Email marketing automation involves using specialist tools to create automated email marketing campaigns that are triggered by a customer action. Let’s break that down a bit more.

Let’s say your marketing automation campaign targets a particular demographic in Auckland. You have a tool or valuable piece of content on your website (like an eBook) that appeals to people in this demographic. Using a combination of PPC and SEO, you reach this Auckland audience and capture their email addresses in return for the tool or piece of content you make available.

What do you do now? Include the email addresses on the list of people who receive your monthly newsletter? Pass them onto your sales team?

The goal, of course, is to further engage the audience with your brand and offering. Automated email marketing does this for you by sending out emails you create at intervals you set based on actions the customer takes.

Benefits of Email Marketing Automation

It’s Immediate

Marketing automation sends emails to your customers and prospective customers without delay. This is not possible when you work manually as you are unlikely to always have someone available at the right time to send an email to a specific customer.

Ensures Marketing Emails are Sent

Following on from the last point, it’s unlikely all your marketing emails will be sent if you do it manually, let alone sending them at the right time.

Structured Approach to Nurturing Leads

Using email marketing automation also ensures you take a carefully planned and structured approach to this part of your marketing strategy. With a structured approach, you will get better analytics to measure performance and will have more information to make improvements.

Gives Your Sales Team a Better Focus

Email marketing automation lets your sales team focus their efforts on the most promising leads.

Improves the Customer Experience

You can set up your automated email marketing campaign in a way that segments users based on the actions they take. In other words, you can personalise the content that customers receive. This creates a more personal and relevant connection and improves the customer experience.

Keeps Customers Engaged with Your Brand

One of the challenges of managing your sales funnel is to keep potential customers interested in and engaged with your brand. After all, your sales funnel is probably not the only funnel the customer is in as one or more of your competitors could be targeting that customer too.

Automated email marketing campaigns help to maintain customer engagement.

Enhances Customer Loyalty

Following on from the above point, automated email marketing isn’t only beneficial for new customers. It can also help create loyalty with existing customers, ensuring they continue to come back to your business.

Reduces the Risk of Error

On a more practical point, manually sending marketing emails carries the risk of a mistake being made, making your company look unprofessional. This is much less likely with marketing automation.

Reduces Costs

As has been touched on in previous points, automating this part of your marketing campaign is much more efficient than doing it manually. This saves you money.

Increases the Lifetime Value of YourCustomers

From cross-selling to upselling to ensuring you get repeat business from customers, automating your email marketing campaigns can help.

Makes it Possible to Carry Out Quality Testing

You will also be able to test various parts of your automated campaign as you will have consistency in the standard and delivery of your marketing messages. This testing will lead to improvements.

Make Marketing Automation Part of Your Email Marketing Strategy

With automated emails, there will still be a place for sending newsletters and manual emails to customers and potential customers on your list. You can take your efforts to a new level, however, by adding marketing automation as well.