex or the concept is new, a single email won’t cut it. Direct Supply, which serves senior care providers across the US, faced this when launching a next-generation foodservice robot. Most of their customers had never considered robotic food service, so the email program needed to educate an entire sector, not just sell to it.

Working with Dotdigital, they built a behavior-driven nurture program using decision nodes. Customers who clicked through and showed interest were automatically passed to the sales team. Those who didn’t were placed on a nurture track, receiving a series of educational emails that built the case step by step.

The results:

• 47% open rate on nurture track emails
• A full sales funnel of engaged prospects established from the program

“We are utilizing Dotdigital and all its tools to better automate our emails and engage our customers in new ways, leading to better conversations and more productive use of our sales team.” — Direct Supply

See more here

7. Loyalty and rewards

Reward the customers who stick around: Wittner – footwear retail

Acquiring a new customer costs significantly more than keeping an existing one. Wittner, one of Australia’s leading footwear brands, launched a tiered rewards scheme and automated every milestone within it. Move up a tier, and a congratulatory email goes out automatically. Drop a level, and you get a nudge with an incentive to climb back up. All of it is driven by data pulled from both their e-commerce platform and point-of-sale systems.

The results:

• 86% increase in lifetime customer value

“By using online and offline data and automating customer engagement through Dotdigital, we have increased loyalty and have seen lifetime customer value increasing by 86%.” – Wittner Marketing Team

See how Wittner did it

Reward the customers who stick around: The Royal Ballet School – education

The Royal Ballet School shows the same principle in action outside of retail. Wanting to reward customers who had bought three or more of their online dance classes, they built an automation offering 15% off the next purchase, followed by a reminder seven days before the discount expired, with personalized product recommendations in every email.

The results:

• 77% open rate on the initial offer email
• 6.2% conversion rate — a 3,000% increase vs. one-off campaigns

“This project has proven to us the power of an ‘always-on’ email marketing automation.” – Maddy Carroll, Audience and Insights Executive, The Royal Ballet School

Read The Royal Ballet School case study

8. Lapsed customer re-engagement

Win back the ones who’ve gone quiet: ergoPouch – Baby & Kids

Every database has them: customers who bought once, maybe twice, and then stopped. ergoPouch, the Australian brand making sleepwear safer for babies and kids, built a two-part re-engagement campaign offering a $20 coupon for a customer’s next order.

The key finding? Cutting the lapsed customer window from 180 days to 90 days made a significant difference. Warmer customers were more likely to respond, and ROI climbed as a result. 

The lesson: find the sweet spot between too soon and too late, then keep testing.

The results:

• 44% open rate on the lapsed customer program
• Campaigns exceeded industry benchmarks by 10%

Read on for more details

Build your business case for marketing automation

If you’re looking into marketing automation, you’re likely thinking about what it can do and what it means for your team and your business.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Do more with the same resources

Automation helps you scale campaigns without adding extra manual work, which means your team can spend more time on strategy and less on repetitive tasks.

Deliver more relevant experiences

With segmentation and behavioral data, you can tailor messages based on what people do.

Improve lead quality and conversion

By nurturing prospects over time with the right content, you can guide them closer to making a purchase that feels natural to them.

Align marketing and sales activity

Shared data and clearer journeys help both teams stay focused on the same goals, with better visibility across the funnel.

Strengthen reporting and decision-making

Centralized data and campaign insights make it easier to see what’s working and where to improve.

The numbers back it up, too. 58% of marketers already automate their email campaigns, making it the most automated channel by a long way. And with 68% expecting their automation budgets to grow, it’s clear there’s a shift in how good marketing gets done.

Where to start

Across these twelve automation examples, the same idea shows up again and again: the right message, at the right time, to the right person.

If you’re just getting started, pick one. A Welcome journey is the most common starting point for a reason because it’s quick to set up and the impact is immediate. 

If you’re already running the basics, then have a look at what happens before and after the cart:

• Browse abandonment to catch people earlier
• Loyalty automation to keep them coming back longer

Every brand in this piece started somewhere. And every one of them got results.

In this guide, we’ll break down:

• What marketing automation is
• How it works
• Why it matters for your marketing

You’ll get practical tips, some examples, and step-by-step guidance to help you engage your audience, save time, and drive better results.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation lets technology take care of the repetitive tasks in your marketing, so you can spend more time on things like strategy, creativity, and connecting with your audience. 

It also helps you:

• Run campaigns more smoothly
• Gather meaningful insights
• Deliver messages that feel personal to each customer

So, by using automation, your marketing becomes more efficient, your manual workload shrinks, and your results improve, whether that means boosting engagement, generating leads, or increasing sales. 

How does marketing automation work?

At its core, marketing automation uses customer data and behavior to guide your campaigns. Instead of tracking interactions manually, the platform collects data across channels, like email, SMS, social, and your website, and helps you understand what your customers want.

From there, you can create triggered campaigns that respond to customer actions automatically. 

For example:

• A new subscriber signs up → they receive a welcome series that introduces your brand
• Someone abandons their shopping cart → they get a friendly reminder with a small incentive
• A customer browses high-value content → they receive follow-up tips or related product recommendations

By delivering the right message, on the right channel, at the right time, marketing automation makes every interaction feel thoughtful and personal, while giving your team more time to focus on strategy and creativity.

The benefits of marketing automation

Marketing automation helps you focus on the work that really matters, which is building campaigns that connect with your audience. By combining smart technology with real customer insights, it makes your marketing more efficient, more personal, and more effective. 

Here’s how it can help you get results, faster:

1. Save time and get more done

Marketing automation takes care of the repetitive tasks that eat up your day, from sending emails to posting on social media. It can handle complex workflows at scale, without errors, freeing you up to focus on strategy and creativity.

• Feature: Trigger multi-step campaigns automatically

• Use case: Onboard new subscribers with a welcome series or nurture leads without manual follow-ups

2. Target the right people with smarter segmentation

You don’t have to guess who’s most likely to engage. Marketing automation lets you create highly detailed segments based on behavior, preferences, demographics, or purchase history.

For example, by using eRFM modeling, you can segment your customers based on their: 

• Recency (how recently they made a purchase)
• Frequency (how often they make purchases)
• Monetary value (how much they spend)

• Feature: Use predictive analytics and a single customer view to guide campaigns

• Use case: Identify your most valuable customers and deliver messages that match their interests, boosting engagement and loyalty

3. Deliver content that’s personalized and relevant

Automation makes personalization at scale achievable. You can serve the right content to the right person at the right time, whether that’s through email, website messaging, or SMS.

• Feature: Dynamic content and personalization across channels

• Use case: Recommend products based on browsing behavior or previous purchases to increase conversions

4. Multi-channel engagement from one platform

With marketing automation on an all-in-one platform like Dotdigital, you can manage emails, SMS, social campaigns, and website messaging from a single workflow, without having to juggle multiple tools. Everything works together seamlessly, making it easier to reach your audience across channels and keep your campaigns on track.

• Feature: Multi-channel orchestration

• Use case: Launch a campaign that starts with an email, follows up with a retargeting ad, and finishes with an SMS reminder, all automatically

5. Make smarter, data-driven decisions

With real-time analytics, you can see what’s working, what isn’t, and adjust where you need to. Instead of guessing, you can rely on clear insights to guide your strategy and improve results.

• Feature: Dashboards, reporting, and performance tracking

• Use case: Quickly spot which campaigns are driving the most engagement or revenue and tweak them for better results

6. Streamline the customer journey

Marketing automation lets you respond instantly to customer behavior, helping guide them naturally to the next step in their journey. By reacting in real time, you can make the experience smoother and more effective for your audience.

• Feature: Triggered messages based on actions, like abandoned cart reminders or post-purchase follow-ups

• Use case: Deliver timely messages that encourage conversions and keep customers engaged

7. Create memorable customer experiences

Efficiency is important but it’s also about making every interaction feel thoughtful and personal. Marketing automation helps you create and deliver meaningful, consistent experiences that your audience remembers.

• Feature: Personalized offers, triggered communications, and lifecycle campaigns

• Use case: A visitor shows interest in a product, and they automatically receive follow-up emails highlighting related products or special discounts, which boosts satisfaction and conversion

Types of marketing automation programs

If you’re looking to integrate automation into your marketing strategies, you can start by implementing different automation programs. 

Marketing automation programs allow you to catch and nurture customers at any point in your customer journey. Here are some programs you can implement today.

1. Customer engagement programs

Welcome series

Make a strong first impression with every new subscriber. Marketing automation lets you deliver a personal, multi-step welcome experience that sets the tone for a positive relationship between your brand and your audience.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. A user signs up for your newsletter
2. An automated welcome email is sent immediately, introducing your brand and key offerings
3. Two days later, a follow-up email shares helpful content or tips tailored to their interests
4. A final email highlights your most popular products or services to encourage the first purchase

Channels: Email (primary), optional SMS follow-up

CRM connection: Contact tagged as “new subscriber,” engagement tracked for future segmentation

Why it matters:

• Saves your team time
• Keeps new subscribers engaged
• Increases the likelihood of a first purchase

Loyalty programs

Encourage repeat customers and strengthen brand loyalty by implementing a rewards-based loyalty program. Incentivize your customers to keep choosing your brand through various offers, discounts, or personalized perks.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Customer completes a qualifying purchase
2. Automated email confirms reward points or loyalty perks
3. Follow-up emails highlight opportunities to earn more rewards or redeem points.

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Customer points and activity logged for segmentation and targeting

Why it matters:

• Boosts repeat purchases
• Keeps your brand top of mind

Marketing preference collection

Give your customers control over the content they receive and make every interaction feel personal. Collecting marketing preferences helps you deliver messages that truly match your audience’s interests while reducing unsubscribes.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. A new subscriber joins your list
2. Automated email asks them to set their preferences (topics, frequency, channels)
3. Preferences are stored in your CRM and used to segment future campaigns
4. Automated follow-ups adjust messages across email, SMS, and social media based on these choices

Channels: Email, SMS, social, web personalization

CRM connection: Preferences logged in the CRM to maintain a single customer view and trigger tailored campaigns

Why it matters:

• Personalizing content based on preferences increases engagement
• Keeps your audience happy
• Makes your marketing more relevant and effective

Birthday & anniversary programs

Delight customers with personalized messages and special offers on their milestones. This gesture not only reinforces your brand’s goodwill but also helps strengthen a deeper connection with your audience.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Customer’s birthday or anniversary is detected from CRM data
2. Automated email or SMS is sent with a celebratory message and exclusive offer

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Milestones logged for ongoing segmentation and follow-ups

Why it matters:

• Builds emotional connection
• Encourages engagement or purchases

2. E-commerce programs

Abandoned cart

You can reduce cart abandonment and drive more sales by setting up a triggered campaign that sends a reminder or a tailored incentive when a shopper leaves items in their cart. This gentle follow-up encourages them to complete their purchase and helps you recover revenue that might otherwise be lost.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. A customer adds products to their cart but doesn’t check out
2. An automated email reminder is sent within a few hours, showing the items left behind
3. If there’s no response, a follow-up email with a small discount or free shipping offer is sent the next day
4. Optionally, an SMS reminder or retargeting ad reinforces the message across channels

Channels: Email, SMS, retargeting ads

CRM connection: Customer behavior logged in CRM for future engagement and segmentation

Why it matters:

• Increases conversions
• Drives revenue
• Helps make your customers feel valued without manual effort

Post-purchase follow-up

You can strengthen engagement and improve satisfaction by sending automated follow-up emails after a purchase. Whether you’re asking for a review, gathering feedback, or sharing helpful tips related to the product, these timely messages show customers you’re paying attention. Over time, that consistent support helps build trust and long-term loyalty.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Customer completes a purchase
2. Automated thank-you email with order confirmation is sent immediately
3. Follow-up email requests feedback or a review, and suggests complementary products

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Purchase logged, engagement tracked for segmentation

Why it matters:

• Enhances customer experience
• Builds trust
• Drives repeat business

Upsell campaigns

You can increase revenue by recommending products based on a customer’s past purchases. When you highlight complementary items or thoughtful upgrades, you create natural opportunities for additional sales while making it easier for customers to find what they need. This not only lifts average order value, but also shows that you understand their preferences.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Customer completes a purchase
2. Automated email highlights complementary or upgraded products
3. Optional reminder emails or ads are sent to encourage additional purchases

Channels: Email, SMS, retargeting ads

CRM connection: Purchase history tracked for personalized recommendations

Why it matters:

• Boosts average order value and revenue while meeting customer needs

3. Sales enablement programs

Follow-up campaigns

Make sure no prospect is missed by automating outreach after key interactions. This helps busy sales teams maintain consistent communication and cultivate relationships with potential customers.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Prospect downloads a guide, registers for a webinar, or attends an event
2. Automated email thanks them and provides additional resources
3. Follow-up email or SMS encourages next steps, like booking a demo

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Interaction logged and tagged for sales hand-off

Why it matters:

• Keeps prospects engaged
• Ensures timely follow-up without manual effort

Lead nurturing

You can improve conversion rates by guiding prospects through a personalized, multi-stage journey that speaks to their needs and builds trust over time. Marketing automation supports this by delivering the right content at each stage, based on how someone interacts with your brand and what they’re interested in.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Prospect expresses interest via a form or download
2. Automated sequence sends targeted content over several days or weeks
3. Highly engaged leads are flagged and passed to sales for personal follow-up

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Engagement tracked for segmentation and sales readiness

Why it matters:

• Builds trust
• Increases conversion rates
• Keeps leads moving through the funnel

Abandoned browse

Identify prospects who show high intent by visiting pages like pricing or demo requests and send triggered campaigns to re-engage them before they lose interest. This approach can help keep potential customers within your sales funnel.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Prospect visits a pricing page or demo request form but doesn’t act
2. Automated email or SMS is sent to encourage next steps

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Page visit logged for segmentation and targeting

Why it matters:

• Reduces drop-off
• Recaptures attention
• Drives conversions

4. Re-engagement programs

Win-back campaigns

You can reconnect with customers who haven’t engaged or shopped with you recently by delivering personalized content designed to win them back. Tailored incentives and offers can help reignite their interest and help rebuild their relationship with your brand.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Identify inactive customers via engagement data
2. Automated email offers incentives or personalized content to re-engage them
3. Follow-up reminders are sent across channels if there’s no response

Channels: Email, SMS, retargeting ads

CRM connection: Engagement and reactivation attempts logged

Why it matters:

• Rekindles relationships
• Recaptures lost revenue

Lapsed lead programs

When a prospect starts to disengage, you can launch targeted re-engagement programs designed to bring them back. By sharing fresh content or offering a thoughtful incentive, you can capture their attention again and spark renewed interest in your brand.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Identify prospects who haven’t interacted in a set period
2. Send targeted email or SMS with fresh content or offers

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Engagement tracked for future segmentation

Why it matters:

• Reduces churn
• Keeps leads active in your pipeline

Renewal reminder & preference updates

You can automate timely reminders for customers to renew subscriptions, memberships, or update their marketing preferences. By keeping your content relevant to their needs, you maintain ongoing relationships, drive consistent revenue, and make it easier for customers to stay engaged.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Subscription or membership is nearing renewal
2. Automated reminder email or SMS is sent with renewal instructions
3. Inactive contacts prompted to update preferences to stay engaged

Channels: Email, SMS

CRM connection: Renewal and preference updates logged

Why it matters:

• Maintains revenue consistency
• Improves long-term engagement

Retargeting campaigns

You can reach customers beyond email by showing personalized ads across the web and social channels. Retargeting helps re-engage users who have interacted with your brand but haven’t yet converted.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Visitor browses key pages on your website (e.g., product pages or pricing)
2. Automation tags the user and adds them to a retargeting audience
3. Personalized display ads are served on social media or partner sites, highlighting products or offers they viewed
4. Optional follow-up email or SMS reinforces the message if they still haven’t converted

Channels: Display ads, social media, email, SMS

CRM connection: User activity logged to track engagement and segment audiences for future campaigns

Why it matters:

• Recaptures potential customers
• Boosts conversions
• Keeps your brand top-of-mind without manual effort

5. SMS programs

SMS coupon codes

You can encourage quick, spontaneous purchases by sending targeted offers directly to your customers’ phones, making it easy for them to act in the moment.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. Identify customers for a limited-time promotion
2. Automated SMS delivers a coupon code with urgency messaging

Channels: SMS

CRM connection: Redemption tracked for segmentation and ROI analysis

Why it matters:

• Increases immediate sales and supports high SMS click rates

SMS order confirmations & event reminders

Keep customers informed and engaged with timely notifications like their order details or information to attendees to keep the event top-of-mind.

Here’s a workflow example:

1. After a purchase or event registration, automated SMS confirms details
2. Follow-up SMS reminds attendees before the event or delivers tracking info for orders

Channels: SMS

CRM connection: Engagement logged and linked to customer records

Why it matters:

• Enhances experience
• Reduces friction
• Builds trust

What marketing automation can do

There’s more to marketing automation than just sending emails. It gives you the tools to worksmarter, personalize better, and make decisions faster. Here’s a snapshot of the capabilities you can benefit from:

1. Trigger logic and personalization conditions

• Set up actions based on customer behavior, like clicks, page visits, or past purchases
• Example: A visitor looks at a product page → automation triggers a targeted follow-up email or SMS

2. Lead scoring and qualification

• Automatically rank leads based on engagement and behavior to help your sales team focus on the hottest prospects
• Example: High-scoring leads are flagged and passed directly to sales for follow-up, saving time and increasing conversions

3. CRM integration

• Keep your customer data synchronized so marketing and sales always have a complete view
• Example: New subscriber activity or abandoned cart behavior updates the CRM automatically for segmentation or future campaigns

4. Multi-channel automation

• Coordinate campaigns across email, SMS, social, and web to reach customers wherever they are
• Example: Welcome series starts with email, followed by a social ad, and ends with an SMS reminder

5. Analytics and reporting

• Monitor performance across campaigns and channels with dashboards, metrics, and insights
• Example: See which emails, SMS, or ads drive the most engagement and adjust campaigns in real time

How to get started with marketing automation

Now that you know what marketing automation is and why it matters, it’s time to put it into action. These seven steps will help you build a plan that works for your audience and your business:

1. Pick the right marketing automation platform

Start by choosing a marketing automation platform that fits your needs. With Dotdigital, you can manage customer interactions across channels, unify your data, and create campaigns that feel personal and relevant.

A good platform saves time, keeps your marketing organized, and gives you insights into your customers so you can make smarter decisions.

2. Set clear objectives

Before diving in, decide what success looks like. Do you want to:

• Boost engagement?
• Generate more leads?
• Drive sales? 

Clear, measurable goals will guide your campaigns and make it easier to track progress.

3. Segment your audience

Segmentation is the key to delivering targeted and personalized marketing messages. Use data collected from various customer touchpoints to create meaningful segments based on demographics, behavior, preferences, and more. This will help you to craft tailored content, enhancing the effectiveness of your marketing automation initiatives.

4. Map out customer journeys

Think about the steps your customers take; from first hearing about you to making a purchase. Mapping their journey helps you deliver the right message at the right moment.

Marketing automation makes this easy. For example, if a customer adds items to their cart but doesn’t check out, an automated abandoned cart email can remind them and even include a small incentive.

5. Create content that’s relevant and engaging

Once you know your audience and their journey, craft content that grabs attention and encourages action. Keep it relevant, useful, and tailored to each segment. Test different messages and visuals to see what works best.

6. Test, learn and optimize

Marketing automation isn’t “set it and forget it.” A/B testing and ongoing optimization help you get the best results. Try different subject lines, messaging, or timing, and use the data to improve every campaign.

7. Monitor results and improve

Keep an eye on the metrics that matter like open rates, clicks, conversions, and ROI. By identifying patterns and areas for improvement, you can make informed adjustments to refine your marketing automation strategy over time.

Is Dotdigital a marketing automation platform?

Yes. Dotdigital is a marketing automation platform designed to enhance and extend your marketing strategy. Its advanced features and intuitive interface make it easy to create, automate, manage, and analyze campaigns across multiple channels.

The platform connects seamlessly with ecommerce and CRM systems, allowing you to segment your audience, personalize messages, and deliver highly relevant content that engages customers.

With Dotdigital, you can build dynamic email templates, automate campaigns, and track performance in real time. It’s an ideal solution if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that keeps your marketing efficient, effective, and connected.

Final thoughts

Marketing automation is a great tool that helps you work smarter, connect better, and deliver experiences your customers remember. When you bring automation into your marketing strategy, you can:

• Boost your campaigns with targeted, personalized content
• Save time, cost and resources by letting automation handle repetitive tasks
• Make every customer interaction count, creating smoother journeys and stronger relationships

By using marketing automation thoughtfully, you can understand your audience, engage them where it matters most, and turn insights into results. And all while freeing your team to focus on the creative and strategic work that drives growth.

For over 70 years, Max Spielmann has been helping UK customers turn their memories into something they can hold. As part of the Timpson Group, Max Spielmann specializes in photo printing, personalized gifts, and same-day services across stores in supermarkets and high streets nationwide.

When Alannah Sneyd joined as Digital Marketing Manager in August 2024, she knew there was work to do.

The challenges were clear

Legacy database dragging performance down

Hundreds of thousands of inactive contacts from in-store photo kiosks were inflating email send volumes but contributing almost nothing to engagement or revenue.

Batch-and-blast approach

Segmentation was based solely on open rates (increasingly unreliable), with a “sales are down, let’s send another email” mentality rather than strategic engagement.

Generic automations with zero personalization

Browse abandonment didn’t show customers the products they’d viewed. Welcome emails didn’t check if someone had already purchased before asking for reviews.

No dedicated owner

Email had been managed as an afterthought rather than a strategic channel.

For a small team managing marketing across multiple Timpson Group brands, it was time for a change.

Rebuilding email from the ground up

Working closely with her Dotdigital Customer Success Manager, Alannah took a phased approach to transforming Max Spielmann’s email program.

Phase 1: Getting the data right

The first priority was audience quality. Alannah discovered that engagement from contacts acquired through in-store photo kiosks was dramatically lower than those who signed up via the website.

The solution:

• Introduced double opt-in for all new kiosk sign-ups to ensure quality over quantity
• Rebuilt segments based on click behavior, browsing activity, and recency – not just opens
• Removed long-term inactive kiosk customers, reducing average newsletter sends from 323,000 to 63,000

“People get nervous about reducing volume, but with the right insights in place, testing it on a handful of newsletters is often enough to show the impact,” Alannah notes.

Phase 2: Automation with actual intelligence

Next came a complete overhaul of Max Spielmann’s automations.
Key improvements:

Browse abandonment that actually works

Customers now see the exact products they browsed, not generic category links.

Extended abandonment series

A follow-up email added to the browse abandonment journey.

Welcome series with logic

Added purchase checks so customers who’d already bought didn’t get irrelevant “leave a review” emails, and those who didn’t purchase received a reminder to use their offer.

“It was a mix of everything – technical setup, design refresh, messaging, and adding sophisticated rules that just weren’t there before,” Alannah explains.

The team also tested continuously throughout the year to understand what resonated before peak season.

Phase 3: Smarter seasonal strategy

With cleaner data and better automations in place, Max Spielmann approached peak season differently – sending more strategically while actually reducing overall volume.

“Even with additional sends during peak, volume was down year on year,” Alannah says. “It’s about sending to the right people, not just the most people.”

For Christmas (when December 23rd is consistently their biggest day), the team pulled back on discounting and focused on convenience messaging for last-minute shoppers.

Working with her Dotdigital Customer Success Manager made the transformation possible, Alannah says “with our Customer Success Manager’s support, we’ve been able to achieve things that would normally require a much bigger team or agency support. The relationship is more like a consultant-client dynamic – I come with challenges, and he gives me the blueprint to execute.”

With our Customer Success Manager’s support, we’ve been able to achieve things that would normally require a much bigger team or agency support. The relationship is more like a consultant-client dynamic – I come with challenges, and he gives me the blueprint to execute.

Alannah Sneyd
Digital Marketing Manager

The numbers tell the story

Peak period 2025:

• Total email revenue increased 41% YoY
• Email sends reduced 63% YoY
• Open rates increased from 35% to 42%
• Click-through rate improved from 1.58% to 3.17%

Automation performance:

• Revenue up 78% YoY
• Automations now account for 38% of total email revenue, up from 30%
• Conversion rate increased from 17% to 37%

Impact beyond the metrics

The efficiency story resonated with leadership too. “Senior people in the business like efficiency. The fact the results have been driven from fewer sends – and we didn’t have to spend more – that went down really well. Especially when other channels are getting more expensive year on year, having email working better is just a good story internally.”

Looking ahead

With solid foundations in place, Alannah is eyeing bigger opportunities:

Unlocking in-store data

“We could almost replicate all the campaigns we’ve got just around those kiosk machines if we sorted out the data.”

Multi-channel expansion

SMS and WhatsApp remain untapped. “For customers using their phone to get photos onto the kiosk, it makes sense to explore.”

“Dotdigital has been really good for us,” Alannah notes. “The drag-and-drop builder means I can do things myself. The automation builder with visual notes means I can document why I built things a certain way. For a generalist marketer managing multiple brands, that matters.”