With all the options you have for digital marketing, email is still one of the most effective. There’s always a fad, but email done right is a sure return on investment. One statistic says the average ROI for email campaigns in the United States is around $44 for every $1 spent. That’s where email marketing automation comes in.
For email campaigns to be successful, messages must be timely, relevant, personal, and contextual. Unless you have only a handful of people to send email to, that gets time consuming. Automation helps you save time, connect with more people and make more money.
What Is Email Marketing Automation?
Sounds great if it works, you say, but what is it? Email marketing automation allows you to set up triggers, so people automatically receive an email from your business in response to where they are in their buying journey.
For example, if they subscribe to your newsletter, it automatically sends them a welcome email that expresses your appreciation and tells them what they can expect. They know they’ll start receiving the requested newsletter soon, and that you value their subscription.
You can also send messages when someone has a birthday or anniversary, which communicates your business sees them as an individual and celebrates the days that matter. Or, drop them a message when they leave items in their shopping cart so they remember what they abandoned and how much they wanted it.
Email marketing automation is so powerful because it’s based on the consumer. It’s not an impersonal message blasted out to faceless thousands. It’s something your brand sent just to them, based on what’s going on in their life. They’re more likely to open it and to take action based on the contents.
How Email Marketing Automation Saves Time
Most customers go through stages as they get to know your business and your products and services. At first, they’re researching you and getting to know what you stand for. They want to know if your values are like theirs and if your products and services are good. They’re looking for signs you’re trustworthy and that you will be there for them.
Then, hopefully, they become customers. They experience your brand, and they might have questions about how to get the most out of what you offer.
If they receive what they hoped and they’re delighted with both what they bought and your customer service, they become loyal to your brand. As that interaction continues, they stick around.
With email marketing automation, you create messages for each stage once and set up triggers. Then, you don’t have to wait around for something to happen or try to evaluate where the customer is and when to approach them. Email marketing happens on its own.
Email Marketing Automation Trigger Types
You can set up your email marketing automation to send at specific time intervals, based on user behavior or both. For example, maybe consumers subscribe to your email list to receive a series, something like “How to XYZ in 7 days.” You would schedule the email to send once a day for the first week, then follow up at different intervals.
Then, you could monitor their response to that series and respond in a way that’s behavior based. If they clicked on a product link, you might send them more information on the product in which they showed interest. If they place an order, you’ll follow up with an appreciation email, perhaps even a discount coupon for next time they shop.
You can still send them your standard newsletters and sales campaigns, but you also send content tailored to them.
5 Ways Marketing Automation Leads to Growth
Email marketing is only effective if people read it. Think how many messages you currently receive on any given day. There are probably at least half a dozen sources sending you content you signed up for, that you really meant to read, but you never have time. You leave them in your inbox, hoping you’ll get back to it, but you never do. That’s because those messages aren’t to you specifically, they’re just content.
Email marketing automation is so effective because it’s delivered at exactly the right time to the people currently seeking to interact. Here’s how that grows your business:
- Your business is more responsive to customer interests, creating loyalty and deepening engagement.
- Salespeople don’t have to respond immediately. Those leads receive automated nurturing.
- Your brand is more present to consumers, so there’s greater brand recognition.
- You’re able to improve your abandoned cart strategy and send targeted product recommendations for improved sales.
- Use email marketing automation to reach out to consumers at the end of a free trial to encourage them to become paying customers.
- Collect feedback at critical moments to improve your products and services.
- Contact users automatically to inform them their service or subscription is about to run out or it’s time for an appointment. You avoid losing revenue and they don’t have to keep up with expiration dates and deadlines.
- You can use reporting tools to create retargeting messages, ads and campaigns.
What is Retargeting?
One thing that drives business owners crazy is when they pour effort and dollars into reaching consumers through the noise and nurturing them through the sales process, the shopper adds items to their cart, then they suddenly disappear.
There are a number of reasons this might happen. Maybe they left to research a similar product from another vendor or your checkout process was too complicated. It’s also possible they went to get their credit card and got distracted by a family member.
Retargeting reaches out to remind them what they were doing. You can set up email marketing automation that contacts them half an hour or the next day later, shows them the items they were thinking about, and makes it easy to complete the purchase. Often the consumer will say, “Oh yeah, I really wanted that, let me finish checking out now.”
You can also use retargeting to reach window shoppers. Even if consumers don’t place items in their cart, they might indicate an interest by clicking on some of your products or services. When they navigate away, send automated emails that recommend similar products or provide additional information.
Brands put a lot of money, time and thought into creating free trial offers. Sometimes consumers sign up for a free trial or unpaid version, but they don’t use it. If they don’t try it out, they’re never going to know how great it is. Use retargeting to reach out to people who signed up to encourage them to put it to work for them. Or, if you see they got stuck somewhere along the way, reach out and offer to help.
How to Know Email Marketing Automation is Working
At Spade Design, everything we do is based on data. We believe if our clients trust us with their digital marketing, over time they should see data that indicates that investment is making them money. With email marketing automation, we gather data to look for key performance indicators that let us know how consumers respond. Then, we refine messages and triggers to get an even better response the next time around.
The result is a steady improvement in consumer response. Here’s some of the data we look at to see if email marketing automation is working.
- Delivery percentage – How many of the emails you sent actually arrived in subscribers’ inboxes?
- View rate – Of those, how many did subscribers look at in their preview pane?
- Open rate – When your subject line and what users see in the preview pane intrigues or connects, they actually click to open the email. That’s your open rate.
- Click-through-rate – Well written emails have a clear call to action and make it easy for readers to take that action. If you encouraged them to “learn more” or “buy now” and provided a link to do so, the click-through-rate tells you how many actually did.
- Conversions – If your call to action urged readers to request a quote, schedule an appointment or buy your widget, how many of them actually did so?
How to Get Email Marketing Automation
It’s simple, just give us a call or get in touch online. Call us at (888)412-3128 or fill out our online contact form to find out how easy it is to implement email marketing automation for your business.
