How to set up email marketing/automations on the cheap.
I'm setting up our welcome email onboarding for Xtreeks and thought I'd share the email automation for our other app as an example (shown below). It's over a year long and still has a decent open rate. I prune every couple of months to remove non-openers.
The email series is for merchants using our Shopify app. It gives 60-second summaries of marketing research (summarized by AI) and links back to the study.
I've tailored the prompt over the last year and it works pretty well, especially since I wrote the first dozen or so myself to give it examples. I still get emails from readers about how useful the content is.
What I use: Email marketing is usually overpriced, but if you can do without the fancy features and send from your AWS account it's pretty cheap. We use the Connect plan on Email Octopus, which is only $23/month for 5K subscribers.
I just use a basic plain text template, automations, and send out a few one-off campaigns every now and then. It's the cheapest option I've found without doing more setup/maintenance myself.
For Xtreeks I plan to start with emails about basic habit formation that helped me, then maybe some motivational stuff after that about doing hard things. We'll see what resonates.
Solid setup. EmailOctopus + sending through your own SES is one of the best deals, and plain text usually beats fancy HTML on both deliverability and reply rate — so you're really not missing much
A couple of important things , especially as you build out the Xtreeks onboarding:
Since you're on SES, keep an eye on your complaint and bounce rates. AWS is strict and will start throttling or pausing you if complaints creep up. Your habit of pruning non-openers every couple of months is exactly the right move for that — you could even automate a re-engagement step before you cut them.
For a habit app, behavior-triggered emails usually outperform straight time-based drips. e.g. firing a nudge when someone logs a streak vs. when they've gone quiet for N days — the "doing hard things" motivational angle lands way harder when it's tied to what the user actually did (or didn't do) that week.
Your approach to cost-effective email marketing and automation is solid! A few key takeaways I appreciate:
✅ Lean and effective setup – Avoiding overpriced platforms while using AWS and Email Octopus keeps costs low without sacrificing deliverability.
✅ AI-powered summaries – Automating valuable, digestible content keeps engagement high without overwhelming subscribers.
✅ Continuous optimization – Regular pruning ensures a healthy list and maintains good open rates.
✅ Testing what resonates – Starting with habit formation for Xtreeks and adjusting based on response is a great strategy.
Curious—how do you structure your AI-generated summaries to keep them engaging and concise? Also, any deliverability tricks you've found particularly useful when sending from AWS? 🚀
Thanks. Not really, keeping the list clean and only emailing those who have opted in helps AWS deliverability a ton.