Emails are hard to rule out of your communication matrix no matter how many new media you add onto it. They are personal, and they stick. Emails are at least three times more likely to prompt a purchase, and the average order value is 17 percent higher. This brings us to easily conclude that email automation too has its own benefits.
Email Automation is a seamless and least intervention technique to keep your customers engaged without actually spending time and resources on it. On an average 49% of companies are currently using marketing automation with more than half of B2B companies (55%) adopting the technology. Given the fact that email accounts are likely to increase to 4.9 billion by 2017, ignoring this technology would be a grave mistake.
What should you automate?
B2B marketers who implement marketing automation increase their sales pipeline contribution by an average of 10%
Email automation is a widely adopted retention strategy. Not only does it help you get more leads and convert them into customers, but also pushes for great product adoption and up-sells. The crux of an automated email campaign is, well, it needs to be periodic. Choose an event or an action that takes place periodically and which is important to your customers. If that sounded vague, here are some types of emails that you can automate based on triggers and customers’ behavior.
1. Email Opts Ins
Getting an email opt-in from a customer before you start sending out emails is a practice that marketers today lay importance on. But what do you do when a customer still doesn’t make a move after say, 6 months of sending out emails? Would you stop sending out your emails or alter your email pitch? What if none of them worked? Marketing firm Kissmetrics, sends out this automated email to their customers when they don’t hear from them or see any activity from their recipients for a long time. Pretty humble and classy, eh?
2. When you restocked on a product
Customers generally leave their email ids on a product page, when it is stock-out so that retailers can let them know once it is back! Use this opportunity to send automated emails with details letting them know that their product has arrived! Makes them feel that you care.
3. Cart Abandonment
Nothing can put you off as much as an abandoned cart. There are many reasons to why customers move till the last stage of purchase cycle only to abandon it at that point. Send them an email to help them complete their purchase, convincing them to change their mind or asking them what went wrong?
4. When you receive a new membership
This is by far the most basic email etiquette every brand should follow. If a customer is taking the efforts to sit down, fill out a form and sign up with you to be a member, you should thank him and welcome him with open arms! Add the important links and details that your new member might need and make sure their association with you is worth all the efforts!
Tools
There are multiple apps available for various purposes of email automation. Starting from drip emails to entire marketing automation you can pick any one of the ones below that suit you! For instance, Juvlon is a commonly used software to automate trigger based email campaigns. It is your best bet for Click events, Subscription events and Open Events!
Event-triggered or automated emails help you save upto 80% of your direct email budget. Due to the periodicity of this technique, consistent branding is carried out on its own, plus it saves the time and effort! Do try it out and let us know how it worked for you!