Unlock Email Automation: Work Smarter, Not Harder

We can all get caught in an endless loop of repetitive tasks — crafting emails, segmenting audiences, and manually tracking results — all while being expected to deliver exceptional, personalized customer experiences.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. 

With shrinking resources and rising expectations, marketers need a smarter way to scale their efforts without sacrificing personalization or engagement. This is where email automation comes into play. 

Email automation allows your team to engage customers with timely, highly personalized messages that don’t just streamline your workflow. They drive measurable results. 

But modern automation isn’t just saving time; it leverages real-time data and AI-driven insights to meet customer expectations head-on and achieve ambitious business goals.

In this article, we’ll explore how forward-thinking brands leverage email automation to power smarter marketing strategies that resonate with customers and boost revenue. Let’s dive in. 

Our recent 2025 Global Consumer Products Engagement Report, developed in collaboration with Deloitte, highlights a clear challenge: consumers have become harder to engage.

• 65% of consumer product (CP) marketers feel consumer behavior is increasingly difficult to predict.
• 69% say it’s becoming harder to engage meaningfully with customers.
• 20% of consumers only read the subject line of brand emails, while 27% rarely get past the first sentence or two.

The report also reveals a noticeable gap between the channels marketers prioritize and those consumers actually prefer:

• Marketers emphasize e-commerce (50%), web (48%), and email (46%).
• Consumers lean more heavily toward email (36%), web (34%), mobile apps (30%), and social media content (27%).

Interestingly, channels like SMS and conversational messaging, prioritized by marketers (29% and 35%, respectively), don’t even register among consumers’ preferred channels, highlighting potential overinvestment or a need for more refined strategies.

In the context of diminishing third-party data and evolving privacy regulations, marketers must shift focus toward better utilization of first-party data and personalized email strategies to close this gap effectively.

Challenges marketers face:

• Disconnected systems that prevent unified insights: Marketers can’t personalize or automate with consistency across channels without a centralized view.
• Difficulty identifying key behavioral triggers: Missing signals like browse abandonment or loyalty changes delay engagement and reduce conversion opportunities.
• Lack of dynamic content personalization at scale: Static messaging leads to lower engagement. Customers expect relevance in every touchpoint, and scaling that requires automation.

Despite these challenges, the opportunity is clear. Brands that harness data and automation can deliver timely, personalized engagement at scale and with efficiency.

To move beyond simple batch-and-blast emails and truly impact your bottom line, consider these strategies:

1. Personalize every journey with behavioral data

Deliver relevance at every step of the customer lifecycle by using real-time behavioral signals, such as product views, abandoned carts, and email interactions, to trigger personalized messages. This approach ensures each email is timely, contextual, and directly aligned with customer intent.

Goal: Increase engagement and conversion through behavior-based personalization.

Strategy: Leveraging real-time behavioral signals, like product views, abandoned carts, and email interactions, enables precise personalization.

How it works:

• Trigger emails based on specific actions (e.g. browse abandonment, loyalty tier change).
• Use dynamic content blocks that adjust in real time to reflect recent customer activity.
• Personalize subject lines, product recommendations, and incentives.

Example: A skincare brand detects customers browsing anti-aging serums multiple times without purchasing. It triggers a tailored email offering a product comparison and a limited-time discount on the most-viewed item.

Learn more about creating a personalized customer experience.

2. Leverage AI to optimize performance

Goal: Improve campaign outcomes using predictive intelligence.

Strategy: Shift from manual guesswork to data-informed decisions by using AI to identify patterns, predict customer behavior, and adjust campaigns dynamically for greater impact.

How it works:

• Forecast purchase intent to focus efforts on high-potential segments.
• Optimize email send times based on individual engagement patterns.
• Deliver personalized product recommendations automatically.

Example: An online electronics retailer uses AI to send out personalized bundles of laptop accessories just before the customer is predicted to repurchase, increasing upsell conversion without sending unnecessary messages.

SAP Emarsys converts buyers and drives repeat purchases with AI email marketing, enhancing relevancy and convenience through personalization. Learn more about AI-powered email marketing.

3. Automate lifecycle engagement

Build automated flows that mirror the full customer journey, from onboarding and first purchase to follow-up and re-engagement. When done right, automation ensures every message is timely, relevant, and aligned with where the customer is in their relationship with your brand.

Goal: Streamline customer journeys while driving long-term value.

Strategy: Build automated workflows that reflect key stages of the customer lifecycle, from onboarding to re-engagement, and adjust messaging dynamically based on behavior, preferences, and timing.

How it works:

• Automate personalized flows for onboarding, post-purchase follow-ups, and win-back campaigns.
• Tailor journeys dynamically based on real-time customer actions and segments.
• Embed product recommendations, loyalty rewards, and feedback requests.

Example: A coffee brand automates reorder reminders based on average consumption, significantly increasing repeat purchases.

Explore more about email journey automation. Discover why thousands of marketers trust the SAP Emarsys personalization engine to drive customer engagement across multiple channels.

4. Test, analyze, and iterate

Continual optimization is key to unlocking performance gains. Use data to inform decision-making, uncover areas of friction, and experiment with creative, cadence, and segmentation.

Goal: Maximize email impact through ongoing refinement.

Strategy: Embrace a culture of continuous testing by experimenting with content, cadence, and segmentation. Use performance data to guide improvements and replicate what works.

How it works:

• A/B test subject lines, CTAs, content formats, and frequency.
• Monitor key metrics (open rates, CTR, conversion, revenue per email).
• Apply insights to refine journeys and replicate winning tactics across campaigns.

Example: A fashion retailer runs A/B tests on a seasonal email campaign. One version emphasizes exclusive discounts, while the other highlights style guides. Engagement data reveals that content-based storytelling outperforms discounts and informs future sends.

Discover more on how to power up your email with SAP Emarsys.

Let’s explore how leading brands leverage SAP Emarsys to transform their email strategies into growth engines.

Ryderwear: Boosting revenue with predictive automation

Ryderwear is a global fitness apparel brand serving performance-driven consumers through e-commerce.

Challenge: With a lean marketing team, Ryderwear faced significant constraints in manually managing campaigns, limiting their email marketing potential. Their email revenue contribution was underperforming, and scaling personalization seemed impossible with their existing resources.

Solution: Using SAP Emarsys, Ryderwear automated comprehensive lifecycle campaigns and employed Max AI predictive analytics to anticipate customer behaviors. This allowed them to tailor content and offers dynamically, delivering timely, personalized messages at key engagement moments.

Strategy:

• Automate lifecycle stages like onboarding, post-purchase follow-ups, and reactivation campaigns to streamline customer interactions.
• Leverage predictive analytics to proactively target customer segments based on purchase likelihood, maximizing engagement and conversions.

Results:

• Automation-driven revenue grew from 20% to 80%.
• Total email revenue contribution increased from 4–5% to nearly 20%.
• Increased engagement and conversion from AI-powered product recommendations

Learn more: How Ryderwear uses predictive analytics marketing to unlock success

Babbel: Scaling engagement with personalization

Babbel is a globally recognized language learning platform with over 10 million active users worldwide.

Challenge: Babbel faced the complex task of scaling personalization effectively across a diverse global audience, encompassing varied languages, learning behaviors, and individual learning goals. 

Maintaining personalized user experiences at scale was increasingly difficult without robust automation.

Solution: Leveraging SAP Emarsys, Babbel integrated extensive behavioral data and machine learning to deliver deeply personalized user journeys. 

Automated lifecycle stages — including tailored onboarding, targeted re-engagement, and timely learning reminders — were driven by real-time intent and engagement patterns.

Strategy:

• Integrate behavioral analytics and machine learning to deliver personalized content based on user interactions.
• Automate re-engagement and reminder campaigns based on predictive insights into user behavior, enhancing long-term user engagement.

Results:

• 200% growth in European markets and 100% in the US during the pandemic
• Sustained high trial-to-paid conversion rates despite lower trial adoption.
• Increased long-term engagement with behavior-triggered email automations.
• Doubled their YoY revenue growth in the US market.
• Push notifications drove conversions 50% more effectively compared to traditional emails.
• User engagement improved significantly by 25%.

Learn more: Delivering 1:1 customer experiences to accelerate revenue

Advanced automation transforms email from a repetitive task into a strategic growth engine. With the right tools, strategy, and data-driven approach, marketers can:

• Significantly increase revenue attributed to email campaigns
• Scale deep personalization effortlessly, even with limited resources
• Deliver meaningful and memorable customer experiences

Brands like Ryderwear and Babbel demonstrate how SAP Emarsys equips marketers to build intelligent, automated email journeys that consistently convert. 

From onboarding through reactivation, automation lays the foundation for sustained engagement and revenue growth.

Ready to elevate your email automation strategy?

Request a demo to discover how SAP Emarsys can empower your team to create personalized, revenue-generating email campaigns that engage customers at every step of their journey.