Are you among those who still believe that automation is mainly about gleaming robots on factory floors?
If so then I feel pity for you as you know nothing about some amazing stuff happening around. Have you heard about some of the stunning email automation solutions?
If no, it’s well worth automating at least part of your emailing process. Let me tell you why?
Why Email Automation Tools & Strategies are so Important?
Numbers cannot speak for themselves, but that doesn’t mean they cannot convey well. I mean automated email messages have a 5% higher open rate and 152% more click-through than standard messaging.
60% of marketers choose automation as one of the three most important attributes of their email technology solutions. Quite interesting it is! But that certainly doesn’t mean you have to do nothing. You also require putting specific effort; I would rather say some of the smartest efforts.
There is no denying the fact that competition is heating up with each passing moment. And with so many unanswered questions, you may be concerned as to what will happen next.
So what the best move is? Go for tried and tested methods especially when battling it out for, email campaigns, click to tweets, conversion rates, search engine optimization, and content creation. Trust me, it’s an entirely new world and takes a lot of your effort.
Before you let any creep occupy your mind, let me show you how this can be done!
Strategize well
According to several sources, 64% of marketing professionals consider an overarching strategy to be the most crucial aspect of any campaign. So if you are thinking about going near your automation program before working out on any serious strategies; it will turn out to be the wrong move! Go step by step!
Think upon overall goals. Have you wondered what do you expect to achieve with this campaign in particular? Do you wish your visitors to sign up, again and again, to drive up the web traffic or do you want to convert browsers into paying customers?
Defining or setting your goal in prior will always keep you focused and relevant.
Are the outcomes measurable- Nebulous, vague, ill-defined outcomes are pretty hard to measure which ultimately results in creating a disaster. So what you can do is pin down a few desirable outcomes which can be easily measured through the data.
Customers- Last but certainly not the least, how can anyone not think about their end customers. The more close you try to tailor your campaigns to them the more chances to succeed. Have a get-going attitude and think about how you can divide your customer base into tailored segments.
By doing this, you will successfully able to target them with content relevant to their own contexts, interests, and personalized customer journeys.
Data Usage
Gathering data is pretty much easy these days and when it comes to automation; it’s already data-driven. The “bot” automatically uses data types as triggers for launching new actions.
So make sure you work out on the “triggers” and see whether they are most relevant for your campaign as well as customers or not. You can also direct your automation to the appropriate reaction. For example, think of having a sign-up or an automated welcome email or a re-engagement email.
It may quite interest you to know that the beauty of these automated
systems is that it can juggle multiple customer paths. Of course, this certainly depends on how tightly you’ve segmented your audience. If you are smart enough, I am pretty sure you will take advantage of this stupendous multi-tasking skill. Although it is not so handy, it definitely saves you from a lot of headaches.
Remember, to feed your automation the right data in the right way. Dig in deep when it comes to data and line up with customer email templates, reactions, and so on. However, there are a couple of factors worth taking into account such as:
Data Hygiene– Data usage is something that has to be done carefully or else it becomes easy to create a huge mess when dealing with automation software. For example, syncing your CRM database; doing such simple action with your software can leave you with piles of duplicate data.
This cannot be noticed easily until some weird analysis results start coming in. So, you have to be very careful! All you have to do is keep your data neat, standardized, and well-sorted.
Data in context– As I said before, using the right data at the right time.
However, here you need experience I mean you will never get to know what or when these are used unless you’ve deeply considered your customers’ contexts.
Track down the customer’s journey in detail; so that you can set up data triggers at appropriate points. This will nurture your customers along the path to purchase.
Opt-in Opportunities
With the dawn of 2019, businesses have started expanding their frame of
reference. With the advent of voice technologies like Siri, Alexa we can now reach audiences beyond imagination. Accessible and format-friendly emails are going to gain momentum in the near future.
Also, consider what graphics like emoji sound instead of flat HTML speak or the implications of your emails being overheard at both ‘ends’ of the equation.
No matter how much you deny the fact, data is still the king! With more and
more people having opt-in opportunities; one can receive emails easily. Just make sure they are encouraging people to entrust and provide valuable data.
Make sure your opt-ins are:
- Prominent
- Easy to undertake
- Don’t ask any sensitive information
Completely transparent
At last, nail it down with these marketing tools!
GetResponse
The pioneer of an email campaign and email marketing service industry. If you wish to conduct webinars or create landing pages, track visitors behavior, review website analytics, edit images, etc the tool can provide a great help!
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is for those who wish to understand what type of content will work best for their business. Broken down individually, straightforward results you can see how each piece of content is performing on each page.
Google Analytics
This one is my favorite from day one! It helps you to figure out more about your visitors and target audience. For instance, what type of keywords are driving the most traffic to your website or how much role social media plays in your success, which pages are most popular and so forth.
Wrapping Up on Email Marketing Automation
It’s time to wrap up the post! I hope I’m able to make a successful Email
Marketing Strategies that generate leads and ensure conversions.
Success and failure will always be part and parcel of your journey but to avoid trouble and serve your customers for many years to come; now it’s time to take adequate action!
This article is written by Charles Richard. A Business Analyst by day and a writer at night, Charles like to write on emerging technologies. Currently, working at Tatvasoft which is a leading software development company in London.