What is B2C marketing automation?
A B2C marketing automation platform is a messaging software that lets you create, manage, and automate campaigns across the users’ lifecycle. You can create multi-channel campaigns to engage and retain your users based on the rules you define.
Every campaign can have a different objective, but the common goal is to keep the existing users engaged. With B2C marketing automation, you can also build and maintain unified customer profiles, analyze user engagement with your app/website, and make data-driven decisions that help you drive business growth and maximize revenue.
Statistically speaking, marketing automation makes a strong point for itself:
- 91% of marketers surveyed by Instapage say that marketing automation workflow is very important to the success of their marketing campaigns.
- Protocol80 says that the use of lead nurturing through marketing automation saw 15-20% of potential buyers that were not ready to purchase converted to sales.
Why is marketing automation important for your B2C business?
If you are at the helm of a consumer business, then you NEED to be where your customers are.
- B2C Marketing Automation will give you the ability to engage with your customers contextually on a highly personalized level.
- You will have access to tons of user data that will help you create an intimate profile about your customers based on their demographic and behavioral data.
- You can facilitate one-on-one communication with your customers with not just personalized but hyper-personalized and highly relevant content.
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This brings us to the all-important question: How to leverage Marketing Automation technology to improve your brand’s marketing effectiveness?
To answer that, we have highlighted 15 examples to help you understand how different brands are using Marketing Automation:
15 B2C Marketing Automation Examples
- Welcome campaign
- Onboarding campaign
- Repeat purchase campaign (Customer Retention)
- Re-engagement/Reactivation campaign
- Multi-channel campaign
- Behavioral campaign
- Cross-selling campaign
- Information/update campaign
- A/B testing for campaigns
- Feedback campaign
- Upsell campaign
- Milestone campaign
- Referral campaign
- Location-based campaign
- Limited time campaign
1. Welcome campaign
Brand Examples: Resume.com, Airbnb, Tripoto
Communication medium used: Email
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel
Having a Welcome campaign is perhaps the most obvious use of Marketing Automation. It is absolutely necessary for most brands to establish a connection right off the bat. You also can’t be bothered to shoot an email to every new signup, especially if you have a lot of users.
This is where automation shines and allows you to automate new sign-up emails right after registration.
Resume.com: Email example
Airbnb: Email Example
Tripoto: Email example
2. Onboarding campaign
Brand Examples: Tailor Brands, Mailchimp
Communication medium used: Email
Industry fit: SaaS, Online Marketplace, BFSI
Most apps lose about 77% of their DAU (daily active users) in the initial 3 days after install. Users often drop out early because of having very little understanding of using a new product. This is why it is crucial for businesses to have a sound onboarding process.
An onboarding campaign can help ease the user into the product step by step, and facilitate the transition from casual onlooker to invested active user.
Tailor Brands: Email example
MailChimp: Email example
3. Repeat purchase campaign – Customer retention
Brand Examples: Pinkberry, Flaberry, H&M
Communication medium used: Email, Push Notification
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel
How do you extract more out of an existing customer? According to Adobe’s recent study, existing customers are responsible for creating 40% of revenue for an ECommerce store. Acquiring a new customer will be 5 times more expensive than getting a conversion from an existing one. However, increasing customer retention rate in the e-commerce industry by 5% can increase your profitability from 25% to 95%!
Your existing customers are familiar with your brand and your product, which makes them theoretically easier to convert compared to new customers.
Based on certain triggers derived from user behavior, you can create tailored campaigns with an incentive that will drive up the perceived value of the offer.
Pinkberry: Email example
Flaberry: Email example
- If you look at the Flaberry email closely, they have mentioned my cousins (Sona & Isha) being their customers. I had mentioned their names while personalizing their gifts during my last purchase.
- The second bit of personalization comes with the discount coupon code: PRIY10. It contains the first 4 letters of my name giving it the appearance of a one-off individual offer meant only for me.
H&M: Push Notification example
4. Re-engagement/Reactivation campaign
Brand Examples: QuizUp, RunKeeper, BuzzFeed
Communication medium used: Push Notification, Email
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
It is a challenge for every entrepreneur to make a product that is super sticky, and keeps users coming back for more. Every major app that we have in our phones today had a point in their existence where they struggled with decreasing user count and average time spent.
If you are struggling to retain users and keep them engaged with your product, then you can use Marketing Automation to get them back on your app/website. You can also use this retention rate calculator to understand if your retention rates need boosting.
Check out some of these examples for inspiration:
QuizUp: Email example
RunKeeper: Email example
BuzzFeed: Email example
5. Multi-channel campaign
Brand Examples: Ola, Bookmyshow, Prettysecrets
Communication medium used: Push Notification, Email, SMS, Web Push Notification
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
Most online users elicit multi-screen behavior with phases of sequential usage. They might start off their online search on a laptop, proceed to check out some in-depth content on a tablet, and ultimately choose to make a transaction from their mobile phone.
Brands are increasingly tapping multiple channels of communication to maintain top of the mind awareness, and this can be easily achieved with marketing automation.
Ola: SMS & Email examples
Ride-hailing app Ola advertises their new service offering over SMS, Email, Push notifications & in-app messaging.
BookMyShow: Push Notification & Email examples
Ticketing-app BookMyShow notified me about the superhero movie Justice League over 3 channels: push notification, email and an in-app message a day apart from each other.
PrettySecrets: Push, SMS & Web Push
Lingerie retailer Prettysecrets follows the users fervently across multiple channels. It covers the mobile domain effectively by sending a push notification and an SMS prompting the user to clear their abandoned cart. Even when the user lands on the website, a web push notification gets triggered for the same targeted campaign.
6. Behavioral campaign
Brand Examples: Nordstrom, Overstock, Netflix, Amazon
Communication medium used: Push Notification, Email, SMS
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle, Online Entertainment
A Marketing Automation platform will generate massive amounts of data regarding users and their online activity across different channels. You can piece together your consumer’s buying behavior based on their demographic traits & online browsing activity. This is particularly useful in segmenting your users and targeting them with relevant, personalized messages.
Nordstrom: Email example
Overstock: Push Notification example
Netflix: Push Notification example
Amazon: Email example
7. Cross-selling campaign
Brand Examples: Crate&Barrel, Amazon, EasyJet
Communication medium used: Email
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
Cross-selling refers to pitching related and complimentary items for sale along with a product. E-Commerce behemoth Amazon has been wildly successful with this tactic with almost 35% of their revenue being generated from cross-selling.
You can send customized messages to your customers after every purchase to trigger a repeat purchase. This can be achieved easily with a Marketing Automation Platform and data pertaining to customer’s purchase history. Let us look at a few examples:
Crate&Barrel: Email example
Amazon: Email example
EasyJet: Email example
8. Information/Update campaign
Brand Examples: Ola, United Airlines, Google
Communication medium used: Push Notification, Email, SMS
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle, BFSI
Marketing Automation can be used effectively to send important information and critical updates to your customers over multiple channels. Brands automate the sending of basic transactional information and preferred updates via Marketing Automation. This way, you can send out crucial information, contextually relevant at the right time.
Ola: Email + SMS example
Ride-hailing app Ola sends transactional information about refunds to users on Email & SMS automatically after successful credit.
United Airlines: Push Notification example
Google: Push Notification example
9. A/B testing for campaigns
Brand Examples: Yummly
Communication medium used: Push Notification
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
A/B testing your campaigns can help you understand what works and what doesn’t. With a marketing automation platform, you can test out multiple iterations of your campaign communication on real customers and create effective campaigns.
Yummly A/B testing: Push Notification examples
10. Feedback campaign
Brand Examples: Whale, Papa Johns, Tailor Brands, Tinder, Amazon
Communication medium used: Email, Push Notification
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
Feedback is the bedrock of every company’s development process. It directly affects the evolution of a product based on the reviews of real-world users. Trouble is, good quality feedback is hard to come by. Using Marketing Automation, your brand can reach out to your customers/users over multiple channels to extract sound feedback.
Whale: Push Notification example
Papa Johns: SMS example
Tailor Brands: Email example
Tinder: Email example
Amazon: Email example
11. Upsell campaign
Brand Examples: Kotak Mahindra, Quikr
Communication medium used: Email
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
Upselling means pitching an upgraded product/service that is more premium to a customer against their preference. Gartner’s report states: “Over 80% of your future revenues will be generated from 20% of your customers”. Using Marketing Automation, Skullcandy managed to ramp up cross-selling revenues by 30%.
Another strong argument stems from the costs involved: acquiring a new customer worth 1$ will set you back around 1.18$, compared to 0.28$ from an existing customer.
Using Marketing Automation, you can extract more value from your customers effectively with upselling. Let’s see a few examples:
Kotak Mahindra: Email example
Quikr: Email example
12. Milestone campaign
Brand Examples: Payback, UEFA, Uber
Communication medium used: Email
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
Using personal and product milestones in marketing campaigns can increase online conversions and top-tier product adoption. Want to give your customers a special discount on their birthday? Want to reward your loyal customers? All of this can be automated by simply creating milestone triggers that will fire off a custom event of your choosing.
Payback: Email example
UEFA: Email example
Uber: Email example
13. Referral campaign
Brand Examples: Ola, Dropbox, Uber
Communication medium used: Email, In-App Notifications
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
According to Nielsen, people are 4 times more likely to purchase something that has been recommended by a friend. Referral campaigns also attract higher-quality customers with a 16% higher lifetime value compared to a non-referral customer. You can use Marketing Automation to create a custom referral campaign for your consumers using multi-channel marketing.
Let’s check out a few industry examples of Referral Campaigns:
Ola: Email example
Dropbox: Email example
Uber: In-app Message example
14. Location-based campaign
Brand Examples: Starbucks, Moda in Pelle
Communication medium used: Push Notifications
Industry fit: Offline Retail, QSR, Clothing & Fashion
Using technology called geofencing, brands are creating a virtual fence around a location of interest. Every time a customer breaches this ‘fence’, personalized messages are pushed out automatically to these customers on their mobile devices to increase conversions. Using geofencing can potentially double your conversions from mobile marketing if you have a precise idea of the mobile app metrics you’d need to track.
Here are a couple of examples that show the effective uses of location-based campaigns:
Starbucks: Push notification example
Moda in Pelle: Push notification example
15. Limited time campaign
Brand Examples: Paytm, Flipkart, Banana Republic
Communication medium used: Email, In-App Notifications
Industry fit: SaaS, E-Commerce, Travel, Fitness & Lifestyle
The psychological effects of perceived scarcity have long been used by marketers as a ploy to create demand for products and services. Using the scarcity heuristic increases the value of a product by making the product seem more difficult to obtain. Xiaomi employed a ‘drip marketing’ strategy to sell their Mi3 phone in India with great success.
You can automate these campaigns at set intervals instead of doing this manually with Marketing Automation.
Paytm & Flipkart: Push Notification example
Banana Republic: Email example
Summing it up
There are many more ways in which you can set up Marketing Automation for your brand effectively. For a start, these 15 examples should hopefully be good enough for you to take inspiration and get going. If you can’t get enough of Marketing Automation examples, then we have listed 8 more examples of our customers who have mastered Targeted Email Marketing .

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