What is Email Automation and Why is it Important? [FAQ]

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What is Email Automation and Why is it Important
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Email automation is an essential part of any effective marketing plan. Email automation takes the legwork out of staying up to date with your clients and makes communication more accessible, without losing the personalized touch. Best of all, email automation offers targeted and specific incentives and nurturing to help move your customers towards engaging with your business and wanting to work with you.

Here we look at exactly what email automation is, and why it is such an essential part of your digital marketing strategy.

What is Email Automation?

Sending automated emails means sending time- or action-triggered emails to potential customers – people who have shown interest in your business in some way. An individual email could be a welcome email after joining your mailing list, a special message or coupon on an anniversary or birthday, or a regular blog update. Either way, email automation makes communicating and engaging with customers easy to set and more effective at the same time.

Email automation can be seen as an essential part of lifecycle marketing, as each email can be uniquely tailored to where the client is in the marketing process. This ensures that your customer directly receives the right information at the right time to stay interested and engaged with your business. This obviously has an effect on conversion rates, which would improve as more people engage.

 Email Automation – Robotic and Impersonal?

email automation

When people hear the words ’email automation’ or ‘email marketing automation’, they think it means something robotic and impersonal – but this couldn’t be further from the truth! In fact, email automation helps you engage with your customers on a more personal and individual level, by appealing to their unique preferences, activities, and interactions with your company.

91% of email users check their inbox daily. That’s a lot of opportunities to stay engaged with your clients. Email automation looks for details specific to a customer, such as their interactions with your business or previous purchases, and tailors an email to be sent by these aspects.

Why Does My Business Need Email Automation?

Email automation means you receive more significant results from your email marketing campaigns for fewer resources and less effort. Some of the reasons your business needs email automation include –

  • Nurturing leads– email automation can help you guide interested potential customers through the essential information regarding your services and products, leading them to choose to purchase.
  • Generate new sales– your email automation campaign can carefully track and monitor your customer’s activity, presenting them with the correct information at the right time to make a purchase. Ever received one of those “abandoned cart emails”? You place something in an online shopping cart, leave the website, and a day later receive an email that you forgot to check out. BOOM… sale.
  • Turn new customers into repeat buyers and advocates– many businesses, such as home remodeling businesses, still rely heavily on word of mouth for advertising and promotion. Repeat customers are also a fantastic source of leads for any business, as they are already delighted with what your company offers. With the right subject line and catchy calls to action, email automation can help re-engage old customers, turning them into repeat customers or advocates.
  • Engage Customer with Personalized Communication– Targeted and specific emails that are relevant to your customer’s interests are more likely to be opened and read. This means you aren’t wasting your valuable marketing time and money. You also engage with customers one to one, on a more personal level, creating a more effective and convincing marketing effort.

How to Implement Email Automation for Your Business

The email automation needed for automated email campaigns can be as simple or complex as you want, but it does require the software to analyze and automate your emails according to specific demographics and activity. While there are many options for marketing automation like Constant Contact and AutoPilot, the two software options we have found works best for full marketing automation and CRM is SharpSpring or HubSpot.

SharpSpring and HubSpot are both marketing suites that include intelligent email automation to make marketing easier. They are best implemented with the expert assistance of a digital marketing company so you can identify your ideal buyer persona, clarify your plans for a drip campaign, and get started on the most targeted and effective email marketing campaign.