This is a guest post from Shannon Langmeier & Robert Newgen at Predictive Response.
Launching a successful email campaign is one of the most important digital marketing elements to keep in mind, whether you’re building a start-up of your own or taking a local brick-and-mortar business online. Even with the advent of social media and mobile devices, email marketing still remains one of the most popular and effective methods to reach users.
With an email marketing campaign that’s fluid and adaptive, you can maximize your online reach and your ability to garner new subscribers, followers, and loyal customers.
What is email marketing automation?
Email marketing automation is the practice of sending automated emails to subscribers and customers of a website, based on behavioral actions, preferences, demographics, and even specific information such as membership expirations or birthdates.
Using automation for email campaigns is one of the most efficient methods of communicating with prospective customers and followers who have a genuine interest in following the updates of a business or brand. With email automation tools, you don’t have to miss another opportunity to generate leads, sales, and revenue again.
Behavior-based marketing automation
Behavior-based email marketing automation is extremely beneficial for digital marketers and those interested in learning more about a specific target audience or a subset of demographics. Behavior-based campaigns work best once you have gathered information about your website’s visitors and current followers via social media and your email newsletter.
Send emails to users based on responses and interactions that have been captured and tracked on your website and with your brand’s most popular social media platforms. Reach users based on their expressed wants, needs, and interests to maximize your opportunity to generate leads, new followers, and sales.
Home in on your target audience
Using profile-based marketing automation solutions, target subscribers using specific criteria in your email campaigns, such as locale, demographics, preferences, interests, and even active memberships or user registrations.
When you have the ability to home in on a target audience that’s willing to trust you while supporting your products or services, avoid the risk of overspending or wasting your marketing budget on ads and campaigns that simply don’t deliver results.
While social media platforms like Facebook became increasingly popular among digital marketers due to their highly customizable ad-serving platforms, all-in-one campaign automation providers now offer similar solutions.
Using an all-in-one campaign automation solution, learn more about the behaviors, interactions, and responses of your followers and subscribers as they browse the web, follow new brands, and make purchases from their homes and smartphones.
When you’re in tune with your target audience and demographics, it’s much easier to craft and launch email campaigns that motivate and encourage users to learn more and buy products.
The importance of highly personalized email campaigns
Whether you’re launching a one-time email campaign or if you have a scheduled campaign mapped for registered users and newsletter subscribers, highly personalized emails are essential. Personalized emails help businesses, brands, and entrepreneurs alike to stand out amongst the competition and traditional junk email messages received daily.
Sending basic email campaign templates without personalization can quickly raise red flags with users, even if they willingly subscribed to your newsletter.
Emails that sound robotic, too corporate, or impersonal may even be deleted altogether. Personalizing an email with a name or information about a user is one way to retain their interest in the content, information, or products you want to share.
Use personalization in your email campaigns to remind subscribers or registered users on your website of their past purchases or products that are most relevant to them. Send articles and newsletter content that resonates with subscribers based on their age, preferences, and even declared interests (obviously you’ve been tracking all of this data in your ESP).
The more personalized an email feels, the more likely an individual is to read, absorb, share, and use the message themselves.
Email campaigns and dynamic content
Sending the same email message to users repeatedly quickly becomes stale and boring, especially if you’re representing a business or a brand in a highly competitive market. Dynamic content within email campaigns can drastically increase your conversion rates, while also boosting the traffic your website receives from your newsletter updates.
With an all-in-one automation service for email campaigns, implement dynamic content into each individual email you send to subscribers, even if you want to utilize an alternative template for your message. Choose from the custom email templates you’ve created or use a premade layout that’s fitting for your brand colors, aesthetic, and the sentiment you want to be attached to your campaign.
Using an all-in-one email automation service is a great way to keep up with current email campaigns without feeling bogged down or overwhelmed at the prospect of manually formatting each individual email. With an automation service, simply choose the layout that works best for your next email and add headers, copy, and proper CTAs before allowing a campaign to go live.
Scheduled and drip email campaigns
Scheduled email campaigns are extremely adaptive, especially when implementing dynamic content that shifts with your segments. With a drip campaign, send automated messages to subscribers over time.
Triggered, automated emails (e.g. emails triggered by a first-time login, adding an item to the cart, or a completed purchase) are extremely common and help maintain an ongoing conversation.
Consistent communication with subscribers and customers can drastically improve your ROI and your campaign conversion rates, driving more traffic, sales, and, ultimately, revenue to your website and business.
Using an email campaign automation service for your business, brand, or venture
An all-in-one email marketing automation program is optimal for anyone who’s interested in taking complete and total control over email campaigns and individual messages sent out each day.
With an email campaign automation service, you can craft, send, and track the results of each individual campaign message you send to new and active newsletter subscribers you’ve accrued.
Some of the advantages that come with using an email campaign automation service include:
- Intuitive editor: Put an intuitive email template editor to use, even if you’re unfamiliar with programming and coding email layouts yourself. Start with a blank canvas or choose an existing template available with a built-in layout gallery.
- Custom gallery: Save templates you’ve created for your business in one central location for easy access in future campaigns.
- Work with your team: Manage permissions and the accessibility of your current email templates and files with all of your coworkers, employees, or team members without the hassle.
- Optimize: Even if you currently have hundreds of email templates and base emails developed, view them all in a gallery that’s completely optimized. An optimized gallery is ideal for those browsing with smartphones or tablet devices.
- Test and preview: Take advantage of a built-in testing feature, perfect for testing new email campaigns, layout formats, and on various devices before allowing a campaign to go live.
- Dynamic content: Add fresh, informative, and useful new content to each email you send out with just a few clicks, using premade or customized email templates of your own.
- Set delivery times: Schedule your email marketing campaigns with specific delivery times based on a user’s time zone or specific dates that are most relevant to them and their account. Send birthday emails, discounts, or promotional offers to users who have provided you with their birthdate. Ensure the email campaigns you intend to launch reach all of your subscribers during peak internet hours, regardless of their location and current time zone.
- A/B testing: Test multiple emails simultaneously to learn which format, imagery, and messaging works best to attract visitors and to drive revenue to your website or online business. Track and monitor the results of each A/B campaign you launch using an all-in-one email campaign automation service.
Wrap up
Using email marketing to your advantage is advisable whether you’re promoting a new brand or if you’re working to scale an existing and profitable corporation.
With email marketing automation, you can gain valuable insight into the wants and needs of your target audience, while gaining a better understanding of your preferred demographics.
Learn how to deliver the content, services, or products your target demographics desire with drip email marketing campaigns and the proper strategy in place.
Shannon Langmeier and Robert Newgen are part of the digital marketing staff at Predictive Response.