Add My Company
7 Powerful Email Automation Tips to Implement in 1 Hour or Less that Will Skyrocket Your Profits
Most businesses are used to one-off campaigns and seeing results straight away. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, what if I told you that there’s a better way? What if there’s a sales automation system that utilises the latest technology that will connect with your prospects and clients 24/7, for many years from now? It’s called email automation, and it still gives you a much higher return on investment than any Google ad campaign or social media promotion. Let’s dive in!
What Is Email Automation?
Email automation is the use of technology that’s been around for decades. It simply reduces the number of repetitive emails you have to send, and – unlike Jessy at admin – is always on time when it comes to follow-ups and sending out newsletters. And unlike Neil at sales, it does ask for the money regularly.
Email automation has been around for a long time. People started off with automatic replies, then the industry grew. We are currently working with a client who has an email marketing automation system that was probably built in the 90s. And it still works. But today, there are much better solutions. You can automate your transactional emails (booking follow up, thanking them for the purchase, or thanking them for the visit).
Email automation can be used for different purposes:
- Staying in touch with customers and prospects
- Marketing automation
- Sales automation
We will discuss all of these in detail below.
How Email Marketing Automation Can Make You More Money?
You might be thinking: how can one tool make me more money? Well, the simple answer is: like clockwork. You only have limited working hours per day, and so does your sales and marketing team. Not to mention that it’s not the best use of your time to be on the phone all the time to “feel” people’s buying intent. Email marketing automation can take care of that.
So, let’s say that you have a list of 400 past clients. You have two options. You can either call them all and see if they want to buy again (old system and not very efficient), or you could send out a campaign based on purchase history from your autoresponder linked to your CRM. The first option will take about a month, if you have other jobs to do. The second option will probably take 1 hour, once your email marketing is already set up. Honestly, which one would you choose? Oh, have I mentioned that out of the 400 clients probably 4-15 will buy again, if you give them an offer they can’t refuse?
Tools to Use for Email Marketing
There are loads of cost effective email marketing tools available. Some of them are better than others. The only one we can vouch for is ActiveCampaign, as we have been using the software for a long time. Plus, we have partnered up with them. There are, of course, other tools available, and we have covered them in this post. If you are really on a small budget, you can start for free with GMass, a free email marketing provider. Of course, you will have to have all your contacts and customers on your GMail.
7 Email Automation Tips for Better Results
I know that I promised you seven things you can do to automate your marketing. So, here comes the list of things you can do to reduce your workflow and increase your profits in one hour or less.
1. Newsletters
If you don’t have a newsletter, you are missing out. You have to stay in front of your audience and keep them updated. If they don’t hear from you or you become invisible on their social media accounts (nowadays Meta prioritises ads revenue over relevance), you will have no way of letting them know that you are still in business. People get distracted, and the only way you can stay in touch is by automation.
How To Automate
You can put a subscribe button on your website and get people to subscribe to your updates or blog posts. You decide. If you are really lazy, just send out blog posts as and when they are published. If you like writing, send a weekly, biweekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletter.
Why Automate
Once you have people on your list, you can market to them. It’s that simple.
Time Saved
You can save about 2 hours a week by sending out the blog posts automatically. As for the newsletters, the bad news is that you will still need to write them, but don’t have to address and manually send the emails, which will save another couple of hours depending on your customer base.
2. Gated Content Welcome Series
If you don’t have a lead magnet/gated content/download, you will need to add one to the site. This way, people who are interested in what you talk about on your website, but want to try before they buy can benefit.
How To Automate
You can set up a lead capture page on any platofrm and add a lead capture code or script that will put people on the relevant list. Most of the platforms make this super easy to do.
Why Automate
You will need to build a list of prospects (in this case, suspects) to warm them up to become leads and customers. You can create reciprocity, and also create the “like me moment”.
Time Saved
Well, you will save a hundred percent of the time. You don’t have to send anything; the free download and content will be delivered by the email marketing automation system.
3. Blog Subscriptions
Blog subscriptions can be automated using your website’s own system, or by integrating your autoresponder. Either way, you will want repeat traffic, and engagement. The more people consume your content the more they will feel like they already know you and trust you.
How To Automate
You can simply add a blog subscription module from your WordPress site or add one from your autoresponder.
Why Automate
Well, unless you want to send the link to your blog post straight after you published it, why wouldn’t you?
Time Saved
You will save at least 20 minutes per email, so every little bit helps! You can focus on what really matters in your business.
4. Pre-Launch Emails
If you are launching a new marketing campaign for a product or service, you want your existing customers, contacts, and prospects to know about it first. They might even feel hurt that you didn’t let them know. That’s what pre-launch emails are about.
How To Automate
Once you have the page set up to generate interest, you can get people to sign up for more information. The details will be delivered straight to their inbox.
Why Automate
As explained above, you will need to notify people who are already familiar with your brand and offers first. Otherwise, they will feel disadvantaged. Plus, they are more likely to buy than those who just came across your website. Am I right or am I right?
Time Saved
You will save hours of cold calling and emailing (which – by the way – has a very low efficiency) plus the time it would take you to contact every single customer who ever showed interest in your content or service.
5. Special Offers
Just like with pre-launches, special offers should go out to people who already either know, like, or trust you. If they do all three, you have got a deal. Instead of going in cold and bringing in a measly 1 percent conversion rate on your campaigns, you are hitting the iron while it’s hot. People on your list might be searching for the solution you came up with, and the only thing they were waiting for was an offer. Sending out a special offer email will take about 30-45 minutes if you have the right software integrated.
How To Automate
You simply select the people on your list (called list segmentation) and send them a onoe-off email or a seroes of pre-launch emails telling them that the price goes up or the special offer ends in x days.
Why Automate
You want to test your offers on a warm audience before rolling them out. You might even do a limited number of discounts to see who jumps on board on a first-come-first-serve basis. Great idea if you are not sure how your market will react to the price/offer.
Time Saved
You will probably save a couple of hours of emailing, plus you will not have to run an AB test on a cold audience to find out if the offer will be a hit.
6. Behaviour Based Emails
While GDPR rules are changing in the EU soon, cookies are still relevant in 2023 and will help you make more money. For example, we send out emails to people who came back and visited our blog or booking page. We simply thank them and tell them how they can find out more. Nothing spammy.
If you have an eCommerce website, you can send out automated emails to people who abandoned their cart. And it works. People are busy and life often gets in the way. It takes less than an hour to set up, too.
How To Automate
This is where you will need a bit of coding. Nothing too complicated for a sales funnel specialist, but it might be oer your head. It involves adding a tracking code to your site to know when people visited certain pages. You will also have to add conversion tracking.
Why Automate
Well, you don’t want to go through your entire analytics account to find out who was on your sales page and decided not to check out. Let email automation integrated with your other software take care of it!
Time Saved
You will save 10+ hours a month by not having to manually find and contact people who were just one step away from becoming clients.
7. After Sales Emails
Many businesses forget about this aspect of email automation, still it is very important. You can gather feedback, show gratitude, let people know about your return policy, etc. Just make sure everyone’s on the same page.
How To Automate
You will just need to track the sals on your email marketing system and when the pixel fires you will automatically send a reminder for a review, a link to a survey, or an offer related to their order.
Why Automate
You just want to drive sales, and might not have the time or resources (Ann at Admin) to check everyone’s happy with their order. Plus, you can run surveys and recommend products at the same time. Amazon does this really well.
Time Saved
Depending on the volume of sales, you will save 5-15 hours per week not having to check in with customers to ensure they got their order and are happy.
The 4-7-11 Principle
Marketing and email automation is powerful because of this principle. According to Google, the average buyer will spend 7 hours researching the product or service, they need 11 touch points, and 4 different platforms before they make a purchase.
So, the more you interact with your audience, especially your prospects, the more chance you give them to interact with you on different platforms, consume your content, and engage with you.
The Power of Follow-Up
Follow-ups should be the main priority of every sales department or team. If it is not, the business is leaving money on the table. Of course, there are only limited number of hours in a work week, so why not let email automation take care of some of it?
Of course, not all businesses are created equal. At LMNts Marketing, the UK’s most prestigious sales funnel agency we know that. That’s why we design every marketing automation campaign around the business. Our Marketing SWOT and Sales Funnel Mapping services are great for businesses just getting started with sales automation.
Resources:
https://www.activecampaign.com/learn/guides/3-steps-to-building-your-first-automation
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-automation-examples
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-automation/
For more information on 7 Powerful Email Automation Tips to Implement in 1 Hour or Less that Will Skyrocket Your Profits talk to LMNts Marketing