When a customer opts into your database, sending them a “welcome” email message is a great way to start the relationship off right.
Would one of your customers benefit from some smart product recommendations based on items they’ve already bought? Send them an email about that too.
Don’t forget to also email all the customers who have left items in their e-commerce shopping carts, possibly by mistake, with a reminder to complete their purchase.
This is on top of the email messages you should be sending about new product and service launches, special promotions and discounts, a newsletter rounding up your latest blog posts and invitations to a special event.
Add it all up and there are a lot of emails you could be – and perhaps should be – sending out at any given moment.
The problem, of course, is lack of time. The hours spent developing, proofing, and setting up email blasts are all tasks on top of the other marketing work you and your team need to do.
Social media questions and comments can’t be ignored.
Digital ad campaigns need to be carefully managed.
If you’re planning even a short event, like a webinar, the workback schedule can become longer than your arm.
Then there is the need to block out time for analysis of your marketing efforts across all these channels, as well as time to strategize about ways to improve your overall performance.
Email automation software is the obvious solution. By setting up event-based triggers to send messages at the moment a customer should get one, you win back that time. When email marketing connects with customers, it also saves you money that would otherwise go towards finding new customers, because existing ones will spend more and remain loyal instead of churning.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have sometimes shied away from email automation based on a perception it’s more a solution for large enterprises. The truth is, companies of any size need to send a lot of email, and without errors, to the right customers and prospects.
The technology to support email automation is also easier to deploy and manage than ever before, empowering SMBs as well as larger entities in improving the way they communicate as a brand.
If you’re ready to reap the benefits of email automation as part of your marketing strategy, make sure you aim to take the following steps.
Personalize every single message
Automated email no longer means “mass email.” When you pair email automation with zero-party customer data and artificial intelligence (AI), for example, you can begin to develop variations of your message designed to appeal to specific needs and interests.
Beyond greeting the recipient by name, you can reference their most recent purchase with you, highlight complementary items or accessories, invite them to an unboxing event or draw their attention to service and support videos to get ahead of any issues. The more you personalize email, the more likely your customers are to open messages and pursue the next steps you want them to take.
Use efficiency to exceed customer expectations
When customers send a brand an email, they expect a response as soon as possible. Manual approaches don’t always make that possible, especially if you’re serving people across multiple geographies and time zones.
Event-based email automation is designed to ensure customers get near-instantaneous responses to a wide range of issues. This tells customers they can count on your brand to be there at the time of need, which builds trust and increases their propensity to become repeat buyers.
Reducing or eliminating manual email campaigns also improves your employee experience, obviously, because they can begin to shift their time away from administrative tasks and instead invest creative energy in strategies that enhance customer relationships.
Rather than loading every single email send, for instance, they might realize they’re serving an audience that would appreciate an email greeting on their birthday with a special offer. This is a way of going above and beyond what your customers might expect.
Build a better customer experience
Emails can be sent throughout the customer journey, from the moment someone discovers your brand to when they’re considering a purchase, and even long afterwards. To properly scale that kind of journey across an exponential number of customers without automation would be a full-time job for an entire team of people – and they still probably couldn’t do it without risking a lot of mistakes.
Remember that email automation is based on the idea of sending a message in response to customer behaviour, rather than sending at random. That means they’ll likely be expecting some kind of outreach, whether it’s a promo code for a purchase they’ve been weighing or a link to a blog post that will build their confidence in clicking a “buy” button.
A great customer experience is also about putting choice front and centre. Depending on what’s already in their inbox, for example, some customers might want to unsubscribe from certain notifications or get off a list altogether. Automation can help them manage their preferences to ensure they only receive the email messages they truly value.
Leverage insights and continuously improve
It’s not just a chore to upload email campaigns manually. Marketers have traditionally had to sift through a sea of tools to glean performance data on email campaigns including the open rate, bounce rate and other metrics. It’s also often been up to the marketer to figure out what it all means.
The best email automation platforms bring all the most relevant performance data together into a single view that helps guide future sends. You can begin to see the best times to schedule a campaign to particular customers, the ideal subject line to get them intrigued, and layout options that will increase conversions.
This makes email automation a foundation for far more comprehensive test-and-learn programs, where you can set specific goals around campaigns or points in the customer journey that need to be optimized. You’ll be able to track your progress towards those goals with every single send.
Email automation isn’t just an opportunity for SMBs. It’s increasingly becoming a marketing best practice that businesses of all sizes can’t afford to ignore.
