Email Marketing Automation

The Problem

A performance marketing agency managing email programmes for 12 B2C and B2B clients was struggling with scale. Every campaign — welcome sequences, abandoned cart flows, win-back programmes — was being configured, written, and scheduled by hand. Two strategists were spending more than half their week on operational tasks rather than strategy.

Worse, campaigns were sent as batch-and-blast blasts to entire lists with minimal segmentation. Open rates had dropped from 28% to 19% over 12 months as inbox providers tightened spam filters in response to low engagement signals. Revenue attribution from email was declining across every account.

The Automation We Built

We designed a behaviour-triggered email engine that treats every contact as an individual rather than a list member:

1. Event ingestion: Website events (page views, product interactions, form fills, checkout steps) stream into the n8n workflow via webhook in real time.
2. Live segmentation: Each event updates the contact's segment score across 14 micro-segments — cold, warm, high-intent, churned, VIP, category-specific, and more. Segment assignment happens within 2 seconds of the triggering event.
3. AI copy generation: A GPT-4o agent generates a personalised subject line and email body for each contact based on their segment, recent behaviour, and purchase history. Each client has a stored brand voice and product catalogue the agent draws from.
4. Optimal send timing: The workflow checks each contact's historical open-time data and schedules the send for their individual peak window rather than a global send time.
5. Feedback loop: Open, click, and unsubscribe events feed back into the segmentation model, continuously improving targeting without manual intervention.

Results After 6 Months

Average open rates across all 12 accounts climbed from 19% to 41%. Click-through rates increased 3× as personalised content resonated with the right contacts at the right time. Email-attributed revenue grew by 210% — without any increase in send volume or ad spend.

The two strategists reclaimed 18 hours per week from campaign operations, using that time to focus on higher-value creative and strategic work.

Tools Used

• n8n — event processing, segmentation engine, and send orchestration
• GPT-4o — personalised subject line and copy generation
• Instantly / Klaviyo — email delivery per client stack
• Segment — event stream ingestion