How to Simplify Your Workflows Using Email Automation Strategies

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Email marketers know just how difficult it can be to send the right email to the right person at the right time. It can be painfully laborious and time-consuming.

But doing it manually is a thing of the past. The available tools use innovative features like AI and automation to simplify your emailing processes.

The time and resources saved by automating your email campaigns can be used to focus on other key metrics.

This guide will show you how to simplify your workflows through email automation strategies.

What Exactly Is Email Automation?

Email automation is a system that automatically sends emails to the ideal person at the moment. Email automation considers your contact list and analyzes a range of data, including behavior, current position in the funnel, and engagement level, to provide optimum email campaigns.

In other words, instead of needing to file through endless lists of contacts and write out emails one by one, your email software automation will handle it all for you.

Whether sending a reminder to a cart abandoner or inviting a previous customer back with an enticing offer, your email automation software will get the message to them at the right time. You can even schedule two or three emails if the first goes unread.

Why Is Email Automation Necessary?

That’s right, necessary.

Not using email automation in 2023 is a huge mistake. You’ll have to start automating emails and utilizing more efficient strategies to scale and grow.

If you aren’t already up to speed, competitors will be ready to take your leads away with a better service.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of email automation strategies.

Keeps Customers Engaged

A well-optimized email campaign will help keep customers engaged by providing relevant content of value to them.

You can create an automated email string for new leads to nurture them through the buying journey. For existing customers, your automated emails can provide information on new products, brand updates, discounts, and training guides.

If the content is interesting and relevant, customers are more likely to engage with it.

Make it Personal

If you have information on your prospects and customers, use it to personalize your emails with attention-grabbing subject lines.

Some examples of subject lines that will get your customers’ attention are

• Quick! Your offer ends today!
• Happy birthday, (name). Look inside for a birthday treat from us!
• Want to know how a DocuSign account can boost your business?
• Access our free online course here!
• Don’t miss out on 20% off your next order.
• Learn how to reduce 30% operational cost with contract management software

You can gather existing customer information easily if you have a CRM. You’ll have to think outside the box for new visitors and leads.

For example, pop-ups have always worked when it comes to grabbing attention.

Swiss Watch Expo nudges their first-time customer with a pop-up that offers a discount for signing up to their email list.

While discounts and coupons provide the nudge, another way is to provide high-value content. Sometimes, gated content can also get your customers’ information.

These are great ways to get prospective customers’ email addresses to enhance future email campaigns.

Email personalization can also extend to recommended products and services. So if you have data on customer purchasing history and current subscriptions, you could recommend new products and services to them.

Create a Better Marketing Strategy

The humble email is still central to a solid marketing strategy. You’ll benefit from improved marketing strategies by bringing automation into the fold.

Suppose you have a huge list of customer details. In that case, it cannot be easy to analyze which type of emails you should send, who you should send them to, or even when you should send them. You can use email automation software to engage individual customers at the exact right moment. You can automatically send welcome emails or birthday messages. Subscription renewal emails can also be automatically triggered as reminders for customers.

This helps drive customers through your sales funnel, improving engagement and product awareness.

Improve Customer Acquisition and Retention

With access to purchasing history and engagement metrics, it’s much easier to upsell and cross-sell new products and services to customers via automated email campaigns.

With a data-informed email series, you’ll be able to send relevant emails to increase customer engagement and retention and boost the chances of customer acquisition.

How to Implement Email Automation to Simplify Your Workflows

Implementing an email automation strategy will help you simplify workflows and achieve maximum performance with less effort. The following steps will help you get the best out of your email automation.

1. Select a Suitable Email Automation Tool

There are plenty of email automation tools available today. A simple online search will show you some of the best. We recommend reading some reviews before making a decision. Your final decision will depend on several factors, including your target audience, your business objectives, and your available budget.

Your email automation tool will sit at the heart of your marketing efforts. So pick wisely.

2. Understand the Different Types of Marketing Emails

To master your email content and increase open rates, you’ll need to understand each type of email usually sent in marketing campaigns or across the customer journey.

The different email types include:

• Welcome emails for new customer
• Cart abandonment follow-ups
• Remarketing emails
• Retargeting emails
• Offers to bring back unsubscribers
• Delivery information
• Training series

3. Define Your Business Objectives

Your emails will only have a chance of hitting the target if you know what you’re aiming for.

Defining your business objectives at the start is key to steering your email marketing efforts in the right direction. There are several goals you could wish to achieve through email automation. It could be:

• Converting free trial members into full-paying customers
• Keeping existing customers on board with new offers
• Generating curiosity and interest in your brand
• Driving more traffic to your web pages
• Reducing customer churn rates

Whatever it is, you’ll need a good understanding of your overall goals to implement an automated email series and track its progress successfully. For example, a document generator provider could send a proposal management Salesforce guide for new subscribers to teach them the new software. The objective would be to increase familiarity with the platform. And the metrics could include tracking how many recipients read the training guide and how many are still using the platform.

4. Segment Your Audience

Each email campaign you set up will target a different audience segment. Therefore, it’s wise to start thinking about segmenting your customers and what content would be relevant for each group.

Some obvious segment group labels include demographics, previous engagement, purchase history, interests, churn rate, etc.

Once your audience is segmented, you can target them with an email campaign based on your initial objective. For example, if you have 300 customers in your churn segment, you could target them with emails containing new offers and discount codes to invite them back on board.

Most email automation tools make it easy to segment your contact lists for improved targeting.

5. Draft up Your Email Templates Ready for Automated Scheduling

After segmenting your audience and exploring the different email campaigns you can automate, it’s time to start drafting your emails.

These emails are the pinnacle of your efforts. The content must be exciting, engaging, and thought-provoking and must leave people wanting to read more. The subject line is crucial. For example, if a document generator business was emailing existing users about a free trial, you could insert ‘[Customer Name], do you like it when things are free?’ Don’t forget to look into how to do an electronic signature to make sure you finish on a professional note.

Your email automation software will let you save your drafts into folders you can name for each campaign. Many providers also include free templates for common email types. You can start with these and edit them to sort your needs.

Once you’ve armed yourself with a selection of email drafts, it’s time to assign them to each campaign, set up your automated scheduling, and send them out into the world. Emails can be scheduled against key customer metrics, so you’ll have to plan a strategy to optimize their release. With a solid plan in place, you’ll be able to measure and run effective marketing campaigns.

6. Track the Progress of Your Emails

Use your email automation software or another analytics tool to track the progress of your email campaigns and evaluate their performance.

There are several key metrics and different marketing analysis types to gauge your email campaigns’ effectiveness. These include open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and so on. By keeping a close eye on these metrics, you’ll be able to spot areas that need improvement and iron out any errors in the automated process. This will let you make ongoing adjustments to keep your email campaigns performing at their best.

As time goes on, you’ll gain more data on your customers and the types of emails that do and don’t work for each segment. With more insights, your campaigns should grow stronger over time, and email automation can provide a significant ROI in terms of value and time saved.

Final Thoughts

Spending hours emailing customers one by one is a thing of the past. Any business looking to attract leads, increase conversions, and boost retention rates should have an automated email strategy at the heart of its marketing efforts.

Not only will an automated campaign simplify your workflows and save you time and effort, but it’ll also arm you with plenty of data to make informed decisions in the future. Hopefully, this guide has given you some ideas on simplifying your workflows through email automation.