Foster customer loyalty by delivering personalized and relevant content.
If you’re looking for the best way to market your business to current and potential clients, the answer is to develop a digital email marketing campaign. Email automation campaigns work because they give you a direct line of communication with your customer base. This doesn’t mean an endless stream of sales pitches, though. Digital email marketing works best when it’s used to build connections and grow a community with your customers.
According to McKinsey & Company, “Seventy-one percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And seventy-six percent get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.” Their data goes on to show that the companies that are doing the best job of personalization also generate the most revenue.
Email Automation campaigns are the easiest and most efficient way to deliver personalized messaging to your audience. They develop positive brand associations and customer loyalty. Automation and customer segmentation allow your brand to speak directly to each individual reader addressing them by name, referencing interests and past actions, and providing tailored information that matters to them.
With that said, it’s not always as simple as adding your customer’s name to an email or subject line. Adding a customer’s name alone is not going to be enough to win them over. You’ll need a well-planned digital marketing strategy based on analytics and digital marketing principles to see the most return on your efforts. Messaging needs to be valuable to the reader to see the desired results from any email marketing automation campaign. Messaging becomes valuable when it truly resonates with a person’s wants, needs, or interests.
How do you create an effective automated email campaign?
The most effective email automation campaigns start with a clear understanding of client profiles and buyer personas. Understanding these elements allows marketers to create messaging that resonates - which becomes messaging that gets results.
Once you know your audience, it’s important that you let your audience get to know you. A strong brand voice communicates your company’s vision, values, and even personality. Whether your image is relaxed and carefree or formal and predictable, you want your audience to see that in every message you deliver.
Speaking of predictability, your audience will feel like they know you when they come to know what to expect from you. That’s why it’s so important to be consistent in email marketing. Whether you have the bandwidth to send messaging once a day or once a month, set a realistic cadence and stick to it. Humans like patterns, and we like to know what’s coming next. When we don’t know, we tend to get fussy.
It’s common to see a brand sending weekly emails and then lose subscribers when they suddenly change to daily blasts. The same thing can happen when the frequency drops. It’s vital to plan frequency in the early stages of developing an automated email marketing campaign. Otherwise, all of your efforts can have reduced effectiveness as email lists shrink.
Know what your customer base wants and give it to them.
When it comes to digital email marketing, your content should do one (or more!) of four things. Every email you send should inform, educate, persuade, entertain, or inspire. Informational emails will keep your audience up to date on the latest in your company or industry. Informational emails could focus on sales and promotions, new products or services, or current industry news and events.
Educational emails teach your readers something. Often, this type of messaging will involve how-to's or in-depth looks at specific products, services, or categories.
Entertaining emails are just like they sound, messaging sent for the purpose of entertaining your audience. Entertaining emails could be games, quizzes, a behind-the-scenes look, or anything else you’ve found that speaks to your customers’ interests.
Inspiration emails spark interest or creativity in your readers. These emails encourage customers and clients to try something new or look at things in a new light.
A winning email strategy will consider your goals and your audience to determine which type of content will be most effective. This is, of course, assuming your target audience opens your emails.
How do you get people to open your emails?
Most of us are familiar with the idea of the eight-second attention span. A study from Microsoft showed that people tend to lose interest in as little as eight seconds, which is more quickly than a goldfish. So, what tools do marketers have to
encourage readers to keep reading - to be engaged with the email they send?
Strategic messaging. When a writer knows that they have one line, one paragraph max, to hook a reader, they learn to make every word count. It’s so important to have an expertly crafted message to ensure that the vital information gets communicated before the reader tunes out. Starting with the subject line and ending with a call to action, effective emails draw the reader in and carry them through the entirety of the email.
Media. Graphics will be seen before a single word is read. Motion graphics and video will be watched even before that. There’s a hierarchy that exists somewhere deep in our brains that tells us what is most important to see and inspect first. Custom-designed media and branding suite delivers your message faster than text and even encourages your audience to then read text they may have otherwise skipped over. If you grab their attention with the right media, they’ll want to know more.
Timing. The day and time that you choose to send an email matters. Ideally, your emails should arrive in your audience’s inboxes at the times they are most likely to be available to read them. This time changes based on your audience’s location, lifestyle, and habits. Expert marketers use tested strategies to find the optimal times to send marketing emails.
Transactional Emails vs. Marketing Emails
It’s easy to think of transactional emails when you think of sending automated emails. Transactional emails - sometimes called trigger emails - are sent to your customer’s email address after an action is taken. Think, thank you for your order, you have an appointment scheduled tomorrow, etc. While important, these are not marketing emails. Automated marketing emails are scheduled messages that encourage your audience to take action. These emails direct customers to make purchases, enter contests, or follow a social media account. With the proper strategy, it’s possible to create a campaign that is automated and still personalized so that it delivers the best results while still saving time and resources. If you’re looking to add a digital email marketing campaign to your marketing mix or just want to delegate the workload of your current campaign to the pros, Altered State Email Suite is a great option to add to your here to talk you through your options.
Learn more about our CRM services here or schedule a free email audit today.
Sell more with personalized digital email marketing and email flow strategy designed by our experts for your email campaigns. With your branding, and Altered State Production’s email design, sign-up units, and email automation we provide ready-to-send emails complete with subject lines, calls to action, and relevant, engaging content. Our email & SMS marketing programs are developed with transactional emails, and our customer segmentation strategy to get your customer base to open your emails and convert.
About Altered State Productions
Altered State Productions delivers a blend of expertise and innovation in crafting targeted email marketing campaigns that captivate and engage. With a decade of experience, Altered State is adept at driving performance through personalized, data-enriched email strategies. Connect with your audience, achieve measurable results, and scale your business with an email marketing campaign tailored to your unique business.
