How many emails do you send and receive in a day? Of those you receive, how many do you open and actually engage with? Marketers use email automation (or should be) as a primary aspect of outreach. According to Campaign Monitor, automated email messages have a 5% higher open rate and 152% more click-through rate than standard messaging. A monthly newsletter is great, but you can use email automation for a lot of marketing purposes like re-engagement and conversions. Optimize your email automation strategy to maximize your conversion rate for campaigns.
Determine Your Goal
First, ask yourself what the goal of a particular campaign is. Are you trying to raise awareness for your company, gain subscribers or increase your social media following? An OKR can help you organize your objectives and key results. An OKR will help you organize your goals and allow you to measure outcomes. Along with defining a goal, you’ll need to know what kind of automation you should use.
There are various forms of automation; for example, a welcome workflow triggers an automation when a user subscribes or submits a form. This type of automation aims to turn new subscribers into paying customers. An engagement workflow leverages a list of users who interact with your site and encourages them to take action. Target users who click on marketing or social media promotions, fill out contact forms or explore more than one page on your website. You can also take advantage of email automation for users that have dropped off from your website. Re-engage them with exclusive content or a special deal.
Know Your Audience
As a marketer, knowing your audience is top priority! Whether you’re posting on social media or redesigning a website, it’s important to know who you’re speaking to. By segmenting your audience, you can tailor your email campaigns to encourage engagement. Segment your contacts by company size, past purchase, or demographics. You most likely have a good idea of who your audience is. In order to segment accordingly, look to social media and Google Analytics for accurate data about who’s engaging with your content.
Capture data about your audience by syncing your CRM system (customer relationship management). This system organizes leads and customers. This data will provide a more robust insight into your audience for future campaigns and social media posts. You may already use a particular CRM. Integrate your CRM with your website and email automation campaign to capture users who engage on your website as well as with email campaigns. Whether your website is Drupal, WordPress, or another CMS, Sevaa Group can help you integrate the two systems.
Craft Your Campaign
Platforms like Mailchimp allow you to get creative with your email campaigns. Depending on the CRM you use, you may also be able to build campaigns directly in the system. Regardless of where your building your email, here are a few tips to promote a high open-rate and engagement.
- Personalize emails – If you’re building a campaign directly in your CRM to send to a lengthy list of contacts, you can include [NAME] to automatically populate the contact’s name. This adds a more personal touch as opposed to a generalize welcome.
- Optimize preview text – Your subject line and the preview text are the first things your audience sees among a sea of emails in their inbox, thus it needs to stand out. The preview text often gets overlooked. Use this section to give a very brief and catching summary of the email campaign.
- Include CTAs – Your calls-to-action should be clear and concise. Bright and obvious CTAs guide users to conversion. Ensure that all CTA links lead to the correct landing page on your website. This is also a good chance to use UTM parameters so that you can track how engaged your readers are.
- Limit image use – While your campaign should be visually stimulating, be aware that not all images show up in your email based on the user’s browsers. Test your email before you send in various browsers. Consider how you can organize your text for readability purposes. Users are more likely to read bullet points and smaller paragraphs as opposed to large blocks of text.
Not only does email automation promote conversions, it saves you a lot of time. Instead of sending multiple, personalized emails to a long list of contacts, you can build one email, optimize, and automate. Integrate your email automation, website, and CRM in order to collect valuable data from campaigns for future content. Talk to Sevaa Group about integration and how we can help you automate your workflows.
