Any marketer would swear by the benefits of and the power of email marketing. Marry that with automated triggered email campaigns, and you will be witnessing crazy engagement rates and conversions while you focus on other aspects of your business, with the email campaign doing the work for you and saving you tons of time. In the following text, we will be decoding the basics and benefits of automated emails and tips to set up impressive automatic email marketing campaigns that get the job done and rake in the moolah while you sip on your Tim Hortons.
Let’s get cracking!
Presenting some email automation data so that you don’t need to do the math and get down straight to curating awesome, compelling content for your emails!
- 65% of users employ automation pipelines and workflows for email marketing.
- According to Ascend2 and Research Partners, in 2022, 55% of marketers switched bases to automated email marketing compared to 40% of marketers in 2021.
- In the Litmus 2021 State of Email report, “59% of marketers have made expanding automation a priority for their email program.”
- Another statistic from the same report shows that 82% of marketers employ automation to devise triggered emails.
- Automated emails perform way better than broadcast ones, with a click-through rate of a staggering 152%!!!
Now those are some drool-worthy numbers. So let’s hit the throttle and delve into the fundamentals of email marketing and tips to ace mail automation.
What is Automated Email, Understanding Its Use Cases, and When To Personalize
As the name suggests, an automated email refers to an email of a transactional or marketing nature that does not require anyone to actually hit the “send” button. Instead, triggered emails can be crafted in a bespoke automated mailing campaign according to the data of the segmented customer base molded to suit your unique goals.
App integrations work their magic when you desire to automate email marketing campaigns. Integrating your CRM with your email marketing automation app allows you to set up workflows to send behavior-triggered emails to the right person at the right time. This can free up time and space to focus on bettering your services rather than analyzing data and manually sending emails.
Let’s have a look at some of the email automation use cases.
- Welcome emails: When someone signs up to receive an email from your brand or downloads a free ebook, welcome them aboard with a personalized message and a coupon.
- Abandoned cart emails: A recent study observed that almost three-fourths of prospective shoppers leave the website without making a purchase. Now that’s close to 69.99%. This is a huge potential customer base that has seen value in your deliverables and might make a purchase when reminded or incentivized. This is where sending out well-timed emails can help people return to the cart and complete the purchase.
- Anniversary emails: When a customer completes a year of being associated with your brand as a valuable member, don’t forget to thank them for their contribution and send them virtual flowers and cakes by email.
- Subscription expiration notice emails: If a member’s subscription is due to lapse in a couple of weeks, let them know in advance so they can renew their subscription hassle-free in due time.
- Re-engagement and unsubscribing inactive users: People get busy or simply lose interest in receiving emails. To encourage re-engagement with emails from your brand, shoot a mail or two to know if you can do something differently or gamify the whole process by sending quizzes and coupons. Before unsubscribing inactive members from your mailing list, let them know it’s been a while since you have heard from them and if they would like a different cadence before you let go of them completely.
- Automated emails addressing customer complaints: When customers face issues with your product or service, they are likely looking for an instant and genuine resolution to the complaint. However, it is not possible to stay glued to your inbox 24 * 7 and answer each dissatisfied customer as and when they drop you an email. Thus, it makes sense to set up automated complaint acknowledgment emails to appease customers and let them know that their issue has been registered and that an official will contact them soon.
- Order-related emails: When a customer places an order with your brand, an order confirmation email adds the ribbon to the box and encourages the customer to engage further with the brand. Order confirmation emails have been known to generate higher RPEs than those of a promotional nature. The simple reason is human psychology; you are more likely to order from a brand that has already created a sense of trust in your mind. Similarly, order shipping, delivery, and product review emails engender better customer relations, thereby enhancing ROIs.
An effective email automation strategy relies heavily on building segmented email lists. This depends on user demographics such as gender, age, occupation, location, user engagement patterns, and their recent activities on your website and a detailed study of this ultimately helps enhance ROI on email marketing. With automation, personalization is possible to a certain extent. However, in certain use cases, such as reverting to a customer with a complaint with an intent to resolve their issue and a personalized follow-up after the automated email is highly recommended.
3 Best Practices To Nail Your Email Automation Game & Realize Awesome ROIs
Email marketing automation helps you deliver the right content and the perfect solutions to the targeted audience at the right time without worrying about going through the rigmarole of sending emails out manually. The beauty of this is when done correctly; your conversions grow simultaneously, and the return on your investment witnesses spectacular growth. When you employ the services of marketing automation specialists to address your audience with a personal and human touch, you automatically pave the way to better engagement and enhanced returns. Once you have your goals in place, along with segmented mailer lists, you are ready for the next part of the hustle. Let’s go!
1. Marry your goal actions with measurable micro conversions: The issue with most marketers is that in the quest for achieving KPIs, they tend to overlook the fact that the real deal lies in the micro details. It is easy to focus on macro KPIs such as click-through rates (CTRs), email open rates, etc. However, beyond a certain point, they cannot paint an exact picture of how your audiences interact with the email and thereby directly influence your ROIs. Here’s how you can fix that gap. Begin keeping tabs on the following metrics; revenue per recipient (RPR), revenue per email (RPE), and revenue per thousand emails (RPME). This shift in perspective moves the focus from quantity to the quality of the automated email campaign. This would require action on the following rubrics:
- Audience segmentation: If you run an eCommerce store and notice that a customer signs in from the kids’ section of the webshop, chances are high that they will be looking for children’s garments instead of those for other segments of the brand. You can send them spring discounts on new arrivals for children or blog links on how to dress up their young ones for the holiday season, etc. The point is to deliver the right value to the right segment of your audience. Also, according to Campaign Monitor, deploying segmented email campaign automation drives a mind-boggling 760% increase in revenue compared to a generic, one-size-fits-all approach.
- Set the right frequency for each recipient: The last thing you want is customers unsubscribing from your email list. Therefore, it is important to set the optimum frequency or cadence for the emails sent to each customer. This wise step will not only keep your customers engaged with your brand but also prevent your emails from getting spammed. Higher customer satisfaction translates into better ROIs!
- Creatively optimize your campaign: Test, test, and test some more to see what works and what doesn’t. Strategically carried out A/B tests will ultimately enhance the bottom line performance of each email campaign, thereby resulting in improved ROIs.
2. Hit the inboxes at the right time: You might have the best email content that screams value; however, if the timing is wrong, it could affect your ROIs. Time is money, and if you strike the iron when it is hot, you might just witness enhanced returns on investment. We recommend developing a deep understanding of your audiences’ mindset and schedule. The trick is to figure out when your recipients are most likely to read and not just open your emails. For instance, if you run a bar down the corporate street, chances are high that workers will be looking for a chilled beer around five or six on a Friday evening. Sending emails strategically around a fixed window on Friday might just serve them what they are looking for! Detailing is the name of the game here.
Another cool tip is to figure out the days and holidays that hold significance for your audience. For example, if you run a cake shop, start optimizing emails around Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Women’s Day, Boss’s Day, etc. Deliver the product or service your audience needs a tad before they actually need it, at a time when they are most likely to read your value-packed emails. This way, you bid adieu to the spam box and say hello to improved ROIs!
3. Personalize your email headers and preheaders for greater impact: Nobody likes to talk to a bot, and emails that serve just the right amount of personalized attention cut through the noise and reach the targetted eyeballs. For example, according to a study conducted by Experian, emails with personalized subject lines witness 29% better open rates than those with generic headers.
Summary
In summary, email automation is here to stay. If you prefer to have an expert look into it, try handing over the reins to professionals who can get it done for you in the perfect window so that you can focus on other aspects of your business.