Email Automation: 3 Ways it's Useful for Your Small Business
Katie Batchelor
What's email automation?
Well, according to Campaign Monitor, “email automation is the ability to send time or action triggered emails to subscribers with relevant information”.
So, what does that mean for your business?
It means that emails like welcome emails, reminders and discounts can be delivered to each customer individually at the correct moment to maximise your sales without you or your staff having to write or personalise each email. In short, email automation can help create great customer relationships while saving you time and money.
What’s not to love?
What's email automation?
Well, according to Campaign Monitor, “email automation is the ability to send time or action triggered emails to subscribers with relevant information”.
So, what does that mean for your business?
It means that emails like welcome emails, reminders and discounts can be delivered to each customer individually at the correct moment to maximise your sales without you or your staff having to write or personalise each email. In short, email automation can help create great customer relationships while saving you time and money.
What’s not to love?
1. It speaks to your customers, reminding them of what is important to you.
Communication is a key pillar of any successful business and communicating with your customers is vital if you want a good customer relationship. And you do want a good relationship with your customers. They pay your bills. Emailing each customer individually would be a massive undertaking for any business, especially if that customer base suddenly grew. Although a personal touch is great, thousands of wasted man hours is not.
Automating your emails allows you to communicate the right information to the right customers at the right moment because they work on triggers. You can schedule some emails to be sent out ahead of time like newsletters, but you can also schedule certain messages to be sent through action triggers. For example, if someone creates an account on your ecommerce website or signs up to your mailing list, a welcome email is a nice touch to show that person that you noticed their interest, before they’ve even bought anything. That is the kind of personal touch customers like and so do you because it took zero effort on your part. Mailchimp estimates that a good welcome email can “generate as much as 320% more income per email than other promotional messages”. That is not the kind of maths you can ignore.
2. It frees up your time.
A 2017 survey suggests that your business “could save at least 6 hours a week if the repetitive aspects of [some jobs] were automated”. How much time does basic administration take you or your workforce daily? Weekly? Monthly? It sure adds up. Freeing up your staff’s time by automating repetitive tasks like sending regular email updates, offers and so on, means they can use their time on other business. No business owner wants to spend money on man hours that could be better utilised doing more important things. Of course, there are few things more important than developing a personal, trusting relationship between a company and their customers, but automated emailing can do just that, in a fraction of the time.
3. It's personal.
Automated emails are automatically personalised to speak to your customers at the right time, with the right message. According to Mailchimp “91% of consumers are more likely to patronise businesses that provide individualised recommendations and offers.” So surely, that means that automated emails are evil because they are automatic and therefore not personal, right? Wrong! A good series of personalised emails should greet the customer by name and respond to the correct actions each individual customer triggers.
It’s no good sending out a mass batch email to everyone on your mailing list to thank them for their recent purchase when some of them might not have ever made one. Automated emails should be versatile enough to appeal to the masses while being personal enough to make each customer feel valued and noticed. That is the beauty of automated emails. They connect with your customers on a personal and relevant level, while you focus on other areas of your business.
So, what are the pitfalls of automated emails?
Simply put, there aren’t any. Your business can flourish and thrive knowing that routine emails created to guide each customer through their individual purchase experiences are all taken care of. Result!
Need a hand with your email automation? Let’s chat!
