Imagine you’re thinking about buying CRM software for your business. Like most business people, you begin your search on the internet, typing something like “affordable CRM software.”
You check out 2 of the top-ranked providers. The first site offers an article about the importance of software customized to your business. You fill out a contact form to get the article—and nothing happens—a dead end, in other words.
The second provides a blog telling you how you can save money by getting only the features you need. Again, you fill out the form to read the article. But this time, there’s an email in your inbox. It thanks you (by name) for reading the content, welcomes you to the business, and suggests you read a related article that other customers have found useful.
Which business has engaged you? Which provides a gateway for further conversation? Which business are you more likely to trust—and which are you more likely to choose for your CRM purchase?
That’s the power of immediate, relevant email response. Said differently, that’s the power of marketing automation.
WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING AUTOMATION?
There’s a simple reason more than 75% of marketers currently use at least one type of marketing automation tool—automation works. When effectively leveraged, marketing automation enables enhanced targeting, personalization, customer experience and the quality of generated leads.
And there’s a reason email marketing tops the list of automation tools (with more than 80% of businesses naming email marketing as their automation tool of choice)—email marketing has the power to increase return on investment (ROI) by as much as 4,800%. Simply stated, combining email marketing with automation will enable you to send more relevant responses to customer questions and concerns—and do so a lot faster than you could do manually.
WHAT ARE THE TOP BENEFITS OF EMAIL AUTOMATION?
Of course, every business is different, with different marketing goals and challenges. That said, most businesses that deploy an automated email marketing platform realize similar benefits, including the following 5:
1. YOUR EMAILS WILL BE MORE PERSONAL
Ever get an email thanking you for your patronage from a company you never heard of? That company wasn’t using automation. With automated email marketing, you can send highly personalized emails—emails that include not only the recipient’s name, but also a reference to whatever action they took that triggered the email. And personalization is important: simply adding a recipient’s name to your subject line, for example, will increase open rates by more than 25%.
2. YOUR EMAILS WILL BE MORE RELEVANT
Automation allows you to leverage all the customer data you’ve collected—both demographic and behavioral—to send highly relevant messages to key segments of your target audience. You can even group emails to align with the buyer personas you’ve created. Like personalization, market segmentation is a game-changer, increasing open rates by about 15%.
3. YOUR EMAILS WILL BE MORE ENGAGING
Connecting with leads and customers isn’t a one-off deal—engagement in other words is the product of an ongoing conversation, one moved forward when you respond in real-time to actions your prospects take. With automation, you can immediately respond to customers who register on your site, download content, visit key web pages, or purchase products.
4. YOUR EMAILS WILL BE ALIGNED WITH PURCHASE BEHAVIOR
If you have an e-commerce business, you have (or should have) a wealth of data about the purchase behavior of your customers. If one of your products, for example, is laundry detergent, you know that customers who buy will on average need to buy more detergent in 1 month. With automation, you can send a reminder email that it might be time to repurchase. You can also, again based on data, recommend other products in which customers might be interested (like fabric softener).
5. YOUR EMAILS WILL KEEP YOUR BUSINESS FRONT OF MIND
On average it will cost your business 5X as much to acquire a new customer as to keep an existing one—and an increase in customer retention of as little as 5% can increase profits by up to 95%. Email marketing automation will enable you to send periodic emails (perhaps with an attached newsletter) through so-called “drip campaigns” to give recipients key information about your business and products—and that can boost click-through rates by as much as 300%.
Coupling email marketing with marketing automation can be a game-changer for your business—but getting the benefits of this strategy means leveraging best practice strategies—doing it right, in other words. That’s where we can help.
To learn more about the ways our email marketing, automation, CRM and other marketing services can help you increase sales and grow your business, download our definitive guide to marketing automation or try Act! for free today.
