With more than 34% of the world population using email every day, it is undoubtedly one of the most effective methods of communication. It is for this reason, that many marketers consider it to be a powerful medium to reach their target audience.
Irrespective of the size and type of business, email marketing presents a company with a great opportunity to grow and connect with its target market. Including email marketing in the business plan allows companies to enhance visibility, engage with prospects and convert them into leads.
Although email is an effective marketing communication method, reaching out to each of the customers manually can be tedious. But automating the entire process makes it significantly easier and increases operational efficiency. This blog is an email automation guide that will cover important topics related to the process.
What is Email Automation?
Email automation allows businesses to send emails in real-time. It is used for a variety of marketing purposes. Whether it is informing the audience about a new product launch, updating them with the latest blogs or gathering customer feedback, email automation enables businesses to stay in touch with their audience effectively. Marketers consider it a time-saving process that strengthens customer engagement, loyalty and retention.
How Does Email Automation Work?
According to a study by Radicati Group, about 196 billion emails are sent daily, among which 109 billion are business or professional emails. The immense popularity of email paved the way for its automation. Though every email automation tool functions differently, the fundamentals remain the same. They usually follow a similar process:
- To start off, one should create a form section on their website so that the people visiting the website can fill out the form.
- Once the forms are filled out, the individual is automatically added to the email marketing database.
- Now, marketers can segment the audience based on their geographical, demographic or psychographic information.
- After segmentation, marketers start creating email campaigns. They schedule emails that trigger the interest of the selected target audience.
- Once the emails are set, the audience receives emails according to the conditions set by the marketer.
Email Automation Best Practices
Consumers today are smart and do not entertain any kind of irrelevant communication. With the advancement of technology, present-day marketers are well-equipped with email marketing tools that can make their efforts pertinent and appealing. Here are a few email automation best practices that marketers can incorporate into their strategy to make it most effective.
- Whenever an individual subscribes to a newsletter or fills out a contact form, the organization should always send that person a welcome or confirmation email. This step reassures the subscriber about their successful connection with the company.
- Most emails are opened within 24 hours. So, to reach the contacts effectively, organizations must focus on the time zone of their contacts before sending emails.
- To improve the click-through rates of the emails and increase the overall engagement, businesses must consider sending personalized emails. However, to achieve the same, they must segment their email list according to their interests, behaviour, locations, purchase pattern and so on.
- The effectiveness of email automation also depends on the quality of the email list. For the success of a marketing campaign, it is important to send emails only to relevant contacts.
- Constantly approaching contacts to make a purchase can appear to be intrusive and appear as spam. To make the campaign engaging, share valuable information that creates an interest in them.
- Test the email before sending it to the entire email list. This allows you to find any broken links, irrelevant tags and improve content before the email is sent.
How to Get Started with Email Automation
Now that the best practices of email automation have been identified, it’s time to get started. Here is a guide to begin:
- To make the most out of email marketing, it is imperative to choose the appropriate platform. Apart from email creation, the right platform helps manage the contact lists and track the campaign’s success.
- Consider adding online sign-up forms to your website or social media to encourage a new customer base. The main motive of email marketing is to nurture customer relationships. Connecting with a small list of quality customers is way more impactful than it appears to be.
- A welcome email is very important as it creates the first impression of a company to its customers. The email should deliver value to the audience and be clear about what the user can expect to see from the company in the future.
- Organizations must look for email templates that are neat and eye-catching. With a large number of audiences who access emails through their mobile phones, businesses should be particular about choosing responsive templates. An ideal template should contain the brand’s logo, signature colour and business information so that customers can recognize the brand easily.
- The most important part of an email is its content. To increase the conversion rate, the content should be relevant and easy to understand. Good email content consists of an attractive headline, an informative message and a call to action.
- Sending the email is not the end of the campaign. To understand a campaign’s success and to improve it for the future, it is essential to track results. Some of the different metrics to track campaign results are: open rate, unsubscribe rate, click-through rate and so on. Investing time in analyzing the automation process allows a business to come up with other innovative tactics to bolster growth.
Best Email Automation Tools
Businesses that use automation software for email marketing generate twice the traffic and leads in comparison to those who use the same traditional method of broadcasting. Email marketing automation is a necessity for present-day businesses. These tools not only make your email operation easy and effective but also saves you a significant amount of time and money. With so many email automation tools in the market, it is truly tough to pick the one which is most effective. Here is the list of tools that can assist businesses in email automation best practices:
- MailChimp
- Hubspot
- Sendinblue
- ConvertKit
- Drip
Each of the platforms mentioned above is great for email automation and often provides free trials, to start with. Using any of these platforms will allow you to automate your email process and continue to track and analyze results. The use of these automated tools helps in increasing engagement by allowing the user to tailor the email according to the audience’s need. If your business is interested in automating your email process, any of these platforms is a great start.
