To automate, or not to automate? It’s a question many business owners ponder, and in fact – while it may seem like an obvious YES! many entrepreneurs struggle with this simple concept.
It feel so robotic right?
Automation in marketing requires certain finesse so it doesn’t come across as robotic and stilted.
The idea of automation is to remove the work that needs to be done by human hands. And sometimes, when it comes to your marketing – automation can be seen as the enemy.
But it doesn’t have to be – and quite frankly, it’s just the opposite if done correctly.
Fundamentally, marketing is how potential customers interact with your brand or product so it’s important that your marketing is infused with emotion.
Building out marketing campaigns takes time. Social media, cold calls, email marketing. It will take hours and hours of work before leads even start rolling in, and you will constantly be tweaking your strategy.
So let’s start with this simple concept.
Email Marketing Automation. It’s a great way to turn your potential customers into warm leads who will eventually become customers.
“How do I do it?” You’re not the first to ask, so don’t feel silly.
Here’s the official definition: email automation is the process by which a company or agency creates an email sequence in order to move customers from an email opt-in to a purchase in a timely fashion.
There are a number of different ways to set these up using different types of software – everything from MailChimp to ConvertKit and sophisticated software like InfusionSoft. What system you use depends on the stage of your business.
The benefits of email automation are boundless, but there are a few key reasons why email automation is worth every penny invested.
INCREASE REVENUE
Show us a business owner that doesn’t want to make more money and we’ll give you $1,000 (disclaimer: we will not actually give you $1,000). That was said for effect.
Increasing revenue is an important part of growing your business and keeping the wheels moving. Research has shown that companies which use automation in their lead generation process saw a 10 per cent increase in revenue over a period of 6 to 9 months.
Automated sequences, or drip campaigns, often receive a higher open rate and click through rate. The more frequently someone sees your promotion, the more likely they are to buy into your product or service.
Having a series of emails gives you a better chance to making sales at various points of the sequence.
REDUCE YOUR MARKETING COSTS
Large marketing teams have long been a staple in corporate offices. For smaller businesses, it’s nearly impossible to have a marketing team capable of generating leads every day.
What is possible, however, is to have one person helping you work on your marketing on a need-by-need basis. This is how most small companies reach the capability to scale.
Having one person create various email sequences for various campaigns that you’re running in your business is a fool-proof way to cut the time spent on marketing efforts, and ergo, the cost.
This money can then be re-invested in other aspects of your business’ marketing to try and create a broad-base lead generation solution.
According to Forrester Research, using email automation creates 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% less of a cost.
OPPORTUNITY TO ANALYZE
When more time is invested in planning and setting emails up as an automated response, it leaves your team or yourself, more time to actually analyze the results of the emails.
The best marketing tactics or plans, come from careful analysis of results from previous campaigns.
Giving yourself time to look over results and understand them, means you can find iterations of your marketing plan that can produce even better results in the future.
Make sure that you’re using a system that allows detailed reporting so that you can really see what’s happening in your marketing strategy.
IMPROVES WORKFLOW
Marketing is a big kettle of fish – there is so much to get done in so few hours.
Automation serves a huge role in improving workflow in the marketing team so that leads are being generated without a huge amount of work. There’s nothing better than a well-oiled marketing machine that works on its own and takes the burden off the team.
MORE SPACE FOR CREATIVITY
This may be the most important aspect of setting up an automated email marketing system.
Taking time out of the input process means that the marketing person or team has more time to create, to think and to postulate.
Out of these moments, the best marketing tactics are born.
Most brilliant ideas sometimes come when watching television or reading a book. By fostering creativity, you have the potential to produce million-dollar campaigns.
So set yourself a challenge – create a series of automated emails and see what it does for your sales.
