Breaking down the benefits of Email Marketing Automation

Take advantage of time and cost savings

The now outdated (and painfully time-consuming) practice of hiring a round-the-clock team of cold callers to recite sales scripts in a bid to wear down would-be customers is something you can now leave behind forever.

You can reach out only when leads are ready to be contacted, avoiding countless man-hours spent writing, formatting and scheduling individual emails.

Your email marketing automation software will absorb the time, cost and resources associated with distributing your campaign effectively and on time.

Better yet, thanks to the intuitive and user-friendly nature of state-of-the-art email marketing automation platforms (like ours), you won’t even need to plough hours of your valuable time into learning the requisite skills needed to navigate your way around a complex and alienating system.

With an automated email marketing campaign, you can fine-tune your messaging for each distinct stage of the lead funnel.

Plan and create a strategic sequence of spotless emails that can be automatically triggered when your customers reach certain criteria. Whether time-based criteria or as a result of self-identifying that they’re ready to take the next step with your brand.

Enhance audience segmentation

One fatal flaw in so many of the world’s email marketing campaigns is a one-size-fits-all approach to customer relations and lead warming.

Each prospective customer has their own set of deal-breakers, communication preferences and buying incentives – making ongoing audience segmentation a non-negotiable element of any email marketing activity.

With an automated approach, you can take advantage of the ability to categorise subsects of your audience. Organised based on the key attributes and behaviour patterns of each individual within your master mailing list.

You can also further segment your audience based on conditions that have been met in past campaigns – meaning your email marketing activity is becoming ever more targeted and informed with every email you send.

With dynamic customer segmentation, your CRM software is able to gather meaningful data on each user’s receptiveness to your messaging and their purchasing potential over time. This data, like every shred of customer data you possess, has practical value.

Get to know your customers

While we’re on the subject of customer data. We don’t want to waste an opportunity to stress the importance of really getting to know your customers. And we don’t just mean getting to know their conversion rate or average order value.

With email marketing automation, you’ll be investing in a platform that can really get to know how your customers like to be communicated with. Which content formats resonate with them. What drives them to buy and all of the unique motivations and triggers that influence their behaviour.

This way, you can spend less time cobbling together ad hoc emails and more time digging into the feast of data your automated campaigns deliver.

With these granular insights on each and every member of your mailing list. You can harness the power and efficiency of automated email marketing to give every recipient a near-bespoke experience.

Personalise customer communications

When the time comes to leverage your customer data in the name of warming leads and driving conversions, there are countless opportunities to tailor your future communications for best results.

Far beyond merely populating email subject lines with users’ names. You’ve got the scope to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. With all of this data being accessible thanks to the advent of the CRM.

What’s paramount is not letting this invaluable data go to waste. Not only the newfound data harvested from recent automated campaigns. But also the heaps of powerful customer data you already possess. Something you may have completely overlooked up until now.

Think of yourself like a chef with the best natural ingredients at arm’s reach. Sometimes it’s about making maximum use of the ingredients available to you while they’re still palatable. Just like produce, once-fresh data can go stale if left unused for long enough.

Nurture leads to drive conversions

Guiding users through the conversion funnel should be a carefully orchestrated process driven by informed decisions and relevant data insights.

From initial signup to content engagement to the first, second, third and nth conversion. Automated email marketing allows for sophisticated lead warming. Build around the steady growth of the relationship between your business and your customers (with just a little strategic intervention from you along the way).

Your first mission is to establish yourself as a brand interested in imparting useful information and providing helpful resources.

It’s only once you’ve proven your value to your mailing list that you can begin to reap the benefits of this user-first mindset. This is the give and take of digital marketing.

By continually engaging your customers in a way that prioritises their needs and interests, you can carefully nurture mere contacts into hot leads primed to convert – and convert again.

Minimise customer drop-off

So many businesses make the grave mistake of adopting tunnel vision with a pure focus on acquiring new customers.

Of course, a well-oiled customer relationship management function succeeds in generating new leads all the time. However, even more important than that, is the process of keeping existing customers sweet. The key to building that all-important brand loyalty.

Increasing each customer’s lifetime value to your business is priority number one – the name of the game. With an automated email marketing campaign, you can launch exclusive offers for long-time customers. Re-engage users who haven’t interacted with your business in a given period of time. And look to incentivise repeat custom through targeted messaging.

By working towards a state of perpetual motion where you’re acquiring new leads daily and nurturing each and every one of these users to become repeat customers, you can begin to grow a thriving mailing list of engaged and lucrative contacts whose loyalty you’ve authentically earned.

Benefit your sales function

The data generated through your automated email campaigns will serve as a powerful tool for your sales team to wield when reaching out on a one-on-one basis to customers who’ve been primed for direct contact.

By identifying the criteria for a prospect who’s ready to be given the final nudge to convert, you can leverage this data to significantly streamline your sales team’s processes (while improving their success rate in the process).

This informed approach to lead nurturing makes cold calling obsolete for all intents and purposes. Your sales team will never have to flirt or negotiate their way to a warm lead ever again – leads will arrive sizzling hot on a plate. Ready to be beckoned over the line.

Measure and report with ease

The ultimate model for email marketing automation is a continuous process of activity, measurement and refinement.

For every stage of every campaign, there’s an opportunity to analyse the resulting customer data. From open and click-through rates to micro conversions and, with any luck, straight-up conversions.

With this data in your arsenal, you can identify customer drop-off points. Use these insights to refine your workflow and messaging. To strengthen and streamline your lead funnel.

Just as important as identifying the sticking points is establishing what is working. Continuous improvement is also about making sure you replicate any successes. But beware of flukes through continuous testing.

Every time you market, make sure to measure. If you leave your precious data to to gather dust, your leads will remain cold, unengaged and redundant.

Now we’ve talked your ear off about the overwhelming rewards of email marketing automation, stay tuned for the next instalment of this series. Next up, the benefits and best practices associated with acquiring new customers. Watch this space.

Grab the benefits of email marketing automation for your brand

With all of those email marketing automation benefits fresh in your mind, how about a free 7-day trial of our state-of-the-art email marketing automation software?

Get yours now to avoid spending one more day letting your invaluable customer data go to waste and enjoy those email marketing automation benefits for yourself.