We already know emails are cheap, essential, and useful communication tool in our everyday life. 3.9 billion, which was the approximate number of email-users globally in 2019, and it will grow to 4.48 billion users around 2024.
But, you might be wondering if email automation is a good option to upskill your marketing game or not. Then let me break this to you for every $1 spent email will give you a $44 ROI. Even in the age of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, marketers keep coming back to emails because it’s 40x more effective.
The best part about email is that you don’t have to invest in any fancy automation tool to leverage its advantages fully. Believe it or not, according to Campaign Monitor, automated emails produce 320% more revenue than non-automated emails.
If all these stats made you enticed and you want to learn everything about automated emails, then you’ve come to the right place. Here is the comprehensive guide on how to send automated emails to grow your business. Without further ado, let’s dig in.
What is Email Automation?
Email automation is the perfect way to send the right message to your target audience without wasting much time and effort. Automated emails will help you to send out emails to your prospects based on a schedule or triggers.
For example, let’s assume you would like to send an email to somebody when they subscribe to any book on your website. Your email to that person will help them get introduced to your brand. You might want to send links and other resources from your website to that person.
Now it would be really frustrating if you have to manually create emails every time someone subscribes or sign up to your website. So, you can set up an email instead that gets automatically sent every time a new person joins your site, without a hassle.
Customers who receive automated abandoned shopping cart emails are 2.4x more likely to complete their purchase” – Experian
How to Send Automated Email
55% of all companies use automated emails to market their products and raise brand awareness. If you want to make your business standard from the rest then follow this easy guide on how to send an automated email.
Create a Plan
The secret sauce to any marketing campaign is a perfect plan for success. It is the first step to any marketing strategy. Just like this, you will need to create a plan to start your email automation campaign. Start by collecting all the accurate data needed to equate the actions of your customer with relevant emails.
Set up your emails by triggers that are based on your email subscribers’ behavior. For instance, you could automate:
- Welcome emails, getting introduced to a product or services, After a sign-up
- A confirmation message after subscription
- Abandoned cart emails
- Email for re-engagement after some time of non-activity
- Refer a friend for a coupon, discount or offer
- Email for birthdays, or a specific milestone
These triggers are the basic foundation for creating an email marketing campaign. According to DMA’s Report, 77% of email ROI comes from triggered and segmented campaigns. It is crucial to have a plan for where to use data in which form and how.
2. Segment Your Subscribers
Marketers often make a common mistake by including every subscriber on their email list with a similar message. But there are several platforms out there that offer the option to segment your subscribers based on certain criteria which increase the chance for them to act on your personalized emails. this segment includes
- Location
- Product/ services purchased or not purchase
- From where the land about your business (for instance, Facebook, Twitter)
Segmenting your email subscribers based on their activities will increase the click-through rate, and it will influence them to take action.
3. You have to Personalize Your Emails
Sending emails to your subscribers with no personalization can backfire you. It is crucial to personalize your email by your every subscriber’s name, location, and the services or the product they are looking for. Also, you can personalize your emails to build a good relationship with your subscribers for a long term goal.
4. Select the Right Automation for You
You can select from three different types of email service providers: Freemium, Mid-tier, and Enterprise.
- Freemium email automation tools, offer a free version with basic features that you can upgrade for the future. If you have a small business with a small number of subscribers, then the freemium email automation service is the best choice for you.
- Mid-tier email service providers are suitable for mid-market companies, small and medium-sized Enterprises. If you are actively looking for growing your email list, then the mid-tier email service provider is the best pick for you.
- If your organization has a dedicated marketing team, high volume email marketing list, then you should use an enterprise email service provider. Enterprise service offers advanced functions with premium features that’ll help you to grow your business. Selecting the right automation tool will keep your investment low and returns high.
5. Measure Your Results
Measure what works for you by analyzing the email results and look for certain key performance indicators. Analyzing your email messages will help you to know if your emails were successful or not. You can measure the success of your email by following these points
Email Delivery Rate
It’s important to know the percentage of the email messages you sent that actually arrived at your subscriber’s inbox. If you get a low delivery rate, that means you need to contact your ISP or web host to know the reason why.
Open Rate
Most of the email subscribers don’t care about opening the delivered messages. That’s why the open rate is an important indicator to measure the success of your automated email.
View Rate
The view rate is another vital indicator of the success of automated emails. You will pass the view test if the majority of your email subscribers open and view the messages.
Click-Through Rate
After receiving your email, the number of subscribers who clicked your call to action, will determine the click-through rate of your automated emails. If you get a high click-through rate, that means your emails are engaging and triggers your targeted subscriber to take action.
Conversion Rate
The click-through rate of your emails will determine the conversion rate. After clicking your emails call to action how many subscribers ultimately took your expected action? This action can be signing up for an online event, webinar, sales, etc.
5 Free Email Automation Tools to Save Your Money and Procure 4x Better ROI
Based on the Survey of Content Marketing Institute, approximately 87 % of the B2B marketers and 77% of B2C marketers use email marketing to grow their business. Without an effective and efficient email automation tool, marketing is like cold hell!
A lot of companies use email automation tools to simplify their email marketing process. However, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to use one of these tools. There are several free automation tools available that not only save your money but will also provide better ROI.
Scroll down to read our list of the top 5 email tools to send automated emails free:
1. Sender
The Sender is one of the finest email marketing tools that let you create newsletters, insurance deliverability, HTML knowledge etc. All you need to do is select a template and personalize it with images videos and texts. You can customize your newsletters for each email subscriber to create a better impression on them.
The robust analytics feature of Sender helps its user to track the open rate, view rate, and click-through rate. You can even create a perfect buyer profile based on the action of your email subscribers. This will help you to create personalized email strategy and enticing offers.
2. Mailchimp
In the world of email automation tools, Mailchimp is the king. It is the most popular free email automation tool every marketer swears by. The free plan of Mailchimp offers basic features of email marketing like email creation and scheduling.
Mailchimp will offer you valuable audience insights and recommendations feature to the marketing game. It’s easy to use platform. In fact, you can design your emails with the help of the content manager, here you can store your file and images to get easy access. With the help of Mailchimp, you can automate your emails to send welcome messages, confirmation messages, abandoned cart reminders, and much more.
3. HubSpot Email Marketing
Hubspot’s email automation tool offers amazing features to create marketing emails to engage with your subscribers actively. With the help of HubSpot email marketing tools, you can list membership, create and send marketing emails, create automated emails, analyze your email marketing campaign’s performance.
HubSpot’s email automation tools can help small businesses to send thank you emails, email to promote their services, offers, etc. This tool is user-friendly and features the drag and drop visual editor that is pretty handy. Also, you will get loads of the same place to create newsletter emails at a go.
The best part of HubSpot’s email automation tool is its integration with other HubSpot tools. You can test your marketing email and improve email deliverability with the help of this tool.
4. Sendinblue
Sendinblue offers both email automation tools and customer relationship management functions. Sendinblue offers several email design templates to create a catchy and engaging email. What’s interesting is you can preview your design to ensure they look exactly the way you want on the screen.
Once you’re all done with the design of your email, you can use several other features like a segmented recipient list, A/B testing to optimize your marketing campaign and target your ideal customers.
5. SendPluse
SendPluse’s email automation feature is well popular because of its perfectly designed email templates and drag and drop editor. With the help of SendPluse, you can personalize your email at ease.
SendPluse will guide you through personalizing your emails and sending them based on the trigger, behavior, and other elements. The subscriber rating feature of SendPlus is a bonus point, and you can identify your valuable subscribers with the help of this feature. Even you can send customized emails based on name, gender, date of birth, age, and profession.
6 Benefits of Email Automation
If you are still wondering why you should use email automation for your business, then read these six benefits of email automation:
#1 It will Save Your Time
Based on the Report from the Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Excellence 2018, 30% of the business say that saving time is the primary benefit of email automation. It’s difficult to manually create emails every time a new subscriber subscribes to your email list. By automating your emails, you are saving time that you can invest in other areas of your business.
#2 Scale Up Your Business
You can invest the huge amount of time and money you’ll save from automating your email marketing campaign to scale up your business.
#3 You can create engaging content
With the help of automatic email, you can create content to engage with your subscribers. Engaging content will increase user engagement. With automated emails, you can encourage your email subscribers to use your product, provide feedback, etc. For instance, you can send an automated “how-to” guide email trigger to some new subscriber who hasn’t used your product or services yet.
#4 Build Your Brand
Automated emails are a great way to communicate and engage with your customers. It allows creating a bond between your potential customers and your business. By sending them timely updates, product features, you can extend your brand presence.
#5 Gain Customer Loyalty
When you send personalized emails to each of your customers, they will feel valued. The automated email will help you to gain customer loyalty, which can transform into consistent users for the long-term.
#6 Revenue & Action
When you send emails to your customers regularly, they will return the favor by entering their information or upgrading their account. Automated email target people who have already interacted with your brand product or website. That means they are more likely to take further action in the future and increase the chance of getting better revenues.
However, to help you become a pro in sending automated emails, here are some tips you can use:
- Don’t use automated emails like a robot. People like to interact with real people, not with companies. Personalize your emails. Write like you talk. That should be the mantra while writing automated emails. Use conversational language with a personal touch to engage with a larger group.
- Keep the subject line of your automated email informal and conversational. Subject line with a personal touch is more likely to be opened by your subscribers.
- Every automatic marketing email you send should include an unsubscribing option. Instead of writing “unsubscribe” or “click here to unsubscribe” write something fun like “click here if you don’t want to hear from me”.
- Send a personalized birthday, anniversary, message to your client or customer. This small gesture will help you to make a good impression on them.
- You can ask about your audience’s preference by simply asking them about their needs. Send them personalized web form in your automated email to record their preference for future reference.
- Always use your target audience’s name in all the emails. It’s important to use names not only at the beginning of an email but also in mid-sentence to give a personal touch.
Winding Up
Now that you know everything about automated emails and how to send one effectively, it’s time to set up your email marketing campaign. With the help of automated email tools, you can measure some important metrics like open, view, click-through rate, spam rate, deliverability rate, bounce rate, and much more.
Once you are familiarized with the use of automated emails, you can drive results without spending time, money, and continuous effort. Here’s a heads up, the goal of automated emails is to increase the user experience, so always remember to provide value and be creative!
Now go ahead and automate your emails like a pro!
