Email Automation is Not as Simple as it Sounds 

333.2 billion emails are sent and received each day in 2022. Your business must find a way to break through this clutter. It's important to recognize that even though it may be time-consuming to set up a successful email automation strategy, this is the best way to get prospects to engage with minimal impact on your daily workflow. We have compiled a guide of the most important “Dos and Don’ts” to seamlessly guide you through email automation.  

The Most Important Dos of Email Automation 

Segmentation is Key 

The first action you should take when setting up email automation, as with most marketing tactics, is creating segments of your recipients. This ensures you are delivering messages that resonate with each prospect’s goals. Consider segmenting your list by industry, purchase history, buyers' journey stage, past activity or special interests. This will allow your strategy to send the right email to the right person at the right time. For example, if a user has bought Nikon camera accessories from your photography store before, if segmented correctly, this user will receive emails regarding deals and updates on Nikon equipment. If you opted to not segment your list, the user who only buys Nikon could be receiving content that is irrelevant to them like deals on film cameras and Cannon accessories. This decreases the prospect’s likelihood to purchase again because they are not receiving the information that appeals to them. In order to facilitate future purchases, it is critical to filter out irrelevant information and only present to customers what they want to see by segmenting your email list.  

Incorporate Personalization 

Another important aspect of email automation to consider is personalization. Personalization goes hand in hand with segmentation because segmenting your email list will allow you to more easily personalize for subscribers. One easy way to personalize is to send emails for abandoned carts, price drops on items customers have viewed and order confirmation emails. Overall, do your best to make your subscribers feel like VIPs and remember to consider your customers' location and needs. Address your customer by name, recognize important anniversaries and purchasing milestones and be less formal by using humor and avoiding jargon.  

Track Results 

Always track your results. Tracking results from the emails you have sent to customers and prospects will allow you to see if your strategy is working and where you need to improve. If you are not consistently tracking results, you may miss areas for improvement. Take note of click through rates, bounce rates, clicks per link, unsubscribes and content downloads. Noticing patterns and optimizing your strategy to the behaviors you notice in your email data will continue to make your emails more effective. Try using email tracking software’s such as HubSpot, Salesloft or GMass. Remember that while open rates may not be available through apple mail, you can still look at and place importance on bounce rates and clicks per link. Check out our blog on the loss of this critical email metric and what it means for your business.  

The Most Important Don’ts of Email Automation 

Don’t Forget to Align Your Teams Messaging 

Remember to not neglect sales and marketing alignment. Consistent messaging across teams ensures your customers understand your business, offers and key differentiators. Inconsistent messages confuse, and therefore lose, prospects. Shared goals between sales and marketing teams for email marketing help keep an open line of communication. If the sales team has come up with a special deal on products or services, make sure this offer is communicated to marketing and that the marketing team is able to effectively communicate this deal to customers and prospects. When you neglect sales and marketing alignment, goals become much more difficult to reach and communication with the target market is often inaccurate or difficult to understand. 

Don’t Flood Your Prospect’s Inbox  

It is important to not spam subscribers. It may be tempting to send every subscriber every piece of marketing material hoping that something will resonate with them, and they will convert. Unfortunately, doing this only irritates the subscriber and is more likely to direct them straight to the “unsubscribe” button rather than the “buy now” button. Instead, use your segmentation and personalization tools to send each subscriber only the most relevant information. As a rule of thumb, email your subscribers once or twice a week. This will keep them aware and engaged without making them feel like they are being inundated with unnecessary information.  

Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help 

Finally, never be afraid to ask for help. There are plenty of resources out there! Sometimes it feels like you’ve tried everything, and you are just not reaching your goals. We get that. In 2023, the average consumers email is flooded with sales and marketing content from dozens of brands. Email marketing is not an easy task. That is where SilverTech comes in.  

SilverTech is a full-service digital experience agency with a strong team of developers, marketers and digital content specialists with a long list of email marketing and automation experience. Check out our email marketing services or, contact us today.