Let’s be brutal here. Email marketing isn’t for the weak of heart. You don’t just churn out content and broadcast them to everyone on your mailing list.
For example, are they in the mood for one of your discount offers? Do they require further nurturing with more informative content? It’s all about sending the right kind of content to the right person — at the right time.
Unfortunately, it’s incredibly easy to miss this opportunity in the everyday blur of a marketer’s life. And that’s exactly why you need to integrate email marketing automation into your strategy.
In this post, we’ll discuss the most effective ways to do this.
Let’s dive in.
1. Automate Email Address Extraction
Imagine being in the real estate industry and receiving many email updates from listing sites such as Realtor.com and Zillow.com.
While you’re happy that you received the messages since they contain leads that you can use for your business, the task of having to comb through each unread message to extract the information you need can be quite overwhelming.
Depending on the number of listing sites you signed up for, and the settings you chose on how often they would send you email updates, it may take you hours (even days) to extract the data.
That’s the struggle you’ll face if you extract the data manually.
Instead of spending hours manually combing through your inbox for pertinent data, you can automate the extraction process with the help of email parser software.
These work by letting you define “rules” that weed out irrelevant information, keep certain details intact, and consolidate them in a structured format.
For example, within a few clicks, you can create a rule that extracts the email sender’s address. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to get this done.
Apart from the sender’s address, Parserr software also allows you to pull information from the email’s body, subject line, CC recipients, and even PDF attachments. This gives you the flexibility to parse different types of data, such as invoices, receipts, and other business documents.
It’s worth noting that not every email parser software is the same, so you have to see which fits with the automation you are setting up.
For instance, if you want to extract and structure data from PDF invoices, then Parserr’s drag-and-drop PDF data extraction tool would be of great help. It also supports heaps of integrations through Zapier — an automation platform that lets you weave two different services into a single workflow.
A popular integration for Parserr is with an automation platform like ActiveCampaign. By linking both services through Zapier, you can easily set up workflows such as onboard new contacts to an automation list, update contacts, create deals, and more.
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform that lets you build forms, design newsletters, segment your contacts, set up customer interactions in your sales pipelines, and more. You can also have a look at the email service providers.
2. Sending Welcome Emails
The worst thing you can do to leads is to leave them oblivious to the fact that they’re subscribed to your mailing list. Not only will it reflect badly on your brand, but it’s also illegal in areas with strict anti-spam laws.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the most popular brand in your niche. If you want prospects to warm up to your value offerings, you need to treat them and their privacy with respect.
As such, be sure to automate a “welcome email” that wraps up their subscription as well as gives them the option to unsubscribe right then and there.
In addition to these tips, below are a few more tactics you should consider:
Send Content Recommendations
As a marketer, you can’t afford to miss the engagement opportunity present whenever users open your email. To make the most out of the interaction, consider starting off their subscription with a couple of content recommendations.
Say “Thank You”
It takes trust for visitors to convert into subscribers — the least you can do is say “thank you” in the friendliest way possible. Feel free to utilize GIFs, videos, or just a quick image with your genuine smile.
Example from: Nomadic Matt
Summarize Your Value Propositions
The earlier you set the right expectations, the more value you can get from every subscriber. Don’t take several paragraphs before you mention your value propositions in your welcome email.
3. Scheduling Date-Based Activities
In email marketing, there are many ways to maintain brand awareness without spamming newsletters that your subscriber’s don’t care about.
One such way is to schedule date-based emails on times that matter to your audience.
The easiest way to use a date-based email for engagement is to send leads special “gifts” or treats for their birthday. To turn this opportunity into a conversion, offer them a special discounted rate for one of your products or services.
Apart from birthdays, you can also present leads with a similar message during their subscription’s anniversary.
A tip when automating date-based emails: be sure you capitalize the occasion by sending offers aligned with the subscriber’s interests. This requires a comprehensive lead segmentation strategy that tracks user activity on your website.
4. Using E-Commerce Triggers
Finally, automated emails are powerful tools for securing conversions in an online store. For this, there are a handful workflows you need to consider. Here are three of the best ones:
Recovering Lost Sales from Abandoned Carts
It takes a great deal of work to get visitors all the way to your checkout page, but they sometimes cancel the transaction for several reasons — like losing internet connection or being distracted by something else. You can squeeze more sales by sending an “abandoned cart” email that reminds them of the items they left on your site.
Target Site Visitors
It’s a known fact that most of your visitors won’t convert on their first visit, but they still showed their interest in your brand nonetheless. As such, they are perfect targets for an automated email that highlights your best products.
Upsell to Recent Buyers
Have add-ons you’d like to offer your recent customers? You can automate a follow-up email that presents them these related products and upgrades to maximize the value of each conversion.
To maximize your success with e-commerce triggers, remember the following:
- Fine-tune your subject line
Your email subject line is the first thing your leads will see whenever they receive your email. A good strategy is to exploit their fear of missing out, which incorporates urgency with words like “limited-time,” “today only,” “about to expire,” and so on. - Optimize your preview text
Just like your subject line, optimizing your preview text will also help boost your email open rates. Make sure it mentions the specifics of your offer. - Measure and Improve
Even if you spend the next hour going over a hundred different email automation tips, it’s still impossible for you to come up with the perfect strategy. The only advice that’s guaranteed to work 100% of the time is to track your campaign’s performance and let the numbers show you how to improve.
Conclusion
Email automation is a great way to level-up your digital marketing game. And with the right tools in your email marketing arsenal, it doesn’t necessarily have to be difficult. If you need to know which bulk email list verification tools to use, check this review from AccuWeb Hosting team blog.
With the right tools and techniques provided by the email marketing companies available in the market today, you can develop self-sustaining email automation campaigns within a day. Hopefully, the strategies above helped steer you in the right direction. Good luck and have fun automating!