Email marketing is a great way for businesses to gather new leads and inform their current customers about new updates. For this to be done successfully, businesses must make sure their emails are relevant and they are reaching the right people at the right time. A great way to ensure this is to implement a form of email automation.
What is Email Automation?
In simple terms, email automation allows a company to automatically send customizable messages to their subscribers based on a set of predefined criteria. This criteria could include booking an appointment, completing a purchase, monthly/weekly company updates, payment reminders, and more. Email automation allows a business to send automated messages based off a conditional statement of “if this happens, then that will happen” which allows a business to ensure no customer slips through the cracks.
Advantages of Using Email Automation:
Here are the main advantages of using email automation:
- Allows for a Personal Touch: A nice feature of using automated emails is that it allows you to insert a customer’s name and other details into the message, rather then addressing the customer generically. Most automation platforms come with predefined formulas that you can choose from that will automatically insert whatever criteria you would like to include in the email. This allows for a more personal feel which is more likely to increase the chances that your customer will be more receptive to your marketing messages. Experian Marketing Services stated that personalized promotional emails are 29% more likely to be opened compare to standard, non-personalized emails. Also, consumers were found to be 25% more likely to engage with the personalized, triggered email compared to those that were not.
- Helps Segment Contacts: Email automation helps your business to better segment your audience based on both demographics and psychographics. For example, if you sell both Windows and Apple products, you will be able to specifically send emails to either group with a specific message pertaining to which product they were interested in. Segmenting your audience helps to ensure that they will only receive material relevant to what they are interested in, and email automation allows you to categorize these contacts with the same interests into groups to receive the same emails. Doing this helps to keep the customers engaged and reduces the probability of them unsubscribing or moving you to their spam folder.
- Improves Productivity: Implementing email automation will free up some of your marketing team’s time as they won’t have to spend as much time compiling email lists and scheduling email campaigns. The automation features works based off a system of opt-in’s and triggers that will automatically enter the customer into a pre-made email campaign based on where they entered from.
- Helps Retain Existing Customers: It is usually cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new one and automated emails help keep these customers engaged. You can keep them engaged by sending promotional emails, feedback requests, or different kinds of rewards via email.
When implemented properly, email automation can be a powerful marketing tool that frees up your team to do what they do best. If you want to learn more about email automation, get in touch today.