When it comes to marketing that gets results, no channel does it better than email. Even though it is one of the oldest communication channels around, email has had quite a solid renaissance as a marketing tool that delivers when it comes to ROI. In fact, according to research, email can result in ROIs of 4400%. That’s a whopping $44 for every $1 you spend. In order to get these amazing results, however, you need to move away from the traditional method of using spreadsheets and an email client to manually send emails. The ROI highlighted above is a result of email automation. This post will help you understand what email automation is and the benefits it brings to your business. We will also look at how email automation helps you improve workflows.
What is Email Automation?
Email automation refers to the use of technology to send automated emails to your subscribers. These automated emails are either triggered according to a prescribed time (drip email campaigns) or according to a user’s action (behavioral triggers). In order to automate your email campaigns, you need to invest in a good email marketing automation platform that can easily help you meet your email marketing goals.
5 Benefits of Email Automation You Just Can’t Ignore
Besides the amazing ROI, what other benefits do you get from email automation? Good question. Let’s look at 5 ways email automation helps you reach your goals.
1. Enables You to Personalize Your Emails
One of the biggest benefits of using email marketing software is that it enables you to personalize your emails. Yes, email personalization is a necessity in today’s cutthroat marketing climate. Source: Campaign Monitor Email personalization goes beyond using a subscriber’s first name. It mainly means sending relevant content to your subscribers. For example, the above email is relevant to parents.
Why does personalization matter?
Research conducted by Experian revealed that email personalization resulted in 6x higher transaction rates than regular email blasts.
2. Increases Your Efficiency
If you’ve ever tried sending an email with the same message to different recipients, you know how monotonous and time-consuming it can be. This is where automated email sending comes to the rescue. It helps make your email marketing more efficient and leaves you free to take care of matters that need your attention.
3. Makes Scaling Easy
Every business owner desires to grow his or her business. The question is if they can manage their customer relationships as easily as they did when the business was smaller. Without an email automation platform, marketing and lead nurturing become harder the more customers you have. This makes scaling difficult. With an email marketing platform, however, scaling your operations becomes easier as you can easily handle a bigger customer base efficiently.
4. Improves Customer Experience
Email automation just doesn’t benefit you as the business owner. It also helps your customers have a good experience with your business. This is important as your business can only go as far as your customers are willing to take it. Therefore, give your customers the best experience you can give them – automate your email marketing. One aspect of email automation that helps you give your customers a great experience is the fact that automation helps you target those that will find your content and products relevant. Because of this, it becomes easy to tailor-make customer journeys that they will enjoy. By making your customers happy, you increase your customer retention rates, thereby ensuring your business thrives into the future.
5. Boosts Your Revenue
For a business owner, this is probably the biggest reason to invest in an email marketing automation platform. Let me give you a few statistics to convince you of the impact email automation will have on your bottom line.
- According to DMA, more than 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, with 21% of email marketing revenue being attributed to automated email campaigns.
- Research conducted by Campaign Monitor revealed emails with personalized subject lines have a 26% higher chance of being opened.
- The same report by Campaign Monitor also revealed that segmented campaigns can increase revenue by up to 760%.
Those stats are definitely something you don’t want to ignore. These statistics prove that email automation is definitely worth the investment.
How Email Automation can Improve Your Workflow
Now that you know what email automation is and some of the benefits it brings to your business, let’s take a look at some of the specific ways email automation software can improve your workflow. First, let’s define what we mean by workflow. Email workflow refers to the series of automated emails you send out according to your predefined triggers. These are meant to take the customer on a journey that will result in them taking the desired action and thus fulfilling your goal for the campaign. Let’s take a look at some of the most common workflows and see how email automation helps you improve them.
The Welcome Email Workflow
The welcome email is the most common and widely used email workflow. Its purpose, contrary to popular belief, is not just to thank a subscriber for signing up. The welcome email is the most powerful email in your arsenal as it is the most read email sequence. You’re probably wondering why you need an email sequence to welcome a new subscriber, aren’t you? The reason is simple really. The purpose of a welcome email workflow is to:
- Introduce yourself
- Engage your new subscriber
- Build trust
- Prime them for a conversion
As you can see, you can’t do this in one email. That’s why your welcome email workflow should consist of about 3-5 emails. The first one should be sent immediately after a subscriber signs up, and then the others can be spaced 2-3 days apart. This is why automating your welcome email workflow is crucial. You have to time each email in the sequence well so that the sequence can have maximum impact. Here’s a great example of a welcome email that is highly effective: Source: Really Good Emails This email does more than just welcome subscribers, it immediately leads them to take further action with the bookshop’s products. It’s a welcome email that actually leads to immediate conversions. Depending on how your subscriber engages with this workflow, they are enrolled in another sequence that will take them further down your sales funnel.
2. Lead Nurturing
If your subscriber has had some positive interactions with your welcome series, your automation software should then enroll them in a lead nurturing workflow. The purpose of the lead nurturing workflow is to move your subscriber from the awareness stage of the customer journey to the interest stage. This is where you sell them on the benefits of your product or service – one email at a time. You don’t want to overwhelm your prospect with too much information so you will have to break this stage down into 3-5 emails. Executed well, the lead nurturing workflow should pique your prospects interest and lead them towards making a purchase. Source: Really Good Emails This email from Wynd is a fantastic example of a lead nurturing email. Besides the beautiful email design, it promises the subscriber a beautiful atmosphere in the home with the purifier’s many benefits. By informing and educating your prospect on your product or service, you better equip them with the knowledge they need to make an informed decision on whether to buy into you and your product or not.
3. New Customer Workflow
The customer journey doesn’t end with a conversion. After your prospect makes a purchase, there’s another workflow you need to enroll them in – the new customer workflow. The most common email in this workflow is the order confirmation and thank you email. Beyond thanking your customer for being a patron, you can send more emails spaced a few days apart. The purpose of this sequence is to keep your customers engaged so as to prime them for an upsell or cross-sell. A good way to do that is by requesting feedback, or by giving them tips on making the most of their recent purchase. Source: Really Good Emails By following up on a recent purchase, you’re showing customers you value them and not just the money they spent in your business. This will help turn them into loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
Cart Retrieval Workflow
Email automation is also a great way of recovering lost carts. At times, all your customer needs is a gentle reminder to finish off a transaction they had started. Moschino does this exceptionally well. Source: Really Good Emails The design of the email is as bold as the products they sell, improving its impact. More than that, this workflow has one major factor that makes it successful – it’s automated. Manually following up on each abandoned cart and sending out personalized emails is next to impossible. This is why you need email automation to make this workflow more effective.
Wrap Up
There are so many email workflows you as a marketer need to develop. Particularly if you’re short on manpower, you can’t succeed at your email marketing without email marketing software. This is because email automation software will help you:
- Makes your workflows more efficient
- Gives your customers an enjoyable email journey
- Saves you resources you would otherwise spend on hiring a larger team to take care of your email marketing
So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and
automate your email marketing and enjoy phenomenal growth without overburdening yourself.
