Email marketing is one of the most effective campaign strategies employed by businesses as it helps you promote your brand to your target audience, and eventually drives sales. It’s not only cost-effective, it also allows you to reach more people. As much as possible, you’d like to stay connected and capture your audience’s attention at the right time. This is where email automation comes into play.
What is email automation?
Nowadays, email marketing teams are working smarter while getting more savvy and sophisticated. With the evolution of email marketing comes automation of tasks, most important of them is the sending out of emails to their customers. Automated emails are timely, personalised emails that are relevant to the people who see it at that given time and with the help of marketing automation tools like Mailchimp, Hubspot and Active Campaign, to name a few. These are emails that matter to the right people, and not just ones that recipients will skip reading.
Getting creative
More often than not, the majority of the visitors to your website aren’t ready to buy. However, the fact that they are taking time to check out your services, means that they are showing interest. Now here’s where you could get creative and get your visitors to subscribe to your email list.
On your website, a simple but prominent ‘Subscribe via Email’ section that should then add people to a list in your chosen marketing automation tool. You may also drive sign-ups via your company’s social media platforms, or even a trusty sign-up sheet on your company website should do the trick.
How does email automation work?
Marketing automation tools work by basically gathering the data of a set of users, adding them to an email marketing database, and then they are segmented based on geographical locations, interests, and other behaviours. From there, the marketer creates an email campaign, sets the triggers (as in a trigger and action system) that when a certain action is done, an email or a set of emails get automatically sent out.
The benefits of email automation
Though the whole workflow may seem intimidating, the benefits of email automation definitely outweigh and makes it all worth it. Email automation allows you:
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Personalisation
We are all consumers at one point in our lives. And as consumers, there’s nothing more that makes us feel valued other than getting personalised emails that are tailor-fitted to who we are as a customer. It’ll also be easier for us to spot whether any correspondence is personalised, and not just generic. In designing an automated email marketing strategy, it truly is important to make sure that any advertising messages you send out hits close to home, so to speak.
Making each message personalised also gives an impression to your target audience that they may be chatting with a friend who knows them very well, and thus, making it easier for them to respond. Since everything is automated, marketers can easily personalise by way of the data gathered from their contacts who signed up to the email list, all these add up and contribute to how marketers plan out their campaigns to make sure it is relevant, and that they get the response needed, and the customer’s buy-in at the end of the day.
What marketers are after is also a more satisfying customer experience, one that will keep the customer going back for more. As email messages are more personalised, they get to be more specific, and thus they are more relevant to your customers.
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Customer retention that lasts
The timeliness of messages is also what makes the email automation process so sophisticated. With this process, marketers are also able to schedule their messages, so your customers won’t go too long without hearing from you. It’s important too, that you make them feel you’re around when they need you. It’s all part of managing your brand’s customer relationships.
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A carefully-planned strategy
Carefully-planned email workflows also allow you to be more streamlined and have one key goal. By automating your emails, you’re able to carefully plan out each content, making sure they’re relevant to your recipient. It can even give you the creative license in designing your marketing strategy.
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Making the most out of the marketing team
The task of designing an email marketing strategy from scratch could be very daunting, and time-consuming. The time spent in manually sending out emails to your customers definitely could be used by your team to perform other more important tasks, and automation allows them to do just that. Not only are you boosting your team’s productivity, but you’re also giving them more time to focus on doing things that extend outside of work, which is quality time for them.
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Boosting revenue while reducing costs
Marketing automation tools have now become more and more user-friendly and it won’t be necessary to form a large team that ensures emails are regularly sent out. Also, it’ll be easier now for marketers with less experience to man the ship. Also, automating your workflows allow you to speed up the sales conversion process and therefore increase the probability that a lead is converted to a sale. This definitely will have a significant impact on your team’s overall revenue.
Some email tips to make it work
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Don’t always go for the sale
While email marketing is geared towards promotion, it always doesn’t have to be constantly sending customer offers. It also helps to send email marketing collaterals that also educate them. You can also add to their feeling valued by sending anniversary or holiday emails with special discounts and other freebies.
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Sending a confirmation email
It’s always considered as best practice for marketers to send confirmation or welcome emails as a form of acknowledgement, and as a start of the newly-formed relationship with your new customers. In some cases, it’s even now become common practice for marketers to offer some kind of trial for a limited time, as a way of letting your prospective customers experience the product, and help them decide when they’re ready to subscribe.
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Make it easy to unsubscribe
Making it easy for your customers to unsubscribe to your service is sending them a clear message that you respect their time, their choices and their space. This also tells them that they’re always welcome when they’re ready to opt into your service. Also, this ensures that you’re maintaining a list of only high quality and valued contacts.
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Track customer responses
Each time an automated email is sent, you’ll be able to know your customer’s actions on the website. Tracking your customer’s responses is one way of collecting more data that can direct your next move (like giving complimentary subscriptions or discount codes, for example) and can help you strategize.
Conclusion:
Email automation, combined with customer analytics, is truly a smart workflow that allows you to grow your business seamlessly, and knowing now the benefits it gives should be the reason for your business to give it a go if you haven’t just yet. If you’re looking to get the ball rolling with email and marketing automation, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Let’s work together to automate your emails to nurture your customers.
