Email marketing provides a high ROI. Research suggests that, on average, you will receive $36 for every $1 you spend. This is significantly higher than other marketing tactics. Part of the reason for this is that there are 4 billion people who use email and by 2024 361 billion emails will be sent every day. While this is impressive, there are strategies that you can take to increase your ROI further and boost the efficiency of your marketing campaign. This is possible using email automation.
What is email automation flow?
Email marketing automation is referred to as flows. You can use an email automation flow to set up a series of automated emails. These will be sent out based on:
- Contact information
- Behaviour
- Preferences
You can create as many different workflows as you need to ensure that emails are sent out based on specific triggers or filters. This is different from an email campaign. With a campaign, emails are sent to a particular list or segment. However, this is more time-consuming and far less efficient.
Why do you need email automation?
There are various reasons why you may need email automation as part of your marketing strategy. As mentioned, email automation can help save time while providing the results that you want. You will be able to promote your brand to a wider audience, nurturing and converting the prospects required to grow your business. At the same time, you can ensure that clients or customers are provided with the right level of engagement with marketing that feels targeted to their specific needs, pain points or desires. Simplified, email automation will ensure that emails are received by the right individuals at the specific time when it will have the greatest impact.
What are the benefits of email automation?
There are many benefits of email marketing. First, you can personalize the experience that your customers receive when they connect with your brand. 90% of consumers are demanding more personalization in their brand interactions and find this ideal very appealing.
Email automation will also ensure that you can avoid spending a lot of time on mundane, repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Instead, you can focus the efforts of your marketing team on building relationships and other tasks that can not be completed using automated tools.
Email automation helps you reconnect and re-engage with customers with previous customers. This matches the cardinal marketing rule: it’s easier and more cost-effective to sell to an existing client than convert a new one.
Email automation can also help you grow your business in a way that is scalable and meets the requirements of every size or type of company. For instance, you may use email automation to send out welcome emails. Welcome emails can generate 320% of the income compared to a standard promotional message. This is just one example of how the right automated email flow can deliver the results you want.
How to setup email automation
Setting up email automation for your business is easy. First, you need to choose an email automation provider. Numerous companies provide this service but they don’t all deliver the quality standard you need. As such, it’s important to complete some research.
Once you find a company you are happy with, you need to create an email strategy. Start with a couple of triggers and messages to focus on so that you can get used to the software that you are using. The best option to begin would be a welcome email.
Next, map out your workflow. It’s important to ensure that the layout and design of your email look professional and is user friendly. Consistency and quality are critical to winning over your audience.
You will then need to build the right segmented lists. This will allow you to personalize your email flows based on behaviours, demographics and preferences.
Types of email automation
Various types of email automation could be useful for your business.
Welcome emails
Welcome emails are sent to any new customer who may have completed a purchase, signed up to email marketing, or engaged with your business. Your welcome email should be clear and targeted based on products or services that a customer would be interested in.
Abandoned cart emails
Abandoned cart emails can be sent to individuals who were in the middle of completing a purchase but stopped short of finishing the transaction. In 2021, abandoned cart emails had an open rate of approximately 41%. This highlights that customers will respond to this type of engagement and they are more likely to respond to this type of email compared to other forms of marketing.
Transactional emails
Transactional emails are sent to an individual once they have completed a commercial transaction or a specific action. This could be anything from a purchase in your store to something as simple as a password reset. Transactional emails have an open rate of between 40 and 50%. They also have a click-through rate of up to 20%.
Re-engagement emails
Re-engagement emails are designed to re-engage with individuals on your email list who are no longer engaging with your brand. This could include customers who haven’t completed a purchase in a set period. That could be several weeks, months or a few days, depending on the product in question. Re-engagement emails are designed to remind customers why they signed up or completed a purchase in the first place. As such, they need to demonstrate real value to the consumer. On average, an email list will decay by around 25% each year. This is why it’s important to keep pushing to re-engage and re-invigorate your audience.
Case studies of email automation
Research suggests that marketers that use segmented email automation strategies can see a 760% increase in revenue.
Examples of successful automating campaigns
Draper James celebrates the birthday of the Company founder each year with a week-long sale through March. After receiving data suggesting there was an issue with their open rates, the company decided to use an email automation tools to send personalized emails to customers who had:
- Subscribed
- Visited the site
- Read an email in the past 90 days
After hitting their targets, the company then expanded this campaign to 180 days.
Another company, Traya aimed to drive e-commerce sales by increasing levels of engagement through email marketing. They used an automated tool to create highly interactive, abandoned cart emails. The emails focused on re-educating customers about the brand and convincing them of the impact that their products could have.
In the B2B sector, an IT security and infrastructure business used automation to set up a cold-calling email marketing strategy. This included creating nurturing emails as well as a lead magnet.
The results
Each company saw positive results through their email marketing strategy. For instance, Draper James saw an increase in conversions as well as click rates with revenue increasing by 15.4%.
Through their email automation strategy, health and wellness company Traya saw a 15% increase in cart recovery rates.
Through their cold calling email automation strategy, the unnamed IT company was able to achieve a 54% open rate and schedule seventy calls over a short period. In 5 of these calls, the customers immediately wanted another consultation. This is a fantastic demonstration of how automated email marketing can be used through a scalable strategy to achieve small business goals.
Best practices for Email Automation
To ensure that you gain the greatest benefits from your email automation strategy, it is important to use the best practices. First, you should make sure that your emails are personalized and feel human. Do not make the mistake of thinking that automated emails should read as though they were written by automated software. They need to represent your brand personality and identity.
Next, you need to ensure that you are setting workflow goals. Once a goal is completed, the user can be moved to another workflow. This ensures that your email lists are always evolving and growing naturally.
It’s also important to ensure that you do not use automated strategies to spam those who are not interested in your brand or re-engaging. If there is no response to the emails you should remove them from your list. Generally, if three workflow emails were left unopened, this individual should be removed.
Finally, it’s also important to check that your email automation strategy is effective. One of the ways that you can do this is through metric strategies such as A/B testing. With A/B testing, you can use two different email flows at the same time and compare them directly against one another to determine which one is more effective. You can use this to make little tweaks to the design and content of your emails, ensuring they will have the greatest impact.
Maximize ROI with Instiller
As you can see, email automation is a powerful tool. It can deliver higher levels of conversions, engagement and maximize your ROI. You just need to make sure that the flows you create are targeted, personalised and created to the right quality standard. At Instiller we provide email automation tools that are already trusted and utilised by countless major brands and smaller companies. If you are interested in learning more about our services, please do not hesitate to get in touch.