According to Neil Patel, Email Marketing Automation can be defined as sending out emails to your customers and prospects automatically based on a schedule, or triggers you define.
It allows you to create personalized messages for your prospects and customers and send them tailored content they want to read. Imagine the amount of time that goes in drafting all such emails for your customers, but you can utilize that time in doing something more important by creating an automated email which can be sent to customers when they meet the triggers defined by you.
Most of the popular email automation tools allow you to create your highly segmented email list which you would have identified based on customer’s behavior, preferences, and past sales records.
Imagine you are a small business and you have to work on several other things so you create the initial content and let these campaigns run in the background taking the repetitive tasks off your plate and giving you ample time to focus on other critical things.
If you haven’t tried email automation yet then you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities, and if you are not convinced how important is email automation, we are about to give you some strong reasons for your business to incorporate email automation into your marketing strategy:
You can create a bigger impact by segmenting your target audiences
You can divide your customers or database into different groups based on their demographics, interests and purchase behavior and tailor messages best suited for them. This will make sure that they receive only relevant communication resulting in better engagement
You can sync your emails with customer buying cycle
If a customer has purchased a product from you and you know that the product is going to last for a period of 6 weeks then you can automate emails to be sent to that particular customer right before completion of those 6 weeks reminding them to restock.
It is cost-effective
Even though many people feel that social media is likely to be the cheapest mode of marketing as it is free of charge for users, that’s not the case. Marketing on Facebook or Instagram can cost rather more than expected.
On the other hand, email marketing costs fairly minimal. You may have to hire a resource to create email content or pay to email automation services but still its the most cost-effective way to reach your target audiences, especially for small businesses.
You can reach more mobile customers
We are in the age of smartphones and the number of consumers using mobile devices is increasing day by day. Keeping that in mind businesses need to optimize their content for mobile users to remain competitive in the digital market.
With more than 70% of emails being checked on mobile phones, it’s an opportunity for brands to reach out and engage with customers in real time.
Automation saves you precious time
By using the email automation tools you make sure that right mail is sent to the right person at the right time and that too without having to spend too much time and effort in recreating each mail for every new customer you add to your list. As a small business, this is nothing but a blessing as you can take out more time to invest in growing your business.
You can easily measure your email marketing efforts
Email marketing metrics are easy to track and measure and provides you the insight into your email campaign. It empowers you to see which users opened your emails, if they clicked the link or if they took the desired action. You can also see which users unsubscribed after opening your email. All this will help you in analyzing and improving your digital strategy.
Nurture your Leads
Business is a relationship. It’s a relationship between the customer and vendor. Relationships are based on a number of factors – relevance and specificity being a massive aspect of building strong associations and relationships.
Email workflows are designed to nurture your leads.
Many customers have an internal buying strategy (conscious or subconscious) which means that they do not necessarily want to be contacted by a salesperson almost immediately after they’ve downloaded your free PDF lead magnet – they want, and need, to be nurtured in the process.
Email automation allows you to do just that. By sending engaging, relevant, specific information that helps the contact learn more about your business and service, meaning they become more receptive when they are approached by your sales team or offer.
Sales Team Benefits – Warmer Prospects
Reviewing statistics from email campaigns, sales team members can see exactly what information a prospect has read, clicked, engaged with and so on. This means that the prospect is not ‘cold’ but ‘warm’ and the sales teams have a greater understanding of the potential customers interests, aspirations, goals, and thought process. There’s a higher chance the lead will be interested by what your business has to offer.
Certain CRMs (customer relationship management) tools have integrated systems that trigger internal email notifications when a prospect takes certain actions (such as clicking on a link, filling in a form, or opening a certain email). This allows your sales team to take appropriate and relevant action.
Increased Brand Awareness
By sending out engaging, interesting content of value that is specific and relevant, the customer is already building a relationship with your brand and identity – all on auto pilot. This is pivotal for the moment when a sales agent makes contact, or, and offer is sent. The customer is aware, receptive and engaged all on autopilot. Your pre-set campaigns have built your brand relevance and awareness without you having to lift a finger.
Personalization
With most email automation workflow technology you can get really personal. This means that the data gathered from your prospects digital footprint, you can target very specifically and personalize everything. Things such as first name and location, business and so on can all be dynamically generated in your email responses to create the illusion that somebody on your team has hand crafted your email responses personally for the prospect. This is vital, since humans like to buy off people, and they’ll base that purchasing decision on their relationship with the people they interact with over a faceless entity any day. Getting personal in email automation adds a further layer of relationship strengthening.
Personalization has been shown to increase both open rates and click through rates.
These are just a few of the benefits of why it’s a must to use email marketing automation as one of your marketing strategies. It presents a great opportunity with businesses of all sizes to reach their target market and improve visibility.
It’s the simplest and an impactful method that can drive traffic to your website and increase conversions. Start using it right from today, the more time you will spend learning, testing and improving your campaign, the more benefits you extract in the future.
