What is Email Automation? All you need to know!

We have already identified things such as email marketing stress and the anxiety associated with hitting “send” on an email. However, if you plan properly, you can avoid these two evils. 

As we mentioned in previous blogs, email marketing is much more than just putting a few words together and pitching to a prospect - it is a very succinct form of content marketing and requires considerable effort. 

Therefore, once you have your campaign in place, you need to automate it. There is no time to manually do these tasks when you have so much more to do pertaining to content marketing. According to Mailchimp, email automation helps reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time, without doing all the work every time. You simply choose a rule against which you assign an email - a trigger. 

For example, when a prospect signs up, they receive a welcome email, when they add something to their cart, they receive a confirmation message, etc. All of this is automated, through email automation. 

Therefore, you don’t feel anxiety every time you hit “send”. You craft an email once and it is sent to all relevant prospects based on their actions. 

Here is how email automation makes work easier for email marketers. 

Benefits of Email Automation

1. Save time for more important tasks

This may sound basic but this can’t be emphasised enough. Your marketing team has so much more to do than send out a batch of emails every day. Creating content, putting the campaign in sequence, drafting and editing emails, adding images and media, etc is more than enough to deal with. 

Automation allows you to make the most of your marketing team’s time by reducing repetitive tasks and allowing for more productivity. 

Mailchimp reports that 59% of marketers in a study reported that they were able to save six hours every week by eliminating the repetitive tasks in their list. Automation can help make everything more effective with sufficient focus on things that matter and require human attention. 

2. Personalization can help build relationships

No one wants to be sent generic emails that aren’t applicable to them with a salesy message. When a prospect is sent an email relevant to the action they performed last on a website or platform, the message automatically becomes more relevant and useful. 

This is called a targeted email and your emails can also include custom fields where you can enter the prospect’s details such as name, the action they performed, next steps, preferences, etc. With email automation, your message becomes more personalized as it is sent after your prospect performs a certain action. Therefore, the message helps them move further in the buyer journey. 

3. Ensure customer retention

Outboundengine mentions that acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Therefore, a 5% increase in customer retention can provide a 25-90% increase in profitability. So retaining customers should be at the top of the priority list. 

However, you may not remember to craft those emails when the time comes. Automation can help send emails to your existing customers at the right time when you create the campaign beforehand. Your existing customers get an email from you after every two weeks or so and you remain top of mind. 

It is definitely a good idea to remain in touch with current customers at least once a month or every two weeks. These are just some of the benefits of automated email marketing. Now, let’s explore what else you can do with email automation. 

Features of Email Automation

1. Tracking and editing

Email marketing is mainly about consumer behaviour. Your emails need to track behaviour and then respond accordingly. Email automation gives you information about the following factors. 

• Open rates and who opened your email

• Click-through rates and who clicked what

• Time spent on your website after being directed there through email

• Purchases and things added to cart

• Discount offers availed, etc. 

You can use all of this information to edit and tailor future messaging and make your email automation campaigns more effective. 

2. Execute drip campaigns

Drip campaigns require you to use an email platform that assists in automation. Automatic messages are those pertaining to a certain action and drip campaigns are email automation campaigns that are sent to prospects over a period of time. 

For example, prospects are sent an email once every 3-4 days giving them new information about a product/service they are interested in or giving them a discount offer. You can also send blogs, guides, or a newsletter through email. 

3. Timely give a nudge with a promo code 

Once you are able to keep track of your prospect’s actions, you can determine when they need a little push to finish their purchase. For example, if your prospect abandons cart when they see shipping charges, etc. you can offer a promo code or a discount via email to help them finish the purchase. 

Therefore, the information that email automation provides helps you plan your next move. 

According to ConvinceandConvert, 7 out of 10 people in their study claimed to have used a discount they were emailed within the last week - this solidifies evidence for the effectiveness of email marketing. 

Now, how do you choose an email platform for automated email campaigns? You have many options such as Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Hubspot, etc. You need to choose the one which matches your requirements. 

Here is what you have to look out for.

Choosing an email platform

1. Integration

Again, time is of the essence. You can’t manually update your email lists so you need an email platform that will easily integrate with your other email marketing tools such as your CRM and will automatically update your mailing list when a customer is added or when someone unsubscribes etc. 

Therefore, when you are choosing an email platform, see which ones integrate seamlessly with the tools you are already using including your website so you can track visitor behavior. 

2. Pricing plans

Check out pricing plans based on the number of emails you plan to send. If you have a large customer base and several campaigns, you would want to choose a platform that offers a cost-effective package for bulk emails. 

There are different types of plans including monthly subscriptions, pay-as-you-go, and free versions for smaller businesses with basic features. Figure out which plan you need and determine the email platform that offers the best package accordingly. 

3. Ease-of-use

Everyone loves their comfort zone - and there is nothing wrong with that. With so much going on in your business, there is no need to challenge yourself with a difficult UI in an email platform. Explore different options to see which email platform has the most templates, technological features such as A/B testing, segmentation, etc. 

Look at how easy it is to create a landing page. Are the analytics reports thorough? Do you understand them? Is it easy to draw conclusions from them? Choose an email marketing platform that is easiest and most convenient to use while also accounting for the other factors listed above. 

There, that gives you a comprehensive round up of what you need to know about email automation and we can continue the conversation on how to automate email in future posts. Once you have your email domain, warm it up with GoCustomer for a higher chance of landing in the Priority Inbox, and then choose an email marketing tool to begin email automation - create your campaigns and hit send! 

Good luck!