Mistakes You’re Making in Email Marketing Automation
It is important to use email marketing effectively. The success of email marketing depends on how effectively you use it in order to reach new members and stay in touch with those that are already members. As part of a survey conducted by Marketing General, Inc., 60% of associations selected email as the second most popular method of recruiting, and 83% reported that email marketing was the most effective in generating renewals.
Keeping track of how you are using email marketing is therefore something you should be paying close attention to, but many fail to analyse the data they collect as a result of their email marketing campaign, resulting in no real lessons learned on how to improve. Fortunately, adverity.com and similar sites can analyse the data for you. They can determine if any improvements are needed to make your marketing email campaign more effective. Were there any mistakes made? The following four mistakes should be avoided when using Email Marketing Automation in your business
Email Marketing Automation: Mistakes to avoid
1. Using email marketing without opt-ins
You may have experienced this yourself – you hear someone knocking on your door, but you do not expect to hear anyone there. It is common for us to freeze instantly or even panic when we are not sure what to do. What should we do if we receive such a message? In the midst of our busy schedules, it is difficult for us to tolerate the idea of someone unexpectedly knocking on our door.
Email Marketing Automation can also be subject to the same type of problems. Getting access to email addresses and enrolling those addresses in your email marketing system, without any prompting from the subscriber, can cause a lot of negative reactions from the subscriber. Having opt-in email marketing as part of your marketing strategy is one of the most vital things you can do.
The modern consumer wants to be in control as much as possible when it comes to their personal information. I think it’s more likely that your customers will receive emails from you if you allow them to sign up for them and indicate they would like to receive them.
As an added bonus, it is just good marketing practice to incorporate an opt-in process into your marketing plans. As a result, you will be able to maintain deliverability (since you won’t be marked as spam by your recipient, as it complies with GDPR guidelines), and you will be able to improve customer engagement. You should ensure your forms have a checkbox that allows individuals to agree to receive marketing emails from you by filling them out, so before you add your forms to your website, which is the first step in setting up your Email Marketing Automation, you should ensure they have an opt-in checkbox.
2. An overabundance of emails sent too soon
You are able to free up your time by automating your email tasks. With reliable email management software such as those provided by simplelists or other similar companies, you can schedule emails to be sent based on subscriber activity.
As a result, you will be able to save yourself from the hassle of manually sending emails. There is a great advantage to email workflows in that regard. It is only the case of a small number of subscribers being placed on too many automated flows in certain instances because of the automation software.
In the past, there has been much emphasis placed on the idea of personalizing subscriber experiences, but putting them on too many workflows can lead to problems. Your subscriber will most likely feel overwhelmed if you bombard them with an endless string of emails in a short period of time.
Due to this issue, you may lose a subscriber or, in worse cases, they may mark your list as spam and unsubscribe from it. Email campaign effectiveness can suffer as a result. You might lose your sender’s reputation as a result.
It is, fortunately, possible to avoid this mistake.
The learning curve for Email Marketing Automation can be steep if you are new to the game. Although every email workflow should cover a wide variety of scenarios, fewer workflows are also fine. If you are new to workflows, start with two or three. As you gain confidence, add more. Plan the entire workflow ecosystem, eliminating unnecessary workflows, especially those that overlap.
3. Automated sounding
You can automate processes like autoresponders to save you time and enable you to be able to reach out to your customers at the most opportune time for you to reach out. Needless to say, this happens to be the most important part not just in email marketing but in digital marketing, in general. Reaching the right audience at the right time can make or break the game, as even stated by experts in the field such as Nick Throlson. To put up an instance of the right timing, you can automate a “thank you” email for your customers whenever they make a purchase from your store.
Not only this, you can even stay in touch with your customer throughout the purchasing process with autoresponders. You should use them if they are properly set up so that you do not lose the human touch and authenticity of your voice if they are not correctly set up.
Creating generic, mass email is a common mistake that we have seen many beginners make. A generic email message will not grab the attention of your consumers, let alone keep it long enough for them to be interested in your offerings.
A generic email has multiple telltale signs-anecdotes and personal anecdotes are lacking, the salutation is not personalized, and the writing is lacking in personality, which makes it difficult to engage the reader.
Make sure you don’t act like a robot. There are hundreds of brands competing for attention in the subscriber’s inbox, and you’ve got to keep this in mind in order to succeed. If you want your email to stand out from the crowd, you must make it humanized. You could adopt creative processes to figure out how you can best respond to your customers in a way that helps form a connection with them. Design thinking techniques (see some examples) are something you can try out, which will not only help with better e-mail marketing but also improve a lot of other customer-centric business processes for your company.
In the midst of your Email Marketing Automation, make sure you spend some time thinking about the tone and voice you want to convey. Your email should be plastered with personal touches to eliminate any hint that the reply is robotic. As an example, consider the following:
Provide subscribers with their names when addressing them
If you do not want anyone to reply to you, replace the do-not-reply addresses with your own or someone on your staff’s email address
Make your email design as eye-catching as possible by including visuals that captivate your subscribers
Keep people reading your email by using an enticing copy
4. Metrics that are overlooked
Making progress on multiple fronts is a vital part of developing an effective email marketing strategy. Your organization must know what is improving your open rates, deliverability, bounce rates, and other key metrics that determine success.
Don’t overlook these insights as you automate your business processes.
In other words, if you’ve observed a high open-rate for an automated re-engagement email containing a certain type of subject line, keep doing what worked and emulate it in other emails. Don’t forget as well to test your subject lines with A/B testing as this will give you a better idea of whether you should switch up your approach in order to achieve a better result for your campaign.
Don’t forget about your automated email campaigns once you launch them. As much as possible, keep an eye on the results of each campaign in real-time, and always record the results. Test different frequency settings, layouts, copy, and conversion suggestions to find out what works and what doesn’t work for your campaign. A combination of adjustments to your automation and sequences will result in a combination that is the most effective in delivering results.
5. Losing customer data
This includes website and email activity, transaction history, and demographic information. Email marketing automation makes it easy to create targeted campaigns using customer data.
The problem is some marketers don’t put their valuable resources to use by segmenting their email lists properly. Reviewing your customer records and using them to target the right people in the right way is the key to segment your emails correctly. Use all the appropriate strategies, such as needs-based, value-based, and purchase based decisions, in order to execute your campaigns successfully.
Conclusion
The best way to get the most out of Email Marketing Automation is to avoid these critical mistakes. These mistakes can be avoided with email marketing software. Our recommendation is to use an email service like Benchmark Email, which is user-friendly. There are a variety of automation features included in our software, from the most basic to the most advanced. Every opportunity can be converted into a customer with welcome sequences, abandoned carts, and follow-up sequences.
It takes time to learn in-depth about email marketing because it is such a broad field.
There’s no need to worry if you make some or all of these mistakes (well, perhaps you should worry if you make them all). You can however improve your skills by using a variety of resources!
Frequently Asked Questions – (FAQ)
Email marketing automation: what does it mean?
Email marketing automation refers to a series of emails that are sent after a certain action is taken by a subscriber, such as signing up for a mailing list, purchasing a product, or clicking a link.
What are the benefits of email marketing automation?
Your audience can be found and engaged through email automation. With automation, you can focus on other important tasks while automation runs in the background. From new visitors to repeat customers, you can automate the sending of personalized emails.
What is the best frequency for sending emails?
Keep in touch with your customers as often as possible without annoying them. The frequency might be once a week for some companies, while daily emails can be sent by others with a high level of engagement. It will take some trial and error to get your customers to respond to more frequent emails – start slow and work up to more frequent emails.
What is the recommended length of an email?
You must balance length with shortness so your emails don’t lose interest – or seem as though you aren’t trying hard enough. In a study by Boomerang, 50-125 words appear to be the sweet spot. You should make sure the most relevant information is placed at the top of an email, where it will be visible first. Most people spend less than 20 seconds reading an email, so you should make sure it is easy to find.
How do you determine deliverability of emails?
Your email will either be delivered to the inbox or sent to spam based on its delivery ability. It is important to remember that reputation, content, infrastructure and authentication all play an important role in ensuring the integrity of a system.