Email marketing is one of the most important methods of marketing.
What’s even more surprising?
It’s expected that over 347 billion emails will be sent daily by 2023, marking an increase of over 60 billion emails from 2018’s daily count. However, to get the most out of your email marketing efforts, you need to automate the process.
Not only can automation save your time but it can also send your emails exactly when they’re needed the most to make an impact.
So, what is email marketing automation? Let’s find out.
What is Email Marketing Automation?
In a nutshell, email marketing automation is the automated sending of emails based on a schedule or triggers that are defined by you. These emails are sent out so that they can create the maximum impact on your audience and get them to purchase from you.
While this might come across as a simple marketing method, there’s a lot that goes into setting up the schedule and the triggers.
You need to figure out when your emails might make the most impact. It’s also essential to know what to write in the email at each point so that you can get your audience further into your sales funnel.
But is email marketing really effective?
Indeed. The ROI (return on investment) of email marketing stands at about £42 for every pound spent on it. This is perhaps the reason why about 91% of marketers say that email marketing is an important marketing channel for them.
Image via DMA
Now that you know the importance of email marketing, let’s take a look at how you can achieve email marketing automation.
How Can You Do Email Marketing Automation?
Here is a step-by-step process you can follow to implement email marketing automation.
1. Create Your Plan
Just like all other forms of marketing, you need to plan out your marketing strategy from the beginning when it comes to email marketing automation. You need to chart out how you’ll proceed with the email marketing campaign and what sort of automation you’ll use.
There are two modes of email automation — triggers and scheduled.
You need to figure out which one you’ll use. If you choose to go with the former, you need to plan out which emails will be triggered based on which events. For the latter, you need to figure out when to send the emails so that they can create the maximum impact on your audience.
For example, you can trigger a welcome email based on registration, a confirmation email based on filling out a signup form, and more.
2. Select an Email Automation Platform
Once you have got a plan in place, you need tools to get your work done. Without the right tools for email marketing, you won’t be able to execute your campaigns well. These tools can help you automate your emails based on your schedule or triggers.
But why are they important?
It’s important to carefully research platforms and tools before you select one because your email deliverability depends on them. If the reputation of the email platform is poor, your emails may not reach your subscribers, and that could lead to a waste of effort and money.
So, how should you choose an email marketing platform?
Apart from the automation features, you should look at the other features that the platform offers. These include segmentation, personalization, split testing, and more. All of these features help you optimize your email marketing campaigns and tools lacking them may not be helpful.
You should also look at the integrations that the platform offers. Does it integrate well with your CRM? It should also integrate well with other third-party applications. You should also be able to create mobile-optimized emails using it.
Lastly, it should be able to provide detailed analytics about the performance of your campaign too.
Mailchimp is a great email marketing platform if you’re starting out as it’s free for up to 2000 subscribers.
Image via Mailchimp
3. Set Up Your Campaign
Using your email marketing tool, you should start creating your emails. Along with the email creation, you should set up the workflow for the campaign and create the triggers for each email to be sent out. For drip campaigns, you should select the dates when the drip emails will be sent out to the subscribers.
Once this is done, you can execute the campaign.
However, do keep in mind that your emails must be well-crafted and free from grammatical errors. To avoid them, you should consider using Grammarly to proofread your emails.
For instance, Sephora sends out emails to their customers whenever they estimate that their products are about to run out. This prompts their customers to restock their supplies.
Image via SmartrMail
Similarly, you can also send out automated emails for customer service. These emails should inform your customers that you’ll be getting back to them within 24-48 hours. Here are some customer service email templates that you can use for it.
4. Measure and Optimize
The last step in email marketing automation is to test, measure, and optimize your campaigns. You can use your email marketing platform to conduct A/B tests to figure out which emails work better each trigger.
You should measure specific key performance indicators (KPIs) of every email such as the open rate and click-through rate to figure out if your subject line or email content needs some tweaking.
If your platform permits Google Analytics integration, you can dive deep into your analytics through it. Based on the insights gathered, you can figure out what needs to be modified, and accordingly, improve your campaign.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing automation has a tremendous potential to boost your revenue and sales. By using it, you can send out emails whenever they can make the most impact, all without any manual intervention.
For effective email marketing automation, you need to plan out your campaign and figure out when you need to send the emails or which triggers you will use. After that, you need to select a reliable email marketing platform that you can use to send out emails.
Lastly, once you’ve sent your emails, you need to continuously analyze them and dive deep into the analytics to understand how to optimize them.
Have you used email marketing automation for your brand? Let us know your experiences in the comments section below.
About the Author: Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant for 15 years with an emphasis on Influencer Marketing in the last 5 years. He is specialized in sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, Influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.