Email is still the best way to get your customers’ attention, and email automation makes marketing campaigns that much easier.
What is Email Automation?
The name of the game in marketing is not just to reach your audience, but to resonate with them and build long term relationships. To do that, you need to keep the conversation going, that is where email automation comes in. Email automation means sending out routine, targeted emails to specific customers based on a schedule when they are most likely to respond, such as right after a purchase or after browsing a particular product but not buying it.
What are the Benefits of Email Automation?
Seasoned marketing professionals realize that there are many benefits to automating the email process. Some of the most important benefits are:
1. Engaging with Your Audience
Personalize your message, and your customers are more likely to respond. Customizing their experience makes each customer feel special and appreciated.
2. Retain More Customers
Staying in touch with your existing customers is much easier than converting new leads into sales. Automated emails make it easy to keep in touch or reach out if a customer hasn’t purchased in a while.
3. Stretch Your Marketing Dollar Further
The more you can automate, the more you free up your hardworking marketing team to focus on other more critical tasks. Using email automation software that helps them do their jobs could also boost morale with your marketers.
4. Grow Your Audience
Email automation helps you to add new leads to your lists and streamline the process for welcoming new customers and pinging those who have gone dark.
5. Metrics to Gauge Where You Stand
Most CRM systems have built-in metrics that you can use to quickly gauge where you stand in terms of audience click-through, engagement, and responsiveness. These analytics can highlight emails that worked well and those that didn’t make the grade.
Email Automation Works Great for These Types of Communications with Your Customers
- Welcome emails.
- Lead generating emails.
- Customer retention emails.
- Abandoned cart follow-ups.
- Order confirmations.
- Discount offerings.
- New product promotions.
- Anniversary or birthday emails.
10 Easy Steps to Setup Email Automation in EngageBay
There are dozens of CRM programs on the market, and most of them include email automation tools built right in. EngageBay is one such program, and it’s super easy to set up an automated email campaign following the steps below:
We’ll assume you have already built your email list through opt-ins and other email address collection devices.
- Be sure to segment your audience into “lists” or buckets to make email automation easy. Some demographics to consider are: gender, income level, location, occupation, pain points, and where they are on the customer scale.
- Log into EngageBay and choose an automated email template.
- Use the email design tool with drag-and-drop technology to personalize the content, add images, links, and anything else you want.
- Don’t forget to add social media buttons and links.
- Select your target list/bucket of customers to email.
- Choose a schedule or event that triggers your email to send.
- Create an eye-catching subject line to get customers to open your email.
- Test your campaign to make sure it works the way you want.
- Save it and forget it!
- All the automation is done for you.
If you want to make changes later, log into your EngageBay account and edit the email contents and save.
Other platforms may have different tools for creating automated emails, but the overall process will be the same.