Email marketing has consistently been proven to be one of the most effective methods so you can use to grow your business. In fact, a solid email marketing strategy often provides an exponential ROI. This is particularly true when you incorporate email automation.
But, not every entrepreneur understands the utility that it offers. Not quite sure how to begin? We’ve got all the info you need.
Let's explore everything you should keep in mind when it comes to using email automation.
What Exactly Is Email Automation?
As the name suggests, email automation involves the use of automation software during an email marketing strategy. In the past, emails were sent manually at certain intervals with the intention of generating the most engagement possible.
Unfortunately, it was difficult to calculate the ideal times to send emails to a specific demographic and it was even harder to achieve a consistent level of performance.
Even early forms of email automation were relatively limited and weren't able to provide groundbreaking results. Although they slightly improved the process, it still required a large amount of human input in order to reach the desired metrics.
But, entrepreneurs begin to use automation as it developed in order to drastically improve their marketing campaigns. When implemented correctly, it's one of the best investments that a company can make.
How Can It Help My Business?
It should come as no surprise that properly integrating email automation into your company's digital marketing strategy is well worth the effort. This is particularly true for companies to have an extensive list of customers that they would like to interact with.
Without the use of automation, it simply isn't reasonable to expect this level of communication with a larger number of people.
But, not everyone understands the large handful of benefits that it can provide. Let's explore a few of the most notable that your company can take advantage of.
Increased Personalization
The ability to incorporate an increased level of personalization in your email strategy is one of the most significant uses that automation has. To elaborate, many businesses use templates with certain variables that change depending on the recipient.
This includes data such as personal or business names, location, past purchases, etc. By intentionally using information that is unique to the recipient, we will help establish a stronger relationship between that individual and your brand.
Personalization is also particularly useful to use to promote a sale that your company is having. A typical scenario could involve addressing the recipient by name, acknowledging items they have viewed or purchased in the past, and then informing them of the discounts that are available to them.
Since you will drastically increase your open rate and level of engagement, you'll typically find that professional emails or particularly effective when used in this manner.
Boost Brand Awareness
Automating your email strategy allows you to send a higher volume of emails on a more consistent basis. This means that you will have more interaction with your target demographics, which results in an increased amount of brand awareness.
By the time that somebody from your company interacts with your democratic directly, they've already had a strong understanding of who your company is, and the services that you're able to provide, etc. From here, you have a far easier time making conversions as opposed to if this were the first time your brand had interacted with that person.
Detailed Analytics
Having access to comprehensive analytics will provide a thorough insight into how effective your email marketing campaigns are.
This data will provide essential information about attributes like your open rate, level of engagement, number of conversions, etc. You can then use this information to improve in areas that need work while capitalizing on strategies that are providing sufficient results.
You can also use your analytics to test multiple types of emails that you sent to your audience. This process is known as split testing and is one of the most useful ways to refine your marketing strategy. You can achieve this by segmenting your audience into different groups and then sending each group a variation of the same email.
Differences in the content of these messages often include phrasing, headlines, and the type of promotional offer. Additionally, each group that you divide into should be an accurate representation of your target demographics.
For instance, let's assume that you want to determine the ideal headline for a promotional email. It wouldn't make sense to separate your audience into groups of males and females if you're looking for a general opinion. Email automation software is also able to provide predictive analytics.
This analyzes the type of strategies that you've used in the past as well as their performance in order to provide recommendations for the future. Under the right circumstances, this is one of the most significant attributes so you can take advantage of and has the potential to save your company a large amount of time in the future.
Focus on Other Core Obligations
As previously mentioned, email marketing in the past with something that had not been properly optimized. This means that it took more time on average to complete, especially if businesses were looking to send a large volume of emails during a short period of time.
Through proper use of automation, however, you can allow your team to focus on their role's primary responsibilities instead of devoting unnecessary time toward email marketing. In fact, email marketing often requires very little human interaction at all under the right circumstances.
It also allows you to plan your email strategy more comprehensively, as the core decisions will be made and implemented at the beginning of the process. As you might expect, automation will also ensure that you adhere to any necessary timelines while your campaign is ongoing.
It also has the benefit of drastically reducing the potential for errors. For instance, having a team of employees work on and manage a non-automated email campaign has a high potential for providing support results. This can damage your brand's reputation and cause you to lose even more time as these errors are resolved.
Reduced Overall Cost
Without automation, you're forced to develop a sales strategy that incorporates sending out cold emails. While cold calls have a proven track record when utilized by high-level sales teams in a large handful of industries, cold emails do not.
In fact, it's highly likely that your message will end up in the user's trash or even spam folder if they have never heard of your brand before. Unfortunately, this is even true and situations where the user has heard of the brand that has expressed interest in its products or services.
You also run the risk of shedding a negative light on your company, as this type of contact can be viewed as invasive.
Generally, your business will expend far more money than it should to support a sales team that works in this manner. On average, you also need a far higher number of employees and he would if you were extensively using automation for this responsibility.
These employees would also require a significant amount of sales experience in order to interact with cold leads effectively. When using automation software properly, though, even marketing employees with a basic level of experience can effectively manage your business's email campaigns.
The money that you save through the use of email automation software can then be reinvested into your business. This can easily allow you to scale far sooner than expected or drastically reduce your companies ongoing costs in order to give you more financial flexibility.
When combined with the increased ROI that email marketing automation can provide, you may find that your company's performance experience a drastic spike after you implement this strategy.
Greater Insight into Your Audience
In order to target your audience as effectively as possible, you'll need to have a comprehensive understanding of various attributes. These typically include:
- Hobbies/interests
- Annual income
- Primary language
- Geographic location/time zone
Otherwise, you'll likely find it difficult to achieve the results that you desire for your company through your campaign. Fortunately, learning more about your audience is relatively easy when you use email marketing automation on a regular basis.
The aforementioned audience segmentation process is key and making certain email campaigns as effective as possible. In this scenario, though, you want to segment your audience based on their established interests and mindset.
To elaborate, you might find that your female audience members or more likely to make certain purchases than your male demographic is. They might also make a higher number of purchases during certain times of the year, such as around holidays.
With this information in mind, you will be able to target them more effectively in the future. In this particular scenario, you could craft your marketing emails in a way that is more appealing to a female audience and also send more promotional emails to female users during holiday seasons.
Of course, the attributes that you focus on will depend highly on your industry, the product or service you offer, etc. But, taking advantage of insight into your audience's behavior is something that every business should capitalize on.
How Can I Incorporate Email Automation into My Company?
Although email automation kissing like a convoluted process, it's relatively straightforward when you break it down step-by-step.
As with any other business endeavor, you'll need to establish a thorough plan that outlines your intended goals. Email marketing is no different, and planning is an expensive part of the process when it comes to using automation effectively.
During the planning stage, it's also important to figure out what type of triggers you are looking to incorporate. These are scenarios in which your audience will automatically receive an email from your brand.
In general, this could include situations is like when a customer signs up for a free email newsletter, when they purchase a product, or when they have not interacted with your brand for a certain period of time.
After you've established the targets that you'd like to hear, you'll then need to choose the type of automation that is ideal for your company. Some software is more comprehensive than others, and your needs may be different than what a particular program is able to offer.
For example, enterprise-level marketing automation is ideal for larger companies that need a high amount of insight into their performance analytics. Mid-level software provides similar utility but on a lesser scale, making it more ideal for small businesses.
From here, you can configure your email automation workflow and establish the exact instances when your automation software will come into play. This will be completed before you ever send out your first company email, meaning you'll already have everything set in place before the campaign begins.
Afterward, all that you'll need to do is keep track of your analytics in order to determine key information, such as how effective a particular headline is Or how often a certain email triggers activating.
Using Email Automation Can Seem Complicated
But the above information will make the process far smoother. From here, you’ll be able to ensure that you use email automation as effectively as possible and scale your businesses much sooner than you anticipated.
Want to learn more about what we have to offer? Feel free to reach out to us today and see how we can help.