In a world of ecommerce and distanced online marketing, it’s essential to retain as much contact with your customers as possible. Going into cold calling or having your customer queries on call waiting is not enough.
Haven’t you ever wondered if it would be possible to send emails en masse to your customers without sending them manually? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to do it automatically?
Well, that’s where an automated email marketing workflow can change your life.
What is an Automated Email Marketing Workflow?
It’s a wordy phrase, but essentially what it means is using the implementation of RPA to send out automated marketing emails in response to specifications that your customer meets. So, for example, if they sign up to your mailing list, they might get a “Thanks for signing up! Here’s what’s next…” email.
Some more examples are:
- “Some tips to get started.”
- “We’d love your feedback on….”
- “Thank you for your order!”
- “Your order has been shipped.”
Do you see the pattern? In every case, the customer completes an action, such as making a purchase or creating an account, and a corresponding email is sent.
As you can imagine, this is extremely useful for brands that operate predominantly on online platforms. Our world is so fast-paced that holding your buyer’s attention, or getting them to make a repeat purchase, can be really difficult. However, Investing in custom SEO services (accelerateagency.ai) or a solid automated email marketing workflow can go a long way towards improving your customer retention rate.
This article is a step-by-step guide to making the best campaign you possibly can, so read on to find out how.
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1. Decide Your Goals
The first step to planning your campaign is deciding what you want to get out of it. But, more importantly, what are your customers going to get out of it?
Do you want them to:
- …buy something?
- …learn something?
- …read something?
- …fill out a form?
- …sign up for something?
Once you decide what you’re trying to get the customer to do, working out what actions need to be taken will be much easier.
Now might be the time to break out one of those project planning tools that everyone goes on about. Remember, that for a campaign as big and complex as this, planning is absolutely crucial, and will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.
2. Criteria and Actions
These are the two most essential steps to building the foundations of your automated email marketing workflow campaign. Think of it like this: criteria are at the customers’ end, and the action is at your end of the communication flow.
For example, a criterion could be the customer clicks “confirm” on a newsletter sign-up page. The met criterion would trigger a corresponding personalized action, such as a confirmation email being sent to the customer’s contact.
This is where using a CCaaS platform can really come in handy. This collects data regarding your customer base, letting you know which tasks and actions are completed most often on your website. Which pages are the most popular? What is the most traveled path on your website? How long do customers stay on each page? CCaaS platforms are your best friend when it comes to answering these questions.
Answering these queries gives you a great headstart in constructing a set of standards for your workflows. You can tailor your approach and target those areas most often by learning where customers are landing and what they do most frequently. This will increase your customer engagement and drive sales and conversions.
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3. Frequency
Congratulations, you’ve done the tricky part. Now you get to make the fun decisions, like how often you’re going to send the emails and what they’ll look like.
Are you going to make sure the customer gets an email every time they complete an on-site action? This might not be the best idea, especially if they’re a frequent user of your site.
Too many emails in a short period of time will get annoying and cause customers to unsubscribe, or even stop buying from you altogether. Not to mention that those emails could end up in the spam folder, and nobody will get to see all your hard work at all.
Instead, consider designing your criteria to be met every other time they complete an action, or once per week, per month, and so forth. This way, your customers won’t be bombarded with several emails a day yelling at them to complete steps they have no interest in completing. Goodness knows there’s enough of that on the internet already.
4. Designing Your Emails
Here’s where you can flex those graphic design skills. It’s essential to make sure your emails are visually attractive and functional; otherwise, a scenario like the one described above could happen.
Luckily, there’s a whole host of campaign templates out there to help you with your design. Here, we also have some simple tips to ensure your emails are the prettiest ones out there.
Colors
Make sure to incorporate the color scheme that you use for your website into your promotional emails. That way, customers will immediately recognize them as yours before they even read them.
Don’t Crowd It
If someone is receiving a workflow email, chances are they already know who you are and what you do. So don’t waste valuable space, including a bio of you or your company – get straight to the point and tell them what they need to know.
Fonts
It sounds obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how much of a difference a good font can make. Ensure the typeset you use for your campaign is readable, a good size, and accessible. Don’t forget, people with learning differences are just as likely to receive emails as everyone else – in this case, selecting a sans serif font such as Arial is advised as it appears less cluttered.
Also worth bearing in mind is that non-native English speakers may also be on your mailing list, so keep your language clear and engaging while not overly complicated.
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5. It’s Time for a Meeting
So, you’ve done the math and drawn up your designs – what now? Well, here is where it would be beneficial to video call your team, so they can look at your plan and see what can be improved. A fresh pair of eyes can do a whole lot more for progressing your campaign than looking at it over and over again yourself.
You can also use cloud PBX services to make sure that people in every department can be contacted, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you find the best conference call service for you.
Some things to consider during this meeting:
- Does the campaign appeal to every member of your team? For example, different age groups, gender, or interests?
- Is there enough information in your email? Too much? Is the goal clear?
- Does everyone agree on the appearance of the email? If not, why not? Is it personal taste, or has there been a mistake somewhere?
Collaborating in this way can take your campaign to the next level.
6. Test
Now things are getting serious. Your workflow ideas have passed the board meeting, and now it’s time to test. But what should you be looking out for?
First, you’ll need to decide on a testing method. You can either do this internally or by using free email marketing providers. Whichever you choose, there are some things you should bear in mind:
- Does the frequency feel right? Should you send them more often? Less often?
- What feedback are you getting from your test subjects? Listen to them and adjust accordingly.
- Keep track of your analytics. For example, how many people complete the actions laid out in the email? How many people are converting because of them?
Of course, you can never really know what your workflows will be able to do for your business until you push it out into the real world. Luckily, that’s the next step.
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7. Go Live
This is it. The campaign is finally ready to be launched. There’s nothing more to this step other than to watch and wait, which can be nerve-wracking but also highly gratifying. It’s always a bit scary when something you’ve worked hard on goes out into the world. But remember: the work doesn’t stop here.
Monitor your campaign closely, especially during its first few weeks. Is everyone who’s supposed to be receiving the emails receiving them? Are customers doing what you need them to do? How are these marketing workflows influencing your statistics? Tracking this would also help reduce churn rate.
8. Enjoy The Results
You’ve done it. Pat yourself on the back. All your hard work has paid off, and all your loyal customers are enjoying receiving well-thought-out, professional emails.
If all has gone to plan, your automated email marketing workflow will be increasing your engagement and conversion rates. By reminding customers of current deals, member benefits, and sign-up perks, you can be sure that customers will remember your brand and return to you again and again.
And Then They Clicked “Open”
Your campaign will need regular updating to ensure that your customers are kept abreast of all new offers and information coming their way, but that’s where having an RPA system implemented can be so helpful – you already programmed it to do all that stuff for you. You can even add sales process automation to make things easier for your sales team.
Ultimately, these sorts of marketing workflows are all about informing people, letting them know what’s on, inviting them to receive better deals and customer perks, and giving them an all-around great experience. Good luck!
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