Email marketing has been playing an important role in the life of both professionals and consumers since the 90s. Marketers and sales representatives have been using it for driving sales, education, and entertainment.
Today, email marketing gets even more effective than before. Businesses that integrate email marketing in their digital marketing strategy can easily reach out to their target audience. They can boost their brand visibility, consistently stay engaged and convert more leads.
To become even more efficient, professionals need to save time and effort. This is why automation has developed. It has conquered our hearts and covered every industry.
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What is Email Marketing Automation?
Email marketing automation is one type of strategy that looks for marketers to send timely promotional emails. These emails are sent to your website’s subscribers on their mailing lists.
For example – When you are generating leads for a carpet cleaning business, relevant promotional emails will be sent to your subscriber list.
List of Things To Know About Email Marketing Automation
#1. Automatically sent emails are not spam
Cold emails and spam are the same things.
Spam emails are irrelevant that are sent to a wide range of recipients who are not interested in your offer. As long as your email does not resonate with the interests of your audience, it is considered spam.
Sometimes people confuse spam and cold emails.
However, when you are reaching out with a cold email, your recipients are or may potentially be interested in your offer. Moreover, with a cold email, you write to every lead in private and address them with their names and other details. Your email doesn’t look like a generalized bulk one.
Email marketing automation tools offer an opportunity for professionals to reach out to people with cold emails fast. You don’t have to send messages manually to not spoil the sender’s reputation. You only need to set triggers and schedules.
The result is simple where every email is sent automatically depending on the recipient’s behavior. No bulk emails, only a personalized approach. Also, email automation offers smart list segmentation. Thus, your approach gets even more personalized.
#2. Email automation tools and CRM are not the same
Email marketing automation tool, CRM… Does it matter?
For those who are new to email marketing, email marketing automation tools and CRM platforms can seem to be the same. These two serve different purposes.
Email marketing automation instruments help you during the awareness stage of the sales funnel. It supports you in reaching out to cold leads, nurturing, and moving them to the consideration stage.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. So you will use one of the customer communication tools when you already have a client.
As you see, the key difference is that you will use email marketing automation with cold and warm leads. While CRM will support you later, in the middle and bottom of the sales funnel. They help you manage the clients and communicate with hot leads.
#3. All Automation Platforms Differ
There’s such a variety of tools! They all are the same, why bother?
This is not true. Every snowflake is unique just like email marketing automation platforms. Each comes with its unique set of features and tools.
One offers an email sequence builder only, another offers a set of tools; one has a drag-n-drop campaign builder, another provides a ready-to-send email sequence; one is cheaper, another is highly expensive; one is limited in the number of recipients, another is limited in the number of sent emails.
#4. Email marketing is for small businesses too
EMA tools are for large corporations only?
The major benefit of email automation is that it is money and time-saving. This makes automation tools the top choice for many companies.
Many small business owners believe that automation tools are for big companies only. They explain their point of view with the fact that only a company with a high MRR(Material removal rate) can afford time-saving instruments.
However, we know how important it is for every company to save time being a professional. This is why the market is full of opportunities for all and everyone.
You can find the best suitable email marketing automation platform that will meet all your requirements. Spoiler: on the market, the pricing plans start at $39 per month. Moreover, a few companies offer freemium for you to start.
#5. Email marketing automation is cheap
Email marketing automation is expensive?
As stated above already, young professionals can think that automation platforms and instruments are for large corporations only. Furthermore, these platforms are for small companies too as they are cheap and affordable.
Companies offering solutions for small and medium-sized businesses can satisfy your needs at the same level as large corporations do. The only difference is the low price.
To choose the best option for your needs and budget, research the market and choose the one that is the best for you. Compare email marketing automation platforms and may succeed and high conversions follow you.
#6. Email marketing is easy
It’s too technically complicated, I won’t cope with it.
I don’t know why there are still people who think that automation is complicated and demands specific knowledge. The modern world is developing fast, yes. But at the same time, all new technologies and achievements are becoming more user-friendly and easy to use.
Here are a few reasons that will prove to you that email marketing automation tools are worth trying and nothing is scary about them:
- Simple-to-use drag-and-drop campaign editor. You don’t have to learn code and write something extra-complicated, the device has already done everything for you. Meanwhile, you only need to take the required elements, drop them in the campaign field, and connect them with a line in a sequence.
- Actionable triggers and delays. These two elements are optional but still, it’s better to use them. They allow you to automate the email campaign sending to the fullest and never bother about when to send follow-ups. They react to the recipient’s interaction with the email and send follow-ups automatically on your behalf.
- Smart schedules. The targeted approach lies in a high level of personalization. To release it, you not only need to have a buyer persona image. But, also reach out to your audiences when they are most open and ready to see your offers. Timed schedules allow you to reach out to target groups according to the time zones they live in.
- Uploaded lists of leads. If you have a list of leads on your PC, you can easily upload it to the platform to send your email campaigns.
- Simple integrations for your convenience. A few platforms offer integrations with other tools. This allows you to synchronize CRMs and other instruments with your email marketing automation platform. If, for example, there’s an integration with Calendly, your clients can easily schedule a demo with you.
Email marketing automation platforms do not seem so complicated now, don’t they?
#7. You set your hands free with an email marketing automation tool
To automate, I will have to spend a lot of time.
You may think that to set up an automated email campaign, you will have to spend many hours. In fact, it’s rather fast. They are easy to use and fast to learn. Probably, you will spend more time when you will write converting emails.
The main purpose of automating is to enable you to have enough free time for other tasks. It makes your life easier since the major part of the work will be automatically performed by the tool.
#8. There is still something for you to do
If the process is fully automated, I won’t have to do anything.
I know, it may sound a bit confusing. In the previous paragraph, I told you that you will set your hands free. And in this paragraph, you read that you will have to do something more. Unfortunately, once the campaign is launched, there’s still something for you to do.
For automation to work effectively, it requires constant awareness, care, and monitoring. It is important to know that an automation tool is simply your support in your marketing strategy. It can help you reduce efforts like sending email campaigns and following up on leads.
Still, composing emails doesn’t pass into nothingness. You will have to compose a professional email that will help you move leads through the sales funnel. Also, you still need to work on the buyer personas, segment your audience, analyze the campaigns’ performances, and conduct A/B tests. Follow the stats to be aware of which parts of the email sequence need your attention and demand improvement.
#9. Email automation is highly-personalized
When I send emails manually, they look natural. If I automate, they will lose their identity.
If you think that with an automation tool, your emails will lose their approach and you turn into a careless bulk email sender, then it’s a myth. Still, you remain a professional who reaches out to every lead and client in private.
Email marketing automation tools on the contrary help you improve your private approach. You need to collect as much information about your leads and clients as you can and compose emails with personalization variables. Then, the tool will automatically insert the data where necessary and your emails will look perfect.
Believe me, composing such a personalized email manually will be time-consuming. With an email marketing automation platform, it gets easy and fast.
#10. Automation tools help make your campaign creative
EMA tools make the approach boring?
You may think that integrating an automation tool will make you lose touch with your creativity and your approach will get boring since the whole process is automated. This is not true.
Creativity goes beyond manual work. Automation can help you leverage your creativity for maximum results. You can get creative in your email copy, email, and campaign template design.
Moreover, do not limit yourself and start a blog. Create informative and engaging blog posts and freebies. Later, use them in your email campaigns to attract more people, nurture, educate, engage, and re-engage them.
#11. You can combine email with other tactics
Just marketing? Not enough. What about other goals?
Initially, email automation was developed for automating email campaigns. But today, you can use it for any purpose.
- Attracting, warming up, nurturing, and moving to the second stage of the sales funnel. Cold outreach is still working. Thanks to email, you can generate new leads and reach out to them. With email automation tools, it will simply take you less time.
- Promotion. More than half of respondents state that email is the thing that influences their buying decision. So, you can easily promote either your service or a lead magnet. Your imagination is the only limit.
- Onboarding and education. It’s not enough to gain a new client, it’s important to welcome them and show how helpful you are. Therefore, email can help you onboard them and teach on how to use your platform.
- Re-engagement. If you have clients who haven’t been active for a while, you can use emails to check in and improve customer retention.
Combine your email marketing efforts with other tactics. For example, make email and social media work together. Offer your clients to follow you on social media, let cold leads on social media know you are sharing valuable insights through emails, etc.
Also, you can think of how to implement content and email marketing. Promote your content through emails (people love content) or offer people to subscribe to emails within your content. Let your imagination fly!
#12. To automate, you only need three tools
Being new to email marketing, you can think that to automate your marketing efforts, you need a myriad of tools. In fact, the minimum number of instruments is three.
- An email finder to get the email addresses of the leads.
- An email verifier to check the validity of the emails.
- Also, an email drip campaign tool to acquire, nurture and convert leads.
These three are minimum to not only discover fresh leads but also lead them through the sales funnel and convert them.
Good news! We live in a great era when tech is developing fast. We all are humans and professionals and know what other professionals in our niche need.
An all-in-one and free platform, right?
Luckily, the internet is full of opportunities and you can choose the platform with a set of the above-mentioned tools for completely nothing.
Wrapping up
Email marketing automation is the ultimate solution that remains relevant. When done correctly, it will have a positive effect on the revenue and efficiency of your marketing outreach.
To reach the best results, use an email marketing automation tool. With it on board, you will be able to build relationships with cold leads and help them get to the bottom of the sales funnel.
