Automated email campaigns can take the hard work out of your e-marketing promotions, saving you time while earning you money â€" what more could you ask? After the initial setup, your e-marketing system will automatically email leads, customers, contacts and anyone else you want it to, at predetermined times, over a predetermined period.
There are many advantages to setting up an automated email campaign within any organisation that can source sales from email communication. Our hints, tips and things to avoid will also assist you in developing a successful automated campaign. Whether you develop a simple campaign or a hugely complex series of communications, your e-marketing will benefit from an automated process.
Advantages of automation
We all love it when you can push a button and watch things happen â€" even if it's as simple as your garage door opening without getting out of the car â€" and this concept can now easily be applied to your e-marketing efforts.
• Saves time. After the initial time invested in setting up the campaign, writing the emails and defining the rules for the send, an automated email campaign will run with little or no ongoing input from you. Simply push the button and your e-marketing system will do the hard work.
• Saves money. Free up resources to concentrate on other marketing activities. Automated campaigns are also relatively cost effective compared to other marketing activities â€" it's a cheap way to keep in constant and direct contact with your leads/clients.
• Multitask. An automated email campaign can multitask on your behalf, contacting multiple database groups, sending multiple series of emails, market multiple products/services while you concentrate on other business matters.
• Measure the performance. Automated email campaigns are constantly providing more transparency on how your leads/customers behave. Are they clicking through? Are they purchasing items? When are they doing so? When do they unsubscribe? This information will help youconstantly improve your e-marketing and sales results.
• Increase sales. When you regularly communicate relevant and interesting content to your leads and clients, you are increasing your chances of retaining customers, encouraging sales and maximising cross selling and upselling opportunities.
• Communicate effectively. Establishing an automated email campaign is an excellent opportunity to plan, develop and conquer your e-marketing activities. You will have the opportunity to think through what you want to say, when you want to say it, and how you want to say it â€" and then stick to it. Done right you will develop a sophisticated campaign and remove those ad hoc emails that can often be a detriment to your e-marketing campaign.
Hints , tips and things to avoid
• Be interesting. Ensure your content is relevant and interesting and the design suitable and captivating â€" ideally, your database will look forward to reading your emails, open every single one and become loyal, regular customers!
• Be relevant. If you know some of your contacts live in Brisbane and are interested in buying concrete, don't send them an email relevant only to people based in Sydney and looking at buying agricultural machinery â€" you will only increase your unsubscribes. Don't let an automated email campaign become a lazy way to blanket email your entire database.
• Avoid the impersonal. One of the biggest issues with an automated email campaign is the potential for the communication to come across as impersonal. However, try these tricks to avoid sounding automated:
- When you write your campaign imagine you are writing to one individual â€" try to forget that eventually tens, hundreds or even the thousands may receive it.
- Incorporate the first person in your email, use ‘I' and ‘we' in your email.
- Reply to emails you receive back â€" be the real person at the other end of the email.
- Utilise the merge fields in your e-marketing system â€" at the very least import the first name field.
- Do not use a "no-reply email" address; again be the real person at the other end of the email.
• Timing. Do not bombard your databases with emails. There is no golden rule to how many emails your database will want to receive so try to time your emails to best suit what you do â€" it will require testing but it will also reduce your unsubscribe rates.
• Make changes. Don't just ignore your campaign once it is set up.
- Utilise the data your e-marketing systems provides.
- Focus on what is working, change what isn't. Edit the emails over time â€" you can't use the exact same campaign year in , year out â€" what worked at first will eventually become irrelevant to your database.
