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4 Easy Automation Hacks to Increase Email Engagement
For busy marketers, technology is a lifesaver. With so many marketing tasks, technology helps you juggle everything from social posts to email campaigns. But are you getting the most out of your marketing technology?
Research shows 63% of marketers use technology to engage customers, but only about half (32%) actually use their tech to the fullest, according to a report from Ascend2. It’s time to get more out of marketing technology.
If you’re ready to increase engagement with intuitive marketing technology, email marketing automation tools are the answer.
Email marketing automation goes beyond the “set it and forget it” mindset and gives you the tools to track customer behavior, segment customers based on their interests, and send relevant emails that subscribers can’t ignore.
To help you streamline your email marketing automation strategy, here are four automation hacks to implement today for better engagement:
1. Use website tracking snippets
What happens when a subscriber clicks on a link in your email? Does the subscriber make a purchase? Read a blog post?
Understanding what happens after a subscriber clicks on a link in your email can provide valuable insight. Fortunately, Campaign Monitor offers a website tracking tool that does just that.
Using the website tracking snippet, you can monitor how subscribers move from your email to your website — and what they’re looking at.
With this tool, the subscriber journey turns into actionable statistics on your advanced tracking platform, like Google Analytics. You’ll see important KPIs like click-throughs, bounces, first-time visitors, and conversions. You’ll also get important information about subscribers, like their geographical location.
If you can understand subscribers’ online journey, you can tailor your emails and website content to drive better engagement.
2. Try segment builders with access to website behaviors and relative dates
With the website tracking snippet in place, you can start organizing your contacts into like-minded groups.
Segment subscribers based on the purchases they make on your website or the type of content they look at on your blog. These types of segments go beyond classic segments that are typically based on demographic data like age, location, or income, and focus more on a subscriber’s behavior.
With Campaign Monitor, you can use the segment builder to create these groups.
You can even create groups that visit your website and take a specific action within a certain timeframe. For instance, you can create a segment of customers that purchase a specific product from your website in the last month.
The segment builder helps you organize subscribers into small, niche groups that share a similar behavior.
3. Consider segment-triggered automation
After using the segment builder, you have the groundwork complete to create and send hyper-personalized emails. With email marketing automation, the process is a breeze.
You can pre-make and automate emails based on a subscriber’s actions. That’s right, you can deliver emails based on actual actions taken by the customer.
Let’s say you want to send a welcome email to subscribers who join your list. When a contact is added to a segment, like a new subscriber segment, that action triggers an email to send. Those subscribers receive a welcome email.
The email sends automatically. You don’t have to log into your account every day, review new contacts, and manually send emails. Just set up the automated journey and new contacts will receive a welcome email from you.
You can trigger emails based on other actions too. Here are six different triggers Campaign Monitor customers can use as a starting point:
- Subscriber joins a list
- Subscriber enters a segment
- Subscriber exits a segment
- A date
- An anniversary
- Subscriber activity (advanced plan)
Let’s look at another example. Let’s say you’ve created a segment of customers who bought a high-end digital camera from your website in the last two months. You want to encourage these customers to purchase accessories like a camera bag and tripod. You can create and send a follow-up email with this goal in mind.
The purchase triggers the delivery of the follow-up email that showcases add-ons available for purchase.
This kind of email marketing automation makes sure you’re engaging current customers in a timely, relevant way. These subscribers have just made a purchase, they’ve taken your product for a test spin, and are ready to think about accessories that make picture-taking even better.
4. Employ basic dynamic content
Marketers are always crunched for time. If you need to send a personalized email in a hurry, rely on dynamic content.
Dynamic content gives you the ability to create one email, but customize pieces of it based on the subscriber receiving it.
Let’s say you want to send an email promoting a new line of formal footwear. You want men to see their styles and women to see theirs. With dynamic content, the product image changes based on the gender of the subscriber, so women see a picture of heels and fancy flats while men see loafers and wing tips.
Showing products specific to a subscriber’s gender is the most common use case, but you can customize dynamic content to fit your needs. If you’re opening multiple store locations, for example, you can change the image of the storefront based on a subscriber’s location.
Of course, to make dynamic content work, you’ll need to collect subscriber information to ensure the right content gets to the right person.
You’ll need a variety of tools at your disposal to collect information. Here are a few ways to collect customer information over time:
- Email sign up forms
- Surveys
- Website tracking tools
- Event registration forms
- Forms to access gated content
Use the data you have to create smart segments so your dynamic content is tailored to specific subscribers.
Wrap up
With the right technology in place, marketers can make significant improvements in their engagement rates — and email marketing automation can be a significant piece of the puzzle. To learn more about Campaign Monitor’s advanced automation features and see how other brands are using it, check out 5 Brands Crushing it with Email Marketing and Automation.
