6 Tips for Automating your Email Marketing

by Campbell Jof, Guest Contributor

Email Marketing has stood the test of time and continues to be an important marketing tool. Though many other digital marketing strategies have evolved but email marketing still enjoys a dominant place.​

6 Tips For Automating Your Email Marketing

 
However, when it comes to email marketing, there is an incredible competition as hundred of emails are competing for attention in every subscriber’s inbox. Here, automating your emails can work like magic for you. But how to get started? Here are 6 tips for automating your email marketing for better efficacy and best possible results.

Email Segmentation

As per a survey by DMA, marketers have experienced a 760% increase in their email revenue after adopting email segmentation. Thus, more targeted the message, the more are chances of your subscribers to act on it.

It goes without saying that your email list consists of different kinds of people and all have different interests, purchasing behavior and profiles. When subscribers are so different, treating them with ‘one hat fits all’ approach is not going to bring you excellent results. Here, email segmentation comes into the picture and allows you to provide a personalized experience to your subscribers.
You can segment your email list based on the purchasing pattern, demographics, emails they have opened, and more. Through segmentation, you will be able to craft more targeted email messages for your subscribers and they will certainly find it more relevant. Thus, email segmentation is a good practice to keep your customers and prospects invested and keep you out of their junk folder.

Send Valuable Content
The content you offer through your email messages needs to add value to the life of your subscribers in some way else your emails may straight go to the bin.It’ s the value you offer that keep the engages and encourages the subscribers to take an action.

The best way to do this is by stating how your product or services address audience’s challenges or fulfill their needs. It can be by sharing a recent blog post that talks about a common concern of customers or any specific customer queries, etc. sharing a case study how using your product benefitted someone, featuring a client testimonial, or an email that highlights benefits of using your service or products.  This kind of content does not look promotional and subscribers can see the benefits upfront.  

Test, Test, Test
To ensure the efficacy of your email campaigns, it is good to test your emails. Testing your emails will help you figure out the best times and days to send your emails. What works for a particular brand may not work for you, so the response rate tends to differ from brand to brand in the email marketing.

So, you need to test by sending your emails on different timings like sending emails at 10.am on a Monday morning or by sending emails at 12.am on a Sunday afternoon. Then you need to actively track and compare your open rates and click-through rates to find out the best timing for your email campaigns. To dramatically increase your email response rate, you can automate your email blasts based on the best time for your subscribers.

Select Right Solution
Picking up right software for email marketing means half the battle is won. Though, I agree there is an overwhelming option for marketing automation software in the market and in such situation selecting the one for your business is not an easy task. However, instead of picking the one that offers maximum features, go for the one that takes care of all your business needs.

A good way to go about this is, list down all the features you are looking for and then shortlist which software offers all those features. Out of the shortlisted ones, only consider those that fall within your budget and don’t stress over the extra features that you are not going to use ever.

To be Consistent, but not Compulsive
You can schedule your email campaigns to drive maximum results from your email marketing efforts. You need to be consistent with your email messages else people forget you. But don’t overdo it else your emails may land up in the spam folder. So, the point here is you need to strike a great balance and analyze does it improves your click-through rates or not. Besides, sometimes having an amazing email template design can also skyrocket your CTR rates.  

Keeping a refined Email list
While maintaining a large email list looks ideal but it is good to get into the practice of refining your email list from time-to-time. Remember, it is not about having a long list of subscribers rather it is all about no. of active subscribers.

You can always send a break up email to subscribers who have never responded to your emails or have not opened any of your emails for a while. And again if you don’t receive any reply then you now you can remove them from your email list without a second thought. Moreover, some autoresponder programs also provide the option to clean up your email list regularly.                                                                                                           
Lastly, follow the above-said tips to effectively deliver more value through your emails and experience an improved  email response rate.
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Author Bio:
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Campbell Jof is a Creative Head for Designhill, as well as a blogger and designer. He writes on topics concerning design, eCommerce, start-ups, digital marketing, and interactive content. His creative work has earned him several laurels over the years.