Email Automation: How to Set Up Automated Workflows [Data]

Your marketing team is drowning in email tasks, like manually segmenting lists, scheduling sends, personalizing messages, and following up with leads. Without email automation, potential customers slip through the cracks as your team wastes hours on repetitive work—missing major opportunities to nurture and engage your target audience.

Email automation solves this by using trigger-based workflows to deliver the right message at the right time, automatically. By implementing intelligent automation, your team gets hours back, your customers receive better experiences, and your conversion rates climb. 

In this guide, I'll walk you through top email automation tools, provide a step-by-step implementation process, and share proven automation examples you can adapt for your business. Let's get started.

Boost Opens & CTRs with HubSpot’s Free Email Marketing Software

What is email marketing automation?

Why You Should Use Email Marketing

Email Automation and Marketing Statistics Marketers Should Know

The Benefits of Email Automation

How to Automate Email Workflows

Email Marketing Automation Examples

Automate Your Email Marketing Campaigns

 

 

Another common example would be receiving an automated email reminding you to check out the items in your virtual cart after you left a website without making a purchase.

Email automation helps convert leads into customers, delight existing customers, and encourage activities like greater product adoption, upsells, evangelism, and additional purchases.

Top 7 Email Marketing Tools To Automate Emails & Get Clicks!

 

Why You Should Use Automated Email Marketing

Email marketing automation eliminates time-consuming tasks, such as preparing email lists, sending generic messages, or scheduling events manually. This gives marketers and salespeople more time to work on projects that require their attention (or cannot be fully automated).

Email marketing automation is centered around workflows, a predetermined, triggered set of actions you're directing your automation software to take for you.

 

Email Automation and Marketing Statistics Marketers Should Know

• 72% of B2B marketers say they use automation in their email marketing efforts
• The number of email users worldwide is expected to 4.8 billion by 2027, more than half of the expected world population.
• In 2022 alone, 376 billion emails were sent per day.

The Benefits of Email Automation

Let's take a deeper look into some of the ways email automation can benefit marketers.

1. More Seamless Workflow

Email automation allows marketers to send emails to all of their customers quickly and efficiently — allowing marketers to move on to other tasks while keeping customers satisfied.

In fact, 49% of sales and marketing professionals listed "time savings of repetitive tasks" as one of the top three advantages of automation. 49% listed improved efficiency/ROI as another advantage.

2. Better Customer Experience

Automated emails will help you deliver messages that delight customers, such as incentives, helpful reminders, and onboarding content.

Keeping regular contact with your customers will build a better relationship, boost retention, and generate more leads.

3. Improved Email Segmentation

Automated emails make it easier to segment your email recipients based on attributes, behavior patterns, and engagement levels. Doing so leads to an increased engagement rate, open rate, conversion rate, and click-through rate.

4. Improved Personalization 

Email automation analyzes individual customer behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns to customize email content for each recipient, from subject lines and send times to product recommendations and copy.

This hyper-personalization at scale increases open rates, click-through rates, and conversions while making customers feel understood rather than mass-marketed to.

5. Lead Nurturing 

AI email automation nurtures leads by automatically sending personalized content based on each prospect's specific actions, interests, and stage in the buyer's journey. This ensures leads receive relevant information exactly when they need it, moving them closer to a purchase decision without requiring manual intervention from your team.

6. ROI

Automated emails increase ROI by reducing the time and labor costs of manual email management while simultaneously improving conversion rates through better personalization and timing. Companies see higher revenue from automated campaigns that convert more leads into customers, all while freeing up marketing teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

8. 24/7 Engagement

Email automation works around the clock, sending triggered messages instantly when customers take specific actions.. This ensures no lead goes unnoticed and every customer interaction receives an immediate, relevant response, even when your team is offline.

9. Data Insights

Email automation platforms track detailed metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion patterns across all automated campaigns, providing actionable data on what resonates with your audience.

These insights allow you to continuously refine your messaging, segmentation, and timing strategies to improve performance over time.

10. Fewer Errors

Even if you're just copying and pasting or reusing templates for your emails, there is still room for error.

Fortunately, email automation has the ability to map individual user variables onto relevant portions of your templates — allowing you to send personalized emails right away.

Now, let's look at how this process actually works.

 

1. Select email automation software.

There are several email automation software on the market today — the key is selecting the best option for your business and goals.

For the sake of this article, we're will work through the following steps in this section by looking at HubSpot's Marketing Automation tool.

But here are a few more tools for your consideration with their main features and benefits to give you an idea of what these tools are capable of.

Email Marketing Automation Tools

• HubSpot Marketing Automation: Best email marketing automation software for automating and personalizing email campaigns with CRM integration.

Price: Free

Get started with HubSpot's email marketing for free

With HubSpot's Email Marketing Software, you can create, personalize, and optimize your marketing emails on your own. Marketers can craft professional email campaigns that display perfectly on any device, while leveraging HubSpot's email tracking capabilities to monitor metrics such as open and click-through rates for real-time insights.

You can also send personalized emails based on the subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact record. This allows for relevant subject lines, links, attachments, and CTAs for all your customers.

Furthermore, the software allows A/B tests to learn which subject lines get the most opens and which content drives engagement and sales.

Pro Tip: Our email automation tools are powered by your HubSpot CRM database, so the data used to customize your marketing emails are accurate.

• Moosend: Best email marketing automation software for behavior-based automation and list management.

Price: Free trial, $9/month (Pro plan), custom price with add-ons of your choice (Moosend+), custom with advanced functionality (Enterprise)

Image Source

Moosend is an email marketing platform that helps businesses automate their email campaigns and list management. You can personalize email campaigns with conditional logic and tailored content based on customers’ interactions with your brand.

You can also segment your audience based on their specific behaviors (products viewed, forms submitted, etc.). To ensure the best results, you get A/B testing tools to experiment with different items and combinations.

Finally, to optimize your strategy, Moosend equips you with advanced analytics and custom reporting, tracking all-important email marketing metrics in real time.

• Versium Reach: Best email marketing automation software to visualize and segment customers.

Price: Contact for pricing

Versium Reach allows you to create target audiences that you can use across various marketing platforms (like HubSpot) and channels to help you effectively target and reach those groups through your email (and other digital) campaigns.

Versium Reach helps you visualize and segment your customers so you can tailor your email campaigns to them no matter which stage of the buyer's journey.

The tool also helps you maintain a cost-effective lead generation strategy — Versium allows you to experiment with a single data source for better-performing customer segments.

• Mailmodo: Best email marketing automation software for interactive AMP email campaigns.

Price: Free Basic Plan, Paid Plans start at $39/month

Mailmodo is an email marketing platform that allows businesses to create and send interactive AMP emails, enabling recipients to take actions like filling out forms, booking appointments, and providing feedback directly within their inbox.

Mailmodo makes it easy to create these high-conversion emails without any coding. You can automate email sequences and personalize content based on user behavior and preferences to improve customer engagement.

Mailmodo offers detailed analytics and insights to optimize campaigns and improve conversions. It also integrates seamlessly with popular CRMs and marketing platforms, making it easy to automate and manage email workflows.

• Mailchimp: Best email marketing automation software for connecting e-commerce and email platforms.

Price: Free Basic Plan, Essentials Plan; $13/month, Standard Plan; $20/month, Premium Plan; $350/month

Mailchimp makes it easy to deliver personalized and relevant messages and purchase paths to individuals based on their contact information and how they interact with your company.

Send-time optimization then schedules your emails to be sent when your customers are most likely to engage with them.

Mailchimp offers many e-commerce integrations (e.g. WooCommerce, Shopify) so you can connect your online store to the email tool — this way, you can target customers based on their purchases.

Mailchimp offers six main types of email automation to make your team more productive and efficient. These types are:

• Customer journey automation
• Behavior automation
• Transactional email automation
• Postcard automation
• Date-based automation
• RSS-to-email automation

• GetResponse: Best for multichannel campaigns via email, SMS, web push, and mobile push notifications.

Price: Free Basic Plan, Paid Plans start at $19/month

GetResponse is an email and automation platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses that need robust tools at an affordable price.
With the tool, you can set up simple email sequences and more advanced multi-step automation workflows to deliver messages across multiple marketing channels. This allows you to nurture your leads effectively and tailor your communication without having to integrate multiple tools.

The platform offers 170+ integrations and a wide range of built-in tools, including webinars, courses, and paid newsletters.

2. Identify who you're sharing your email campaigns with.

Determine to whom you want to send your emails. For example, you might use lifecycle stages to group your email recipients — for an upsell campaign, you send emails to existing customers who have not purchased a particular product yet.

Your email marketing tool should be able to help you efficiently segment your customers ahead of your campaign using the criteria you've decided upon.

Again, your contact data in your CRM should help with this — for instance, in HubSpot, segment your email recipients by lifecycle stage.

3. Determine your email campaign's goal.

Your email marketing is only as good as your strategy — so ensure you know exactly why you're contacting these individuals. Do you want them to buy something? Learn something? Do something?

Once you answer this question, you can figure out the messaging you need to take them from where contacts are currently to where you want them to go.

You also have to plan for what happens when you succeed.

For example, imagine a 10-email series to get prospects to request a consultation. Prospect A converts within the first email. If Prospect A continues to receive emails telling them to do what they've already done, they'll get frustrated.

In HubSpot, if you define your goal, it will unenroll any contacts who meet the goal.

4. Set enrollment criteria.

Enrollment criteria refer to the qualifications that must be met for a contract to be entered into a workflow.

Suppose you're using HubSpot Workflows. You can create personalized, automated email workflows that can get triggered in a number of different ways.

This can look like a contact added to a list, submitting a form on your website, clicking a link in an email, viewing a page on your blog, clicking on one of your ads, or becoming a marketing-qualified lead.

You can also set up email workflows based on any information you have about the contacts in your marketing database.

This information can include page views, email or social media clicks, content downloads, contact properties, or any combination of these and more.

5. Determine which processes you want to automate with Workflows.

If you were manually emailing these contacts, what would you do? Think of your email marketing workflows as blueprints outlining each action your tool will take.

For instance, specify which actions you want the software to take in HubSpot. Examples of automatable actions are:

• Sending an email.
• Scheduling an email (and/or delaying it).
• If/ then email branching.
• Updating and syncing all email and contact data to your CRM.

6. Create your email campaign assets.

By this point, you know how many emails you want to send, the general messaging you'll include in the emails, and which groups of customers the emails are going to.

Now it’s time to ensure all of your email campaign assets are created and available in your email automation software so you can add them to campaigns.

7. Check your email automation setup and run a test, if possible.

Some things to consider implementing into your workflow publishing process are:

• Looking at your list of enrolled contacts for errors.
• Ensuring the number of enrolled contacts is what you'd expect.
• Considering your workflow chart and use cases.
• Checking your "Send" settings.

In HubSpot, you can test your workflow to ensure the automation you plan to set live works as intended.

8. Make our email automation workflow live and monitor its progress.

Once you're happy with the workflow, set it live.

Mistakes can happen, so monitor for anomalies. Don't be afraid to adjust as needed to resolve issues or improve the performance of your email automation workflow.

Similar to your other marketing strategies, this is also an iterative process.

Additionally, you can continually expand upon your workflows to support other business goals. Use them to automate other actions, such as:

• Setting or clearing a contact property value
• Updating a contact's lifecycle stage
• Adding/removing a contact from a list

other administrative tasks that allow for more targeted, effective marketing to your prospects and customers.

Here are 10 email automation software options with details:

Best Email Automation Software

Here are some of the best email automation software I've managed to find based on key features and pricing. 

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Automation

HubSpot offers comprehensive email automation powered by its CRM database, allowing you to create personalized campaigns based on contact data, lifecycle stages, and behaviors. The platform excels at connecting email automation with broader marketing and sales activities.

• Best Use Case: All-in-one email marketing with CRM integration
• Key Features: Drag-and-drop email builder, workflow automation, A/B testing, personalization tokens, email tracking, seamless CRM integration, behavior-based triggers
• Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $20/month

2. Mailchimp

Source

Mailchimp specializes in connecting online stores to email automation, offering six automation types including transactional emails, behavior-based triggers, and postcard automation with extensive integration options.

• Best Use Case: E-commerce businesses needing platform integrations
• Key Features: Customer journey automation, send-time optimization, e-commerce integrations (Shopify, WooCommerce), pre-built automation templates, audience segmentation
• Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $13/month
  

3. Moosend

Source

Moosend delivers affordable email automation with sophisticated behavioral targeting, allowing you to create personalized campaigns based on specific customer interactions like product views and form submissions.

• Best Use Case: Behavior-based automation and list management
• Key Features: Conditional logic workflows, real-time analytics, A/B testing, advanced segmentation, custom reporting, drag-and-drop editor
• Pricing: Free trial available; paid plans start at $9/month
  

4. ActiveCampaign

Source

ActiveCampaign offers enterprise-level automation features at mid-market prices, with powerful if/then logic, goal tracking, and the ability to create intricate multi-channel customer journeys.

• Best Use Case: Advanced marketing automation for growing businesses
• Key Features: Complex automation workflows, predictive sending, split automation, lead scoring, CRM integration, SMS marketing, site tracking
• Pricing: Starts at $29/month
  

5. Mailmodo

Source

Mailmodo enables recipients to complete actions directly within emails—like filling forms or booking appointments—without leaving their inbox, dramatically improving conversion rates through interactive content.

• Best Use Case: Interactive AMP email campaigns
• Key Features: AMP email creation, in-email forms and surveys, no-code editor, behavior-based triggers, detailed analytics, CRM integrations
• Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $39/month
  

6. GetResponse

Source

GetResponse is an all-in-one platform perfect for small to medium businesses that need email automation plus additional marketing tools like webinars and courses without juggling multiple subscriptions.

• Best Use Case: Multichannel campaigns (email, SMS, web push)
• Key Features: 170+ integrations, webinar hosting, course creation, paid newsletters, automation templates, landing pages
• Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $19/month
  

7. Klaviyo

Source

Klaviyo specializes in e-commerce automation with deep Shopify and BigCommerce integrations, using customer purchase data to send highly targeted product recommendations and win-back campaigns.

• Best Use Case: E-commerce personalization and revenue tracking
• Key Features: Predictive analytics, revenue attribution, SMS integration, advanced segmentation, product recommendations, real-time data sync
• Pricing: Free up to 250 contacts; paid plans start at $20/month
  

8. Drip

Source

Drip helps online retailers automate personalized email sequences based on shopping behavior, cart activity, and purchase history to increase repeat purchases and customer loyalty.

• Best Use Case: E-commerce brands focused on customer lifetime value
• Key Features: Visual workflow builder, revenue tracking, custom events, multi-channel automation, personalization tags, popup forms
• Pricing: Starts at $39/month
  

9. Sender

Source

Sender offers essential email automation features at an extremely affordable price point, making it ideal for startups and small businesses just beginning their email marketing journey.

• Best Use Case: Small businesses and startups on a budget
• Key Features: Automation workflows, popup forms, SMS campaigns, segmentation, responsive templates, basic analytics
• Pricing: Free up to 2,500 subscribers; paid plans start at $8/month
  

10. Omnisend

Source

Omnisend brings together email, SMS, and web push notifications into unified automation workflows, allowing e-commerce brands to reach customers across multiple channels with coordinated messaging.

• Best Use Case: Omnichannel e-commerce marketing automation
• Key Features: Email, SMS, and push notifications in one workflow, pre-built e-commerce automation, product picker, cart recovery, audience sync
• Pricing: Free up to 250 contacts; paid plans start at $16/month
  

 

Email Marketing Automation Examples

Now, let's walk through some examples of automated email workflows you can set up to start getting more out of your contacts database and marketing automation software.

1. Topic Workflows

Main triggers: Page views or content offer downloads.

Create a workflow for each of the industry-related topics you create content about.

Imagine you're a unicorn breeder whose main content topics include unicorn diets, unicorn gear, and unicorn boarding. Then you could bucket your content marketing offers (e.g. ebooks, webinars, kits, etc.) and blog posts by these topics.

You could also create an email workflow for each topic and then trigger the appropriate workflow when one of your contacts views a page or downloads an offer centered around that topic.

Trigger a content download workflow based on a form submission from a tool conversion tool like HubSpot's Free Marketing & Lead Generation Software.

To trigger an automated workflow in HubSpot, you can use the "Lead Flow Submission” option as the starting condition.

So if a contact downloaded your e-book called 10 Tips for a Balanced Unicorn Diet, your "unicorn diet" workflow would be triggered, sending that contact more helpful content, such as blog posts describing unicorn dietary tips.

2. Blog Subscriber Welcome Workflow

Main trigger: Subscription to your blog.

Give your brand new blog subscribers a warm welcome with a blog welcome email. Use this email to:

• thank contacts for subscribing
• remind them what they'll get from reading your blog
• review their subscription settings (and allow them to make adjustments)
• promote your blog's best-performing articles or other offers

Get tips for creating a successful blog welcome email here, and learn more about optimizing welcome emails here.

3. New Customer Welcome/ Training Workflow

Main trigger: Lifecycle stage.

While we're on the subject of warm welcomes, consider setting up a series of welcome emails when a contact converts into a paying customer, which you can trigger when a contact's lifecycle stage gets updated to "customer."

Not only is this a great way to kick off your new customer relationship on a positive note, but it can also keep your customers engaged after they buy.

And if your product or service requires a little training on your customers' part, use this workflow as an opportunity to introduce helpful training materials on an incremental basis.

4. Engaged Contact/ Evangelist Workflow

Main triggers: Visits, clicks, or form submissions.

Create a smart/dynamic list that automatically updates to include contacts that you've really engaged.

To create this list, use trigger criteria such as a high threshold of visits to your website, clicks on your emails or social media posts, or form submissions.

Then create an email workflow to leverage this list to encourage evangelism of your top content on social media.

Because these contacts are highly engaged with you already, they're more likely to share your top content.

You can also consider adding list criteria to pull in contacts with a certain number of Twitter followers to leverage the power of those social media influencers in your database.

5. Lead Nurturing Workflow

Main trigger: Multiple beginning-stage conversion events.

If a contact has downloaded several of your beginning stage marketing offers like ebooks and webinars, it might be a sign that they're ready for a bit more. Set up workflows that help advance these contacts further through the flywheel.

If the contact is a lead, send them emails containing more content that can upgrade them to a marketing qualified lead (MQL) or an opportunity in your sales process.

This workflow may include content and web pages you've identified from an attribution report analysis as influential in converting leads into customers.

Content like customer success stories/case studies, free trial offers, or product demos could be considered.

6. Internal Sales Rep Notification Workflow

Main triggers: Late stage page views/conversion events.

On any given website, there are certain page visits and conversion events that indicate more product interest than others.

First, identify these pages and conversion events using an attribution reporting tool like HubSpot.

You’ll notice that, more often than not, the pages you unearth will be your pricing page, product pages, etc. — the pages that your contacts view when they're truly considering your products or services.

Use workflows here to trigger an internal email notification to your sales rep to inform them of these high-value activities.

Using personalization, give the rep all the information they need about the lead in question, including relevant mid- and late stage content that they can send to the lead in their outreach email.

This allows you to connect sales reps with the best possible leads at the right time.

7. Re-engagement Workflow

Main trigger: Inactive contacts.

Reawaken inactive contacts with a re-engagement workflow, enrolling contacts once they've met certain list criteria.

For example, you could set conditions such as the length of time since their last form submission, website visit, or email click, triggering the email once it's been a while since a contact last engaged with you.

In your workflow, try sending them an exclusive offer or coupon to get them excited about your company again. For more tips about launching an effective email re-engagement campaign, check out this post.

8. Event Workflow

Main trigger: Registration or attendance.

Hosting a live, in-person, or virtual event? Use email workflows to automate your communication to event registrants and attendees before, during, and after the event.

For example, create a workflow that delivers important information registrants should know leading up to the event, such as hotel accommodations and agenda information for live events, or webinar log-in information for online events.

When the event ends, set up a workflow that gives attendees online access to session slides and continues to nurture them with additional content or promotion for future events.

9. Abandoned Shopping Cart Workflow

Main trigger: Shopping cart abandonment.

If you're an ecommerce business, you'll likely benefit from an abandoned shopping cart workflow.

The concept here is simple: When someone adds an item to their online shopping cart but leaves your site without completing the purchase, you can trigger an email workflow that reminds them of their forgotten purchase.

By offering a special discount code or incentive to buy, you motivate the individual to return to your website to complete the transaction.

10. Upsell Workflow

Main trigger: Past purchases.

Communication with your customers shouldn't stop after they make a purchase. This is especially true if you sell various products and/or services. Use workflows to help you upsell or cross-sell existing customers.

Create dynamically updating lists of contacts who purchase a certain product — or combination of products — and create workflows aimed at recommending other products/ services or encouraging upsells or add-ons.

11. Customer Happiness Workflow

Main trigger: High or low NPS scores.

If you administer regular Net Promoter surveys of your customer base, you can use customers' Net Promoter Scores as a property to trigger workflows.

Simply determine what your ideal customer happiness score is, and use that as the threshold for your dynamic list of happy customers.

Then trigger a workflow for customers with "happy" scores and reward them with exclusive content, offers, or discounts.

Trigger a different workflow for your "unhappy" customers that includes content/offers aimed at helping to improve their happiness.

You can even segment unhappy customers by the specific reasons they're feeling unsatisfied — then send them even more targeted workflows to address their issues.

12. Customer Success/ Engagement Workflow

Main triggers: Success metrics or product usage.

If you keep track of customer success metrics, you have a prime workflow opportunity on your hands.

For example, if you're trying to build up your arsenal of customer case studies, automatically trigger an email that asks customers if they'd be interested in being featured as a success story once certain customer success metrics were met.

Furthermore, suppose you track customers' product adoption or feature usage.

In that case, you could trigger a workflow for users exhibiting low product engagement, providing resources that educate and train them on using the product features they're not taking advantage of.

13. Upcoming Purchase Reminder Workflow

Main trigger: Purchases made on a cycle.

Does your contacts database include customers who typically purchase on a cycle? Enter those people into a workflow that gets triggered when they make a purchase.

For instance, you sell eye care products, and a customer purchases a six-month supply of prescription contacts.

Enroll that customer into a workflow that sends them an automated email five months later as a reminder that their six-month supply is about to run out, and it might be time to order a new batch of contacts.

14. Customer Service or Ticket Workflow

Main Trigger: A customer or prospect contacts customer service via email or an online form.

Your customers or prospects might have trouble using your free or paid software. When this happens, fielding a bunch of customer service emails and messages can take tons of valuable time from your schedule.

One way to avoid this is to create a workflow that turns customer concerns into tickets that can be categorized, labeled, and assigned to customer service reps on your team.

These tickets can also help you track ongoing problems and when issues with a customer or prospect are resolved.

15. Deal-Based Workflows

Main Trigger: When someone e-signs a quote or contract.

Sealing the deal is key to successful marketing and sales. Automating small aspects of this process allows your sales reps more time to nurture the client over the phone, during demos, or via other messages.

With a deal-based workflow, you can trigger confirmation emails when a prospect becomes a client or qualified lead by signing a quote or contract.

With systems like HubSpot, you can also set the workflow to change the contact's status to show where they are in the lifecycle.

Frequently Asked Questions About Email Automation

What is automation in email?

Email automation is the use of software to send targeted emails automatically based on specific triggers, schedules, or user behaviors.

Instead of manually sending each email, you set up workflows that deliver the right message to the right person at the right time—like welcoming new subscribers, following up on abandoned carts, or re-engaging inactive contacts.

This saves time while ensuring consistent, personalized communication with your audience.

Can you automate an email?

Yes, you can automate virtually any type of email using marketing automation software.

Common use cases include welcome emails triggered when someone subscribes, abandoned cart reminders sent when shoppers leave items behind, birthday or anniversary emails based on customer data, and re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers.

You can also automate transactional emails like order confirmations, lead nurturing sequences that educate prospects over time, and internal notifications to alert your sales team when a lead takes a high-value action.

The key is identifying repetitive email tasks in your business and creating workflows that handle them automatically based on triggers you define.

Which tool is commonly used for email automation?

HubSpot, Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign are among the most commonly used email automation tools.

HubSpot excels at integrating email automation with CRM data for personalized B2B campaigns and lead nurturing, while Mailchimp is popular for small businesses and e-commerce stores needing straightforward automation like welcome series and abandoned cart emails.

ActiveCampaign is favored by growing businesses that need advanced automation workflows with sophisticated segmentation and conditional logic.

Other widely-used tools include Klaviyo for e-commerce brands focused on revenue attribution, and GetResponse for businesses wanting multichannel automation across email, SMS, and web push notifications.

How to automate emails for free?

Several platforms offer free email automation, including HubSpot (free plan with basic workflows), Mailchimp (free up to 500 contacts), Sender (free up to 2,500 subscribers), and Brevo/Sendinblue (free with up to 300 emails daily).

To get started, sign up for a free account, import or collect email contacts through signup forms, then use the platform's workflow builder to create automated sequences based on triggers like form submissions or welcome emails.

Most free plans include drag-and-drop editors and pre-built templates, making it easy to set up basic automations like welcome series, birthday emails, or simple nurture campaigns without any coding knowledge.

What's the difference between email automation and email marketing?

Email marketing is the broad practice of sending emails to promote products, share content, or communicate with your audience—it includes both one-time campaigns and automated sequences.

Email automation is a specific subset of email marketing that uses triggers and workflows to send emails automatically based on user behavior, time delays, or specific conditions without manual intervention.

Think of it this way: a monthly newsletter you manually send to your entire list is email marketing, while a series of welcome emails that automatically triggers when someone subscribes is email automation.

Both are valuable, but automation saves time and delivers more personalized, timely messages at scale.

Automate Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing automation increases efficiency and gives your team back valuable time that can be spent on customers and other work that requires their attention. You can use HubSpot's AI Campaign Assistant to create assets for your email marketing campaigns.

Additionally, the process helps optimize your email marketing strategy and personalize email content to increase its effectiveness among your target audience and customers.

Identify your ideal email marketing automation tool and begin setting up the workflows your team needs.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in September 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.