How to optimize your email marketing strategy with automation

Email remains an effective way to contact customers, for this reason we cannot afford to stop communicating with them by this means. But if we also implement automated email marketing strategies, their impact is greatly enhanced. To start taking advantage of it, In this note I will tell you the secrets to achieving success in your email automation campaign.

To begin, let's define: what is email automation or automated email?

It is a type of campaign focused on sending emails, configured in such a way that once the campaign is triggered, The flow follows its path automatically, as long as subscribers meet the criteria established in that flow.

For example, imagine that your company launches a new product and you want to communicate it in a promotional campaign. You create an ad and set as the main criteria that everyone who clicks will receive an automated email within 24 hours giving them free shipping on their first purchase, while those who pass by will receive an email alerting them that the offer will last a few days.

How can we automate these shipments? Very easy, with workflows or workflows. They can be simple flows like the example we just saw, or much more complex and consider other variables related to user behavior, both on the site and in the emails themselves. The variables can be as many as your strategy requires.

What does a good email marketing strategy require?

A good email marketing strategy offers users the content that is most valuable to them at the most effective time. Among the main reasons why you should implement automated email marketing in your strategy are:

• It only requires an initial configuration and the rest it does on its own.
• Accelerate your conversion funnel, allowing leads to pass faster and in greater numbers, from one stage to the next.
• Emails always arrive at the right time.
• The contents are personalized, according to the behaviors, interests and/or demographics of your databases.
• It's a very effective form of segmentation.

What types of email automation can you implement in your strategy?

1. Welcome email

The name itself explains it all: Welcome emails are a good way to connect with your subscribers once they subscribe to your content.A good welcome message should contain the following points:

• Show your value proposition and the personality of your brand.
• Generate expectations for your subscribers.
• Surprise subscribers with a “gift” or special offer.

2. Onboarding actions

When a user creates an account on a website, there are usually several steps they must take to complete their profile. There are also things they need to learn so they can get the most out of their account. In these cases, create a good onboarding experience allows:

• Guide users through the account setup process.
• Increase user engagement and retention by educating them about the features of your website and how they can get the most out of their account.
• Identify low-interaction users and those who haven't properly configured their account.

3. Abandoned purchase

Abandoned carts on e-commerce sites are very common. However, This doesn't mean it's a lost purchase. Sending a follow-up email to people who didn't complete their purchase is a very effective way to recover some conversions.

• Abandoned cart emails have twice the average open rate of normal email campaigns.
• They improve the conversion rate, providing timely information to customers to bring them back.

4. Downloadable Value Content

The best option for obtaining information from your potential customers is to offer them content that benefits them in return. The formula is simple: “if you want to get this ebook, complete the following form”. Offering downloadable content is an effective strategy, because:

• Your content works for you. Being downloadable, it becomes a tool for capturing contact information that you can use.
• It helps to grow your database by attracting people who are genuinely interested in your company.

5. Contact tracing

Knowing who your most loyal customers are is a great advantage and is made possible by marketing automation. An easy way to identify them is through their interactions with your business. The most engaged contacts are an invaluable resource for your business, as they:

• They can help you gather feedback through surveys.
• They work as an extension of your marketing team to spread information about your business.

6. Healthy databases

Maintaining a clean email list is important for achieving sustainable growth, in addition to a high commitment to your campaigns. Automation can help you clean your list through a process of re-opt-in. Although it sounds contradictory, deleting contacts from your database brings great benefits such as:

• Improve engagement rates with your email campaigns.
• Lower spam complaint and unsubscription rates.
• Get a better sender score with email providers

7. Lead scoring

A good way to ensure that your customers have the right qualities and are interested in the offer is qualifying them with a strategy of Lead Scoring:

• It allows you to better communicate with the leads that are most likely to convert.
• It can work through automated workflows, making it easier for you to classify.
• You can more precisely segment your lists for email marketing campaigns.

8. Lead nurturing

Incorporate automation into your lead nurturing strategy during your sales and marketing process it can save you time and help increase your customer base on a large scale.

• It keeps customers engaged during their research and buying process.
• Provide your leads with the information they need to make their purchases.
• It automatically qualifies potential customers and moves them to the appropriate stage in their buying process.

9. Reactivation in ecommerce

Los reactivation emails, as its name suggests, aims to reactivate contacts who haven't visited your site, store or ads in a long time.

Sometimes, it's more fruitful to reactivate these customers than to get new ones.

‍You should keep in mind that these examples don't represent absolute truth, but they are proven effective options that can be adapted to the marketing strategy that you and your team establish.

Let's talk about Workflows

Now that you know what types of email automation you can implement, let's talk about workflows: what are they and how will they help my marketing strategy?

What is a Workflow?

The main objective of inbound marketing campaigns is to increase the visibility, acquisition, conversion and loyalty of potential customers. A workflow can simplify this process efficiently.

Broadly speaking, a workflow is composed of a series of automated actions that you can program according to the data of your contacts, or because of their habits and behaviors on the network.

How can I do an automated Workflow?

To get started, you need a tool to help you automate your flow. The platform of InConcert Marketing It is a great option because it allows you to create all kinds of workflows, from the simplest to the most complicated branches. It all depends on your strategy.

This tool is intuitive and very easy to use. Here are some tips for starting to use workflows in your email marketing strategy:

Identify your buyer persona

Knowing who you are talking to is paramount to kickstart any type of strategy and workflows are no exception. Determine who your ideal customer would be and start your flow by reaching out to them.

Visualize your workflow

There are tools that can help you visualize a workflow:

‍- By what criteria can leads enter your flow?

- What has to happen for it to continue?

- Do you need bifurcations?

‍All of this is easier to program if you already have a bird's-eye view of what you need. If you are not very familiar with computer programs, it is always possible to do it the old way, with ink and paper.

Hierarchy your content

The best way to get the most valuable thing that marketing can offer you (data) is offering your leads something useful to them, valuable content. You should think of your flow as a machine that works almost perfectly:

‍- What content is more valuable than another?

- Which one is more attractive?

- Which one works as a hook and which one can be offered for free?

Decide the activation condition

Once your strategy is well defined, the first thing to determine is What will be your activation condition.

The conditions can be multiple, for example: if the contact belongs to a certain database, if they are in the lead stage, if they converted to a certain landing page, or if their position belongs to a certain level of hierarchy that is essential in your strategy.

Determine time intervals between each shipment

A workflow isn't a strategy that ends in a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks. Remember that you are looking for a long-term relationship and therefore it is necessary to think carefully about how long it will take between one shipment and another to make your lead feel comfortable with you.

There's a very thin line between being kind and being suffocating. What we least want is for them to decide not to continue receiving our emails.

Take advantage of each of the steps to convert

Your workflow isn't just an automated way to send emails to your leads, it's also a latent opportunity to grow your conversions. Take every opportunity to invite them to move forward in the conversion funnel, placing Call To Actions in your emails, within your valuable content, and even in your forms. This way your opportunities will grow at every step.

Last but not least: test, check and if necessary correct. Some of the most commonly used actions in a workflow are:

Time interval

It is used to add a time interval between actions. For example, allowing several days or even weeks to pass between emails.

Bifurcation

This function allows you to define if certain contacts with certain characteristics should receive a different email once they are part of the flow.

Set up a contact property

It is used to add a certain property to the contact when it meets certain characteristics, for example, changing the stage of a contact to MQL.

Add or remove from the list

Allows you to add and delete contacts. The main added value is that this property helps you create a more complex list of contacts.

The best way to know how to do a workflow is to start doing them. Implementing this marketing technique will bring great benefits to your lead nurturing strategy, starting with saving time. So the best thing to do is practice and practice, and keep track of your own observations about what works best for your leads and customers.