Why Email Automation is Essential to Your Marketing Strategy

Email automation is the cherry on top of the email marketing strategy cake. It enhances the process and makes for a cleaner marketing technique. Although seemingly straightforward, there are many hidden gems within email automation software that allows companies to customize their strategy and develop their relationship with customers even further.

What is Email Automation?

Email automation is part of the email marketing strategy. Without automation, this marketing strategy is dead. Email automation allows business owners to send emails to customers without actually having to send the emails themselves. This allows for a broader reach with less work. It also means that there is less room for human error, meaning that emails will be sent at the right moment, time and time again.

Why is Email Automation Vital?

Many companies use email as a marketing strategy, and automation is crucial to this strategy. It would be next to impossible for large companies to send all of the emails manually, and very difficult for small businesses to do so as well. Although possible, there is undoubtedly a better way. This is where email automation comes in, says Kevin Peguero.

Is Email Automation Software Easy To Use?

Email automation software used to be only used by large corporations, but now it can be purchased and used by anyone who wishes to email their subscribers. It has become increasingly easy to use, and they even come with templates now. These templates allow anyone, even people with no experience when it comes to writing emails, to create aesthetically pleasing emails with ease.

What Can Email Automation Software Be Used For?

Email automation is used to send emails, of course, but there are also other features that many companies find useful. Email automation can be used for newsletters and many other forms of communication. Welcome emails, email courses, and sales pitches can all be sent using automation software. What’s even better? You can put in specific triggers for those emails to send to different people at different times.

What Are Triggers?

When it comes to email marketing, you don’t want to send the same email to every customer, especially if your company has many different products and divisions. By sectioning out your audience, you can send newsletters, email courses, and product pitches to the customers that are actually interested. This promotes higher open rates, higher conversion rates, and more sales.

How Are Triggers Used?

To section out your audience, you change the triggers on each email to be specific to where the subscription came from. If the subscription came from a landing page for an email course, then the email course should be the emails that are sent. If you are wanting to pitch a specific product, then the subscribers that should be targeted are ones that have bought or shown interest in similar products. When launching a new product, the same technique should be used. There are even ways now to trigger email automation to customers based on their level of Instagram influence or trigger automated thank you’s when those influencers mention you on Instagram making strategies like influencer marketing easier.

Generic newsletters can be sent to all subscribers, but if the newsletter is about something specific, it should be sent to a target audience that is interested in that topic as well. This also reduces the chance of customers flagging your emails as spam or unsubscribing because the email topics are things that they care about. You should never forget that there is a person behind the email, and no one appreciates being sent multiple emails on subjects they aren't even remotely interested in.

How Do I Find The Right Email Automation Platform For My Brand?

There are tons of email automation software available for business owners to use, but finding the best one for your needs is a different story. Here are a few of the top email automation companies and a little bit about what makes each one unique.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is one of our go-to tools for email marketing in general, especially for e-commerce brands. Any brand that sells direct to consumer (DTC), and especially on that has Shopify in its stack, should seriously consider using Klaviyo. From automations to campaigns, reporting and integrations, this is a leading platform for email marketing.

Email Up

Email Up is a best-in-class email design platform for ecommerce brands, agencies, and freelancers. The platform has beautiful templates that help you design beautiful emails in a matter of minutes. They also have direct integrations with the major email marketing platforms listed in this article.

ActiveCampaign

One of ActiveCampaign’s greatest strengths is the level of granularity you can get when setting up your marketing automation funnels. Pair email with text messages, as well as a multitude of other integrations available to really build out a full-fledged set of funnels. The reporting is a bit convoluted, but asides from that, it is a very powerful tool, with solid deliverability across most of their server IP’s.

Drip

Drip is a top email automation platform. This company is unique because they focus on the people behind the emails. One of the critical components of their strategies is developing a meaningful and lasting relationship with the person on the other side of the screen. Their applications are very beginner friendly and have the most comprehensive ways to section out audiences.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a great place to start for brands with low budgets trying to get started because they provide a 60-day free trial! The company was founded in 1995, so they have been around the block a time or two. They offer templates that are niche specific so that anyone can easily create the perfect email campaign for their needs and offer users an event management feature to stay on top of every aspect of their business efficiently.

MailChimp

MailChimp is a popular platform for small businesses, and it's easy to see why. With tons of templates and a convenient drag-and-drop editor, even the least computer-savvy individuals can easily create beautiful email campaigns with this software. New features are popping up all the time on this website, so there is always something different to try out.

GetResponse

Get response is a great email automation company. With over 350,000 users, they are pretty popular as well. This may be due to the fact that not only does it provide a way to making landing page like MailChimp, but it also has a webinar feature! This is an excellent fit for medium-sized companies who want to combine their marketing features into one place.

ConvertKit

This software has the appeal of being simple and easy to use. It is also aimed at creators, like YouTubers, Instagram influencers, and bloggers. The main attraction with ConvertKit is the ability to create email automation workflows easily so you can have a visual of how the email campaign will play out before it is ever sent. This platform is a little unique, as it has users sending plain text emails instead of using fancy templates with a ton of colors and fonts.

Conclusion

Email automation software is essential to any business that wants to use email campaigns as a marketing strategy. With advances in technology, starting a campaign is as easy as deciding on which platform to use and customizing a template. All of the email auto-responders mentioned also provide simple step-by-step tutorials so even complete beginners can get started with ease.