Let’s face it, marketing can be incredibly resource-intensive. With digital marketing, there are numerous platforms to manage, content to create, and measuring, monitoring and tracking to do. Part of the digital marketing function is the mailing platform, where brands generate and send out emails regularly to their database to convert leads.
But, over the years, email automation has emerged and made it easier for companies globally to streamline the whole process. So, with this in mind, we thought that we would take a look at why companies should invest in email automation. We unpacked the benefits and worked out how easy it is to integrate it into your business.
It’s a Simple Way to Streamline the Email Process
The first thing that needs to be said is that email automation is what it sounds like. It is an easy way to shorten the length of time it takes to create and send mass emails to your database.
With these tools, you can easily create emails, set up your databases, and send them to thousands of contacts simultaneously. You will be able to create email templates to easily be duplicated and measure, manage and track the success of each email.
There are various email automation tools that you can choose from. Look at your budget, your unique requirements and the size of your database before making your final decision. There are a number of different tools to choose from, so weigh up your options carefully.
It Increases your Number of Leads and Keeps them Engaged
Lead generation is absolutely crucial for successful businesses. By using email automation, you are able to set up a campaign that drip feeds a series of emails into your subscribers’ inboxes. This allows you to keep your company at the top of your customers’ minds at all times but is staggered enough not to annoy them.
It is important to be mindful of your content and campaigns; your customers are likely to unsubscribe with repeated, stale emails so get creative with your emails.
Your campaigns should be structured as follows:
- An initial email invitation to a targeted list of contacts to introduce your business, products and services and request them to subscribe.
- A thank you to those who did subscribe;
- A follow up to those who did not subscribe;
- An email with a special offer or incentive to convert;
- Confirmation and a thank-you to those who accepted the offer.
You Can Boost Sales
Email automation helps your sales teams get those conversions and sales in. What is great about email automation is that you are actually able to plan everything in advance.
You can plan out content at the beginning of the month to regularly go out to your subscribers. Is Mother’s Day falling this month? You can pre-plan and schedule an email in advance for this?
Thank-yous, follow-up, and all drip campaign emails can be pre-created and scheduled to send automatically without you having to do it. Not only does this take hours out of your day, but it lowers the risk of mistakes and emails not being sent.
You are also able to keep your brand top of mind at all times. Emails are one of the highest converting types of campaigns and are worth the ROI.
You Can Reach Even More Targeted Audiences with Segmentation
One of the best parts of email automation is that you are able to divide your customers up into their specific segments.
So, if there are certain customers that are interested in certain products, or have similar demographics to others, you are able to create a certain list for them and only send content relevant to them.
This means that they are not being bombarded with content that is not relevant to them but means possibly increasing your conversion rate. Say, for example, you are a fashion retailer. You could target certain customers based on their demographics, or based on their previous shopping patterns.
Have they bought something similar before? Have they clicked on a certain product and left it in the cart for a while? You can use all of this information to carefully create a campaign to bring them back to the store and convert.
The Bottom Line
Not only do these email automation tools allow you to easily create and manage your campaigns, but you are also able to measure their success. Each platform provides you with metrics and stats on the open rates, the click-through rates and how the emails have converted. With this information, you are able to create future campaigns and content to convert your customers and have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.