August 3, 2017

Why You Should Be Thinking About Email Marketing Automation

As we’ve said many times, email is back!

You may think that it never left, but it certainly went through a bit of a rough patch. Now we are happy to report that it is back in full force and there is a ton of money to be made in doing email right.

Today, email is all about automation (intelligent automation, that is).

What is Email Automation?

Think about conversations that you regularly have with people (business or personal). Normal conversations are personalized. You may have a pitch in mind or a specific story to tell, but it inevitably changes every time you tell it depending on the reactions of your audience.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could do that through emails automatically?

Well, it won’t be perfect, but with email automation, you can get pretty close!

Email automation is like scripting a conversation and then putting that on autopilot. You trigger automated emails depending on the response or actions of specific audience members and are able to have different conversations based on different needs. In this way you can personalize the conversation and “nurture” leads in a more meaningful way at scale.

This takes a lot of effort and through to set up in the first place, but once it’s set up, the campaigns run themselves.

What is a CRM system?

And how do you know if you need one?

Traditionally a CRM keeps track of your customer relationships. Well duh, right? It is called a customer relationship manager.

This is key for setting up meaningful email automations. You need to be tracking customers at every stage: where they are in the sales funnel, if and what they have purchased before, what their preferences are, etc. Tracking all of these actions are what allows you to set up the right triggers and communications to nurture your leads or customers no matter where they are along the customer journey.

How does this benefit marketing?

There are huge benefits to your marketing department if your sales team is using a CRM religiously.

Automated or not, the more you know about a particular customer and what stage of the customer lifecycle they are in, the more accurately you can talk to them through whatever means of communication. And this gives you a better chance at progressing the relationship with a potential customer, and makes it more likely that they will listen and be receptive.

We all like personal attention. It’s just human nature. So make sure your customers feel known and valued by targeting your messages to their specific profile.

The amazing thing about email automation with a CRM is that you can do this, make your customers feel like they are receiving personal attention, at scale!