Hello Readers
Welcome to chapter 9 of our free email marketing course where we have shared all the basics about email marketing, the role of email marketing in online business, how can you generate leads for your business, and more……..
If you are new to our email marketing course, here are the chapters that we have shared so far. Have a look!
1- How to get started with email marketing?
2 – How to create the email marketing list from scratch
3 – How to create a free email template without coding?
4 – How to measure the effectiveness of your email campaign?
5 – How To Use A/B Tests To Improve Your Email Campaigns?
6- How to generate leads with your email marketing campaign?
7- How to increase the conversion rates of your email marketing campaign?
8 – List of email marketing tools to optimize your email marketing campaigns
In this chapter of the email marketing course, we have shared
- What is email automation?
- How can you get started with your automated email marketing campaign?
- What are the benefits of email marketing automation in business?
- How to build an automated email marketing campaign?
- What are the best practices of any email marketing automation strategy?
Here we go!
Whenever we talk about Automation, the first picture came to our mind is robots, machines, etc. In other words, pretty much the opposite of humans.
So, what is Email Marketing Automation?
In the world of email marketing, automation is the ability to send and reply to emails automatically.
And,
Email marketing automation is the ability to send or reply to triggered emails to subscribers with relevant information as per your email campaign. It can be used for a variety of marketing campaigns, for example, welcome emails, End Of Season emails, etc.
Email Marketing technology helps to nurture more leads and add a personal touch by sending birthday greetings on time, or automated blog updates, etc. Email automation helps to make your email marketing campaign more personalized and efficient in every way.
How Does Email Marketing Automation Work?
Email Marketing Automation can help marketers as well as businessmen to create email workflows that automatically emails to subscribers once a certain trigger has been activated.
Examples of triggers for a B2B company are …
- If a website visitor views a landing page but doesn’t submit the form
- When a lead has downloaded several pieces of content but has not contacted the business directly
- If a potential client has started following the company’s social media accounts
For a B2C brand, triggers might be …
- When a website visitor has viewed several items but not added any to their cart
- If a consumer has placed items in their shopping cart but not purchased
- When a consumer makes a purchase
Email marketing automation just not only for prospective customers, but it can also help brands to retain their old customers as well. You can share new product launches as well as reminder emails to your existing as well as new prospects through the automated email marketing campaign.
There also are a few workflows that work well for both B2B and B2C businesses. Here are some examples:
Automated Welcome Emails:
Whenever a new customer or subscriber joins your newsletter or visits your website, you can send welcome emails through automated email campaigns welcoming your clients and stating about the company as well as services. It gives a great impression when you send beautiful emails just after subscribers show interest in your brand.
Feedback Request Emails:
With an automated email marketing campaign, you can send feedback emails asking for the product feedback they have recently used, the working of the new app, how was the shopping experience, and more. The feedback request email can be both positive as well as negative based on the kind of feedback you ask.
While your messaging will be different depending on which behavior triggered the feedback request, these emails are extremely valuable as they show your subscribers you care about your opinion and also give you the chance to see where you can improve.
Re-engagement Emails:
These types of emails help to reconnect with your existing clients or subscribers who haven’t shown any interest in some days. You can reschedule your emails (let’s say 90 days) to send your emails stating new discounts, the launch of products or blog updates etc to maintain the relationship with your prospects.
Thank you Emails:
Sending an order confirmation and shipping information is a must when someone has completed a purchase. Adding a thank you message to a fulfillment email is a great way to improve your customer experience and build a good impression. They are also a smart way to combat any potential buyer’s remorse, reassuring customers they made a wise choice.
Sale Countdown Emails:
Sale countdowns are the perfect email automation to create a sense of anticipation or urgency around your sale. You could count down to when the sale begins. Or, once the sale is on, count down the hours, minutes, and seconds left until customers miss out. Countdown timers are a visually engaging element to add to these emails that are sure to grab your customer’s attention.
Almost any action an individual takes when engaging with your brand can be tracked and utilized.
Why Should a marketer Use Email Marketing Automation?
There are five primary reasons every email marketer should use email marketing automation:
- Create highly segmented email lists that are automatically updated based on user data
- More quickly convert potential customers into actual customers
- More easily continue engaging with potential and existing customers
- Increase efficiency by automating the repetitive tasks associated with customer relationship management
- Improve engagement by delivering subscribers more relevant, personalized and timely messages
Some brands hesitate to use an automated form of an email campaign as they believe to give a personal touch to each and every email. Or, they may lack knowledge about automation.
But in reality, automation makes it easier for you to keep track of your customers’ activity. It gives more personalization to your email marketing campaigns and it’s more effective for the long run as well.
Why is an automated email marketing campaign important for any business?
Here are some great pointers for automating your email campaigns:
Show personal care to your audience
The best point of email marketing automation is that it gives the 24X7 advantage to stay in touch with your clients without any burden of manpower. As per campaign protocol, you can send relevant emails/replies on time.
For example, a subscriber has just joined for free services to have a free trial test of your product. With your regular updates and assistance, your same free subscriber can turn into paying customers.
Same is the case of e-commerce, if one has landed upon your website and joined your email newsletter. Your regular updates regarding sales or discounts can turn the same customer into paying one. As the sales and discounted emails will interest him/her and lead to the purchase of any item as well.
Save Time
Who doesn’t like to save time? When it comes to business emails, it’s not easy to update or rewrite each email and send it to the subscriber. if you feel like doing so, you may need the hell of manpower to complete just messages and replies. Automation helps to save your time in this case.
Rather than wasting time replying to each mail, it’s important to utilize the same time to design content for your upcoming email campaign or create more email marketing strategies for your business. After you build the automation it unfolds by itself and you can spend your time on other things.
All you need to do is monitor your campaigns time after time, analyze reports and review the emails that are not bringing the desired results. Don’t forget to optimize your campaigns by A/B testing.
Grow Your Revenue Faster
When you plan your email marketing strategy with automation, you can expect tremendous results in terms of revenue as well. Because when you will be seriously sending emails to your customers/subscribers, there will be high chances to increase your click as well as open rate.
By tracking your click-open through rates and other actions, marketers can analyze which are the most interesting campaigns so far and how much they have generated leads or sales.
Acquiring a new lead is more expensive than generating on your own. Also, with automation, you can encourage your existing customers to shop more. It is no surprise that most marketers are interested in upselling. This will get easier to do with a behavior-based automation series (history) which will suggest your existing, as well as new customers, buy more products.
For example, you may have seen how big e-commerce companies like eBay and Amazon are doing this by sending you similar products to the ones you already purchased. This is a great example of automation that is determined by the customer’s purchase history.
Organize Your Campaigns
The ideal way to start any content-centric campaign is by creating an email marketing calendar. With the organized calendar, you will be more sorted and can look your campaign at the bigger picture.
Automation is a great help for any planning enthusiast because it lets you stick to the plan even when you are busy doing other things. Just prepare and schedule the content and the campaign will work itself out.
Maintain Brand Personality
Email marketing helps in maintaining the channel of communication between the brand and its customers. With automation, these possibilities increase ten folds. Automation helps to draft better emails and act as a voice for your brand. It conveys a better message to the prospects and reinforces the brands’ values.
Measure Your Email Marketing Campaigns’ Results
Like a general email marketing campaign, automation also helps to have an overview of how many emails are opened? Which emails generated more leads? Which parts of the campaign can be improved through A/B testing? Etc.
Email marketing tools allow you to monitor who is opening what, how many emails are bounced, and track all email activity for Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).
If you have integrated your campaign with Google Analytics, you can analyze your data and see automatically where the leads come from, how they converted, etc.
Your email marketing campaign analytics can teach you about your subscribers’ behavior by showing the content they are most interested in. In other words, analytics lets you evaluate what content attracts people to your products or services, which converts them to leads, and what convinces them to buy.
Evaluate your marketing performance, adjust your future initiatives and reach your goals in a more cost-effective and time-saving way!
How to create automated emails?
After understanding the importance and usage of the automated email marketing campaign, it is necessary to know how to create an automated email marketing campaign. Therefore, we have decided to share the step by step guide on how to create automated emails.
Let’s take an example of one of the known email marketing tools, MailChimp and follow how to set up an automated email in MailChimp.
- After login, navigate to the Automation page and click the Create
- To choose the list that will receive the emails in your workflow, make the appropriate selection from the Which list do you want to use? drop-down menu. You’ll have the option to segment recipients later.
- Find the workflow type you’d like to use, and click Select. Available workflows display based on the list you’ve selected. To use one of the grayed-out workflows, your list needs to meet the indicated requirements.
- In the Setup step, fill out the Workflow configuration fields and choose your tracking options. These settings will be applied to all the emails in your workflow. You’ll configure each email’s settings later.
- Click the Send activity digest email checkbox to receive a daily email with reporting data for your workflow. Select Edit to choose which account users you want the digest email to send to.
- In the Trigger step, confirm or customize your trigger and segmentation options. Some triggers require more information from you, others are defaults based on the workflow type you chose on the List and Workflow step.
- During the Emails step, add and design emails, organize them in your workflow, and tell us when each email should send.
- Create a subject for your email and name it.
- Editor changes the template to how you want it to look.
- Design your email and add a photo if you like. Remember, make it simple now. You can always get fancy later!
- Add emails to your workflow and trigger the workflow to be sent out a certain number of days after you start.
- In the Confirm step, look over the Pre-delivery Checklist and test your emails if you haven’t already. Click Resolve or Edit to make changes.
- When you’re finished reviewing, click Start Workflow.
And you are ready to go!
If you have followed these steps, then You can send your first automatic email. Now you can start building a relationship with your customers quickly and make more sales authentically.
This is the end of chapter 9 where you have learned the importance of email automation, how it can help to create valuable relationships with your existing as well as potential customers and how to create your first automated email.
In the next chapter of our free email marketing course, you will learn the importance of mobile email marketing and how to optimize your emails for mobile devices?
Read More….
