Email automation has improved things for businesses when it comes to streamlining communication, nurturing leads, and driving conversions. However, expert help for this cannot be denied. Well, it also won’t be wrong to say that email automation can help businesses save a lot of time, improve customer experience, and maintain fruitful & long-term relationships with clients. Our goal in creating this post is to guide you with easy steps to build an effective email automation setup according to your business needs.
Building an Effective Email Automation Setup
Define Your Goals
It doesn’t matter what you are doing, it is highly important to set your objectives first. Now, if we talk about email automation setup, you need to know what you want to achieve through that. Only after that, you would be able to create a result-oriented automation setup. Here are some of the common business goals for which automation can be done:
Nurture Leads
Here, businesses can educate buyers by telling USPs about their products/services and helping them understand how this would solve their problems through targeted emails.
Customer Retention
By sending personalized messages including exclusive offers or rewards, businesses can build stronger and lasting customer relationships.
Conversions
By creating targeted campaigns, businesses will be able to increase conversions.
Improving Efficiency
Setting up email automation reduces the manual efforts required for repetitive tasks while improving the overall efficiency of email marketing.
Select the Right Email Automation Tool
Once you have identified your objective, it’s time to choose an experienced and reliable email automation tool that can meet your needs. Some of the factors that you should consider while choosing an email automation tool include:
Budget
Make sure the tool you’ve selected is within your financial constraints. If not, it could be difficult for you to manage other digital marketing elements.
Business Size
Especially for large enterprises, it is important to identify whether the selected tool can meet your goals and work as per your expectations.
Technical Aspects
Above all, businesses also need to understand that the tools they are selecting are technically strong. Additionally, the tools must also have advanced features.
Build a Genuine Email List
Whether you set up email automation or do email marketing manually, building an authentic email list should be the priority. For this, businesses need to grow their email list through ethical means. Here are some of the effective ways of building a genuine email list:
Opt-in Forms
You can use signup forms on landing pages, on websites as pop-up forms, or on blog pages. Interested users will sign up by filling in their genuine details.
Lead Magnets
Provide free resources like eBooks, exclusive discount coupons, or webinars in exchange for their email addresses.
Segment Your Audience
A successful Email automation campaign largely depends on effective audience segmentation. Hence, businesses must segment their audience smartly based on their purchase behavior, interests, demographics, engagement levels, and the source through which they have subscribed.
Segmentation is highly important as it ensures that every email you send is relevant to your audience. This not only increases open rates but also engagement.
Tailor Your Workflows
The automated sequences of emails that are triggered for specific actions are called workflows. Hence, you need to tailor them based on your business goals. Here are some of the examples:
Welcoming Emails
Automation can be set up to send welcome emails to every new subscriber introducing your brand and the products/services you offer.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
Businesses can also send automated workflows to remind users about the products they left in their carts. To increase conversions, extra discounts can be offered.
Follow-Up After Purchase
For a successful email automation setup, businesses must also thank customers for their purchase and get feedback about the purchased product. This improves customer engagement and retention.
Re-engagement Campaigns
Above all, to re-engage inactive subscribers, a re-engagement campaign can also be created by providing exclusive contact.
Create Compelling Content
When it comes to digital marketing, content is the key. Hence, for the success of email automation, you need to craft engaging content that is also relevant to your audience. Make sure every email is tailored for each user. Here are some of the tips to create an email copy that delivers:
Add the subscriber’s name in the subject line or salutation and create the content as per his/her preferences.
- Be crisp and clear with your message.
- Add compelling and easily visible CTAs.
- Optimize your emails for mobile devices.
- A/B test different variations to identify what works best.
Test Your Setup
Once everything is arranged, it’s time to test your automated email setup to see how it performs. Here are the parameters you need to focus on:
- Check that right emails are sent based on the intended user’s action.
- Make sure all links are correctly placed including the CTA.
- Make sure emails are formatted well for different devices and email clients.
- Confirm that emails are sent at the set intervals without any delays.
Doing all this ensures that the automated email setup is working smoothly with minimal error risk.
Monitor and Optimize
Once you are all set with the email automation setup and it is running smoothly, you must keep monitoring its performance and make necessary changes as required. See the open rates, CTR, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate to improve them by optimizing accordingly. Keep checking the analytics to identify the areas of improvement.
Remember, in digital marketing, no strategy is permanent. To always stay on the top, you must analyze the performance regularly and make changes according to the trend and business goals.
