Email Automation and Marketing Automation: A Complete Guide

We've published a follow-up post that takes a deep dive with real-life examples for some of the topics discussed in this article. Make sure to bookmark - A guide to email marketing automation - also.

Did you know that the average open rate for an email is about 25%? This means only a fourth of emails are getting looked at. Hence, this means that even fewer are actually being read.

It’s no wonder why so many companies and businesses have given up on email marketing. There is a myth that email marketing is no longer effective for today’s consumers. However, we don’t believe that’s true.

The problem isn’t that people don’t want to read emails. In fact, most people have email readily available on their mobile devices.

The problem is that people don’t want to read boring emails or emails that aren’t even targeted to themselves. Why would you want to waste your time reading an email that doesn’t apply to you?

But, don’t worry. There is a secret weapon that only those of us with experience in the email marketing world know about: email automation.

To learn about what email automation is, how it can help your business, and how you can use it to your advantage, keep reading. We have everything you need to know here.

What Email Automation Is

Email automation is marked by the automatic sending of an email from your email service provider (ESP). Usually, the email is sent in response to an action that someone takes on your website or your app. 

This means that your ESP can send emails to your customers in accordance with the actions that they take on your website or even on your app. For example, you might want to send a customer an email when they place an order. That email that they get after a place the order is an automated email.

Likewise, you may be familiar with starter emails or the emails that you get when you first come into contact with a company. These are the automatic emails that you are sent when you sign up for an emailing list or offer your email address to a website.

No matter how you decide to use email automation for your business, you’ll be likely to notice some of the benefits that come with using the strategy. Let’s dive into why you should use email automation and what exactly it will do for your business.

Why You Should Use Email Automation

Overall, email automation makes everything easier for business’ marketing team. Instead of having to individually draft every single email that goes out, they can use email automation to ensure that no customer falls through the cracks.

If your marketing team were to have to send out individualized emails, they would be wasting time, money, and energy. Instead, automated email marketing allows them to save all of this for other marketing processes that need it.

Let’s dive into the seven reasons that we’ve composed for why you should use an email automation system for your business.

1. Nurturing Leads

Email has always been one of the best methods to nurture your leads. In fact, it is still one of the best methods to do so.

With email automation, email is even more important in taking care of those relationships and establishing trust and credibility. Through perfectly-timed messages that are relevant to the customer at that moment, you can connect on a deeper level with your leads and current customers.

Even if the customer knows the email automation exists, they will still be impressed by the timeliness and relevance of the emails that you’re sending out. This builds a better relationship with the customers and – in turn – brings in more sales.

2. Personalizing Emails

The timeliness and relevance that we just discussed also goes towards the personalization of the email. A customer that is reading an email about an action that they just took is more likely to feel appreciated by the company that they were interacting with.

With email automation, this kind of email personalization can take your business to the next level by developing deeper and richer relationships with your clients.

3. Reaching Customers

The fact is that customers are more likely to open an email that is associated with something that they were just doing or just thinking about. For example, if a customer just added something to the cart and then left your website, they are likely to open an email that has something to do with that potential purchase.

Having a catchy subject or a more intriguing reason for sending an email will draw customers to open that email. Therefore, you’ll be increasing your open rates and likely increasing your sales numbers.

4. Reading Emails

If a customer sees that they received an email about something that they just did or something that they were just thinking about doing, they are more likely to read the email.

We should stress that opening an email and reading an email or two actions that do not necessarily happen at the same time. Of course, a customer has to open an email to read an email, but they do not have to read an email to open an email. This means that you may have customers that are opening emails but choosing not to read the content.

Even if the customer that you are contacting only reads the subject line of the email that you sent, you have made a point of contact with that person. Even if they don’t read the contents of the email, they saw your business name and subconsciously noted the interaction that they just had with you.

5. Segmenting Customers

Email automation makes segmenting customers much easier. If you are unaware of what customer segmentation is, it’s an extremely useful technique that more and more businesses are implementing every single day.

Segmenting customers means that you are breaking up customers based on a certain characteristic. Perhaps, you want to catch customers at the very beginning of the customer journey or you may want to catch them if they live in a certain part of the world.

Whatever kind of customer or characteristic of consumer you are trying to get, customer segmentation can help you specifically target your emails to that group.

The more you segment your customers, the more personalized your emails will get. However, this being said, segmenting your customers too far can lead to groups that are too small to keep up with. Try to find the balance for your business size.

6. Streamlining Sales 

Any good marketing team understands the sales funnel. They know that the sales funnel is intricate and effective.

By opting for email automation, you can streamline your sales funnel and make it an easier process to follow for your marketing team. This means that you’ll be making your sales funnel more efficient, leaving more time and energy for your marketing team to focus on other things.

While you are using email automation, you can keep track of your click-through rates as well as other actions that your customers take on your website. This will tell you how effective email automation has been at improving your business’ sales funnel process.

7. Promoting Your Business

Whether your customers are reading your emails in full or just reading the subject line, you are promoting your business. Keeping this contact with your customers will keep them thinking about your company more even if only subconsciously, these interactions will be promoting your business in the customers’ minds.

Plus, certain kinds of automated emails like those that come after cart abandonment or special offers can influence a customer to go through with the sale.

Benefits of Email Automation

The advantages of email automation are plenty. Now that we’ve discussed why email automation is the best move for your business, we should discuss why email automation also helps your customers.

It’s more than sales numbers and advertisements.

1. Personalization Strikes Again

Personalization is arguably one of the best traits of email automation. When it comes to your customers, they cherish email personalization more than they may realize.

If you segment your customers and recognize what kinds of customers like certain kinds of interactions, you can personalize your emails to the point where your customers will feel like you are personally interacting with them.

2. Saving Time

Email automation saves your marketing team some time, but it also saves your customer time. Most likely, your customers are sifting through hundreds of emails a day. They won’t want to deal with an email that isn’t relevant to them or doesn’t offer any value to their life at the moment.

Your customers are more likely to appreciate that you are sending content that is relevant to their current experiences. They will subconsciously associate your business with pleasantry and helpfulness.

3. Improve Customer Retention Rate

The fact that email automation can improve customer retention rate is great for both business and the customer. Of course, the business wants to make more money by retaining existing customers, but the customer also wins from this relationship because they are interacting with a trusted, credible business.

By proving to the customer that you are the trustworthy incredible business that they should buy from, you are helping the customer know that they have made a sound choice as a consumer. Hence, you are making the shopping experience better for that customer.

4. Marketing for the Long-Term

By using email automation, you are setting your business up for success in customer relationships. Email automation goes beyond how your business currently is. The strategy allows you to grow as a business and bring in more customers, no matter how big your business gets.

You may be wondering how this benefits your customers. Of course, it benefits you as a business owner or member of the staff at your business.

The truth is that making your email marketing campaign scalable helps your customers know that they can trust you in the long term. This makes their buying experience better and prevents them from having to find a new company when their relationship with your company falls through.

Email Automation Tips

Now that we have you excited about email automation and all of the benefits that come with email automation, let’s get into some email automation tips that you can use with your business strategy.

Growing Your Business With Email Automation

Don’t be afraid to automate emails that will bring your business more sales. You are not annoying a customer by sending an email about something being left in their cart when they were online shopping. You are not annoying a customer to send them coupons on special offers.

Take the time to make these sales efforts through email automation so that you can catch customers who forgot about something in their cart or those who were waiting for a special offer to make a purchase.

Tracking Responses

As you are crafting and improving your email automation process, you should always look towards your customers’ responses. This will tell you how many customers are opening the email, using links to get to your site, taking advantage of offers, buying suggested products, and more.

By looking at these metrics, you can improve your email automation process and make it better for your customers. The more you gear your marketing strategy toward your customers, the more likely you are to increase sales through more positive customer relationships.

Creating Drip Campaigns

If you haven’t heard of a drip campaign before, it is a phrase that refers to the casual, slow implementation of a company’s product or service into communication with a potential customer. This means that you aren’t trying to make a sale the first couple of times that you contact a customer.

Instead, you work on cultivating that relationship before trying to make a sale. Like other email marketing campaigns, you can implement this using email automation.

Top-Notch Email Management Software

To get the most out of email automation, you need top-notch email management software. Lucky for you, that is exactly what we do at helpmonks. 

Our customer service email management software is trusted by over 2000 organizations that send millions of emails. You can get started today by scheduling a demo with us.