Email is a pivotal marketing communication channel. According to comScore, more than 100 million Americans have an email account. With the advent of smartphones, consumers are no longer tied to their computers to read these messages. In fact, research conducted by comScore found that upward of 50 million Americans accessed their email inboxes through their phones – a number that has certainly grown over the past year as more U.S. consumers opt for smartphones over feature phones.
In short, email has never been more relevant, both to customers and brands. Marketers and salespeople can use it to reach and engage consumers 24/7, as they are almost always within arm’s length of their mobile devices.
Email is pivotal to engaging leads.
That said, creating such extensive email marketing campaigns can be very time consuming. Between devising a strategy, targeting it to a variety of consumers and actually executing the plan, marketers lose a lot of time trying to set up and manage campaigns. This is time they can’t get back, and the loss can lead to bloated costs and budgeting issues. For these reasons many companies have turned to automated marketing campaigns.
The Four Steps of Successful Email Marketing Automation
— First, brands need to plan their marketing strategies – this involves the development of templates, content, offers and approaches. This is a very high-level process and probably the most involved, particularly among key executives.
— Second, brands need to target their campaigns. This means ensuring the appropriate materials and marketing collateral are sent to the right customer. Relevancy is crucial, especially when engaging people through a personal medium such as email.
— Third, businesses need to execute their campaigns. This is one of the central steps that automation can help with – these tools can assist company salespeople with creating brand-compliant communications in a quick and timely fashion.
— Finally, companies need to analyze the performance of their campaigns. This will allow them to plan their strategies better in future initiatives by knowing which elements of their emails worked and which didn’t. Marketing automation solutions can also help marketers collect data and metrics that will improve this step of the email marketing cycle.
By fine-tuning their email marketing machines with automation tools, businesses can spend less time executing and more time working on their branding and actual messaging.