Marketing automation comes in many different forms, but email marketing can be one of the most beneficial and easiest to implement for a small business.
While email open rates continue to drop (for some at least…), a person signing up for your list using their email address is the equivalent of them saying, “Yes, I like your company and I will give you my email address in exchange for value.” Think about how you value your email address. Clearly, this exchange is a big deal, so you can’t disappoint your new inbox audience!
Achieve 40-50% Open Rates with Your Email Automation
Ask the real email marketing experts, and they still love marketing directly to inboxes. That’s because they’re still achieving high open rates with their messages. One of the most important factors to remember is that you need to always add value. From your subject to the body of the message, your email should get to the point and make your customer feel as if they’re glad that they opened your spam important sales message.
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Try starting with these simple email automation campaigns to help ensure that you’re building a quality email database, your open rates exceed industry average, and that your time spent marketing turns into money earned at your business.
- Create a Welcome Email: There are two reasons why welcome emails are amazing. First, it lets your customer know that they signed up successfully. You can even use it as an opportunity to send a coupon code their way and prompt them to buy in the near future. Second, it prevents them from trying to sign up multiple times because they weren’t sure if the “submit” button actually worked.
- Send Your Customers a Birthday Present: By capturing your customer’s birth date at signup, you can send a personalized email with a coupon to wish them a happy birthday automatically. Remember, it’s their birthday. Try sending them something free as a gift.
- Past Experience Reminders: If your business thrives on events (birthday parties, corporate events, etc) then you should be selling to your current customers for the next event the minute that a booking is confirmed. You can set your email marketing to begin automatic campaigns months before the anniversary of their last booking. Selling to your current or past customers is almost always less expensive than finding new ones.
- Create Content People Want to Download and Print: Whether you own a furniture store or a bowling center, you can create content that’s so valuable that people will print it out or share it online. For example, if you’re in the home services industry, you could create a look book that gives homeowners design ideas to help them add value to their homes. If you’re a family entertainment center, you could create a PDF filled with valuable information about corporate events or a STEM program. Once a potential customer signs up, they receive the PDF to download in an automated email.
- Schedule an Entire Year of Email at Once: Do you have promotions that you traditionally run? Try building 12 campaigns for each month in a day or two so that you have a full year of email marketing planned and scheduled to send. This gives you the flexibility to send additional in the moment messages as time goes by, but it will also help ensure that you never miss a month of email opportunities.
The most difficult part about email automation is clearly setting up your objectives. What do you hope to achieve, what do you want the user to do, how are you adding value to their day with your email? A campaign that isn’t thought through completely will most likely fail. If you want a high open rate, putting in the mental sweat is worth it!
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Suggested Email Automation Tools:
- Mailchimp – Now available to their free users (TrustWorkz uses Mailchimp).
- Constant Contact – Automation is currently available only to their pro users.
- Aweber – Automation available in their lowest paid tier.
- Hubspot – Typically a good fit only if you have a dedicated marketer on staff.
How will you leverage email automation for your small business marketing strategy?
