The email automation process is the way forward for businesses that want to deliver an incredible customer experience while boosting their bottom line. When we think of effective email marketing, two things come to mind: relevance and timing. Acquiring news leads and delivering an awesome customer experience become so much easier if you have the power to create the right message and send it to the right people and at the right time.
Email automation gives you the very power you need to achieve your business goals with ease. Take a look at these insurance email marketing insights to find out how email automation can improve your business processes. Many businesses believe that either email automation doesn’t produce good results or it’s too hard to get it right. On the bright side, if you have a proper email automation system in place, it becomes increasingly convenient to implement highly fruitful email marketing processes.
Setting up email automation process
Email automation revolves around workflows or how you direct an automation system to take actions. Since automation software doesn’t act like the human brain, you have to create repeatable processes. The following are fundamental steps to creating an email automation process:
- Identify your audience
We understand the importance of personalization: how it enhances customer experience and increases the likelihood of converting a lead into a customer. Email automation enables you to send personalized messages to a target audience. So, the first step of the process is to know who you want to send a message to. For example, the audience of an upselling campaign will be your existing customers who have not purchased a product yet. For this, you need to translate the identified case into a workflow your software can understand.
- Define your goals
Email automation requires strategic efforts: you shouldn’t take shots in the dark. Your email automation initiative is only as good as your strategy. Therefore, define your goals clearly before launching a campaign. What do you really achieve with your email campaigns? Do you want people to buy your products? Learn more about your brand? Take a specific action? Once you identify your goals, you can create the right messaging to achieve them.
It’s also important to define what happens when someone takes an action. Let’s say you create a campaign to make people request a demo. If one of your prospects requests a demo with the first email, you have to unenroll them and take them to the next level. That’s how you need to build workflow’s logic.
- Set enrollment criteria
Enrollment criteria is the definition of attributes that must be met before someone enters into a workflow. That’s where you depend on data in your automation system. When you can create automated email workflows the right way, your prospects and customers get the right message at the right time. For example, if someone clicks on your ads and leaves their details, they are automatically added to your CRM where they start receiving emails tailored to their unique situation.
- Test your process
Don’t forget to test your email automation process before reaching your audience with it. Watch out for errors, workflow charts and cases, and other settings. Once you’re happy with the workflows, let your automation tool take over. Don’t hesitate to make changes to address an issue or improve your performance.
Conclusion
Automation sounds like a difficult thing to manage. It is not something difficult to manage if you choose the right automation platform that fits your business model and industry. Once you choose the right platform, be sure to work on basics. Before you define your email automation process, take a step back and think about your customers journey or what steps they will take before becoming your brand advocates.
