Tips for Improving Email Automation

In almost any sector of the business world right now, automation has become huge. Not only does it make life simpler for employees by automating menial and tedious tasks, but it also helps your business in saving time and resources which can then be redistributed within your business to continue growing and scaling upward each day. Through the use of things like email service providers and similar tools, you can even find ways to automate your email marketing campaigns and emailing and communication in general. This list will provide you with some tips, tricks, and tools to getting the most out of your email marketing campaigns and software, and help you and your business take the first steps into the world of automation.

Utilize Segmenting for Email Lists

Segmenting an email list is simply organizing and classifying your customers by the various data you’ve collected from them over time. This can be a variety of things, such as what emails your customers open, when they first started using your company or products, how much they’ve spent at your business, and a variety of other factors. By utilizing segmentation, you can personalize your emails to fit the variety of wants and needs different segments of your customers have. Not only does this keep them invested in your business since you’re offering what they want but it also encourages them to do business with you out a feeling of loyalty; which is pivotal for turning regular customers into lifetime advocates.

Find the Right Sending Time

You might not think about it, but when you send your email is just as important as how you send your email or what the actual email itself contains. The most important thing to remember when trying to find the optimum send time for your customers is to keep testing. Send emails to different customers at different times of the day and track the responses in turn. By seeing when your emails are accessed, at what frequency, and by what demographics of your customers; you, in turn, gain valuable insight into where your business fits into their daily lives. This allows you to begin sending emails that better fit the schedules of your customers and increases the likelihood of engagement and sales.

Don’t Go too Image Heavy

While having illustrations and images in your email is a great way to create easy visualizations for your customers, they might also cause you some problems. For some customers, their email program or specific software they use may block out the utilizing of images in an email. This creates large chunks of white space in your email which is unattractive to potential customers. In addition to this, it wastes valuable time which you could otherwise be used to improve your business in other elements. 

Give your Customers Control for Email Preferences

The key to great customer service is allowing your customers to decide their own preferences when it comes to things such as how often they’re contacted and what kind of products and services from your business they’d like to hear about. Not only does this allow your customers to easily personalize the emails you send them, but it also increases the amount of automation for your business by allowing customers to control their own email settings and the frequency at which they’re mailed. 

Choose the Right Software for your Solutions

One common mistake smaller and medium-sized businesses can make is choosing the wrong software for the solution side of their business. In selecting the software for your business, you need to ask yourself a variety of questions: what is important? What features do I not need? What is my company’s budget? By asking these questions, you gain a better idea of not just the issues your business is facing and in turn, needs to solve, but you’re also gaining insight into which specific software have the key features you’ll need to get solutions you need and the job done.

Don’t Be Afraid to Prune your Subscriber List

While you might think the key to having a great subscriber list mostly comes down to a numbers game of who has the biggest list, this isn’t exactly the case. The importance in your subscriber list comes not from your number of subscribers, but rather the number of active subscribers who are interacting with your content, your emails, and purchasing your products. This is why occasionally pruning your subscriber list is a good idea, it helps get rid of the customers who may no longer be interested in supporting your business, and in turn, creates new spaces for new customers.

Poll your Subscribers on their Needs

While this might seem like a fairly obvious method for finding out ways to automate your email marketing, many businesses forget the power of simply asking their consumers what they want. Oftentimes, this can be due to things such as budget restraints or simply the diversity of customer needs which can be difficult for a business to meet individually. Whatever the case, including things such as surveys or polls and offering incentives for participation, is a great way to boost customer engagement. Plus, once you know what it is your customers are looking for; you can begin email automation to serve them better.