How to Automate Emails for Every Stage of the Customer Journey

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Idealetter

#34

22 September 2025, Mon

Written by Jyothiikaa M D

How to Automate Emails for Every Stage of the Customer Journey

Turning new leads into loyal customers isn’t easy. People’s priorities shift, and without consistent follow-up, your brand can slip from their minds.

Manually sending emails at every stage is both time-consuming and inefficient, increasing the risk of missed opportunities.

That’s why automated email workflows are essential—they nurture leads & customers to free up your time to focus on attracting new prospects.

In this edition, we’ll cover how to create automated email flows that are interconnected to nurture leads & customers at every stage.

👆🏼This is the interconnected flow that we’ll be breaking down today. Refer back to this to understand the things we'll discuss in the edition.

Stage #1: Lead acquisition

This is the first stage of any marketing funnel where you attract potential customers, capture their contact information, and nurture them.

The email addresses you collect from lead magnets, such as e-books and reports, or through events/webinars, are now your leads. Now, you need to send them your first email flow.

Based on what they signed up for, you need to send them the following:

• Lead magnet flow

In this flow, the goal is to share the resource they signed up for and introduce your brand and features to them.

• Event registration flow

This is to confirm their registration for the event and to remind them periodically about the event to ensure their attendance.

If someone signs up at any point in this stage, they should be directed to the ‘Onboarding’ flows, which we'll cover down below.

Stage #2: Lead nurture

This flow is to nurture the leads who haven’t signed up to check out your product or booked a demo at the ‘Lead acquisition’ stage. So far, they’ve only seen a glimpse of your brand, and it's usually not enough to get them to convert.

So now, you should warm up these leads that have entered the funnel from various sources (lead magnets, events, etc.) and nudge them to sign up or book a demo.

To do that, you can send them:

• Post-event flow

This is to be sent to all those who had registered for the event. Share the event recording and nurture them by introducing your features that might be relevant to their pain points.

• Nurture email flow

In this flow, you can share more resources that they would find helpful. Talk about popular features and include case studies to back them up.

After the ‘Nurture flow’ is over, if they’ve still not converted, keep them engaged by sharing any new resources, case studies, or features with them as and when you create them.

And, after all these emails, if they still haven't converted, ask for their consent and add them to your newsletter list. Periodically send them newsletters to nurture them with thought leadership content.

However, if they’ve booked a demo at any point in these flows, send them the ‘Demo booked’ flow, which aims to remind the leads of the upcoming demo and encourage them to attend it.

Stage #3: Onboarding

Yayy! We’ve reached the stage where the lead has signed up for your product. Now, your goal is to help new users get started with your product.

Based on your business model, you can set up any one of the following flows:

• Free trial-to-paid flow

This is for companies that have a free trial, as it helps you onboard your free trial users and convert them into paying customers. Send emails throughout the free trial period to get users to start using the product, create product stickiness, and then later nudge them to convert.

• Self-serve onboarding flow

This is for companies that don’t have a sales or customer support team to provide demos to users on how to use the product. Through this flow, you should educate users on how your product works and how they can get started.

• Assisted onboarding flow

This is for companies that have a sales or customer success team. You can send them this flow if they’ve signed up after the demo.

The goal of this flow is not to explain the product, as your sales teams have already done that during the demo. In this flow, you need to guide them through the next steps, which include setting up their account, adding team members (if applicable), and establishing success metrics.

Once onboarding is complete, send them to your product adoption flow, which we'll discuss next. 👇

Stage #4: Adoption

Now that users are onboarded, it’s time to get them to use your product and create stickiness.

To do this, you can send:

• Emails to introduce hero features or some underrated features, along with their use cases.

• Milestone emails to encourage product usage, such as creating a first project or utilizing a key feature.

• Helpful documents, articles, or walkthroughs to help them understand the feature and get started with it.

At the end of this flow, if they are actively using the product, send them to the ‘upsell/cross-sell’ flow, which we'll cover below. However, if they’re not active, direct them to the ‘customer engagement’ flow.

But if the user is identified as a churn risk, then send them to the ‘churn-prevention’ flow. If you don’t know how to identify who’s about to churn, here’s a guide to help you analyze and identify churn risk users.

Stage #5: Retention

Now that they've adopted the product, it’s time to do everything you can to retain them.

Here are the flows you can use to do this:

• Customer engagement

This is sent to users who are not actively using the product after the adoption flow. You can share new lead magnets, webinar invitations, product updates, and more to stay in touch and keep them informed about your company's latest developments.

• Churn prevention

This is sent to users who’ve been identified as a possible churn risk. Churn could occur if people are unable to achieve the desired results or navigate the tool effectively.

So, send them help docs, guides, etc., or connect them with customer success so they can help users use the product effectively to get their intended results.

• Upsell/cross-sell

If they’re active users, you can send them emails to encourage them to upgrade and access your premium features.

Better features = better results for users = better retention for you

Stage #6: Introspection and improvement

This next stage is crucial if you want to retain your users in the long run and continue growing your brand.

This involves understanding what your users are struggling with and then improving those areas in your product. And, to do that, you need to gather user insights.

Get user insights by sending:

• Feedback email to current users

In the email, you can add a form that allows them to share the issues they’re facing, why they're not willing to upgrade, and what their pain points with the product are, among other things.

• Feedback email to churned users

Get their feedback on your product, why they stopped using it, what the deal-breaker was, and so on.

Then, share the data from these emails with your product team to create a roadmap for your product and refine it to meet the users' needs.

Starting from scratch and setting everything up is a mammoth task.

There’s an easier way to do it.

We’ve prebuilt all the flows mentioned above, such as welcome and lead nurture, in a way that they’re ready to use.

All you gotta do is:

Click on this link.
Open the page of the flow you want to create, like ‘Post-event nurture’.
Click on ‘Create this in Mailmodo’
Sign up (if you haven’t already)
Customize the emails
Hit publish, and you're live

Get ready-to-use email flows

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That's all, folks! I'll see you next month with more tips and ideas. If there is something we can do better for you, please let me know by replying to this email.