A Definitive Guide to Creating Your Automated Email Marketing Workflow
In a world of e-commerce and remote online marketing, it’s essential to maintain as much contact with your customers as possible. Switching to cold calling or having queries from your customers on call hold is not enough.
Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to send bulk emails to your customers without sending them manually? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to do this automatically?
Well, this is where an automated email marketing workflow can change your life.
What is an automated email marketing workflow?
It’s a verbose phrase, but it basically means using the RPA implementation to send automated marketing emails in response to specifications that your customer meets. So, for example, if they sign up for your mailing list, they might receive a “Thank you for signing up!” Here’s the rest…” email.
Some other examples are:
- “A few tips to get started.”
- “We would like your feedback on…”
- “Thank you for your order!”
- “Your order has been shipped.”
Do you see the pattern? Either way, the customer takes an action, like making a purchase or creating an account, and a corresponding email is sent.
As you can imagine, this is extremely useful for brands that primarily operate on online platforms. Our world is changing so rapidly that it can be very difficult to hold your buyer’s attention or get them to buy again. However, investing in custom SEO services (accelerateagency.ai) or a solid automated email marketing workflow can go a long way to improving your customer retention rate.
This article is a step-by-step guide to creating the best campaign possible, so read on to find out how.
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1. Decide on your goals
The first step in planning your campaign is deciding what you want to get out of it. But, more importantly, what will your customers get out of it?
Do you want them to:
- … sign up for something?
Once you have decided what you are trying to get the customer to do, it will be much easier to determine what actions to take.
Now might be the time to break out one of those project planning tools everyone is talking about. Remember that for a campaign as large 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 foundation of your automated email marketing workflow campaign. Think of it like this: the criteria is on the customers’ side and the action is on your side of the communication flow.
For example, one criteria might be that the customer clicks “confirm” on a newsletter sign-up page. The met criterion would trigger a corresponding custom action, such as sending a confirmation email to the customer contact.
This is where using a CCaaS platform can really help. This collects data about your customer base, letting you know what tasks and actions are performed most often on your website. Which pages are the most popular? What is the most traveled path on your site? How long do customers stay on each page? CCaaS platforms are your best friend in answering these questions.
Answering these questions gives you a head start in building a set of standards for your workflows. You can personalize your approach and target these areas most often by learning where customers land and what they do most often. This will increase your customer engagement and boost sales and conversions.
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3. Frequency
Congratulations, you’ve done the tricky part. Now you can make fun decisions, like how often you’ll send emails and what they’ll look like.
Will you ensure that the customer receives an email each time they perform an action on site? This may not be the best idea, especially if they use your site frequently.
Too many emails in a short time will become annoying and cause customers to unsubscribe or even stop buying from you altogether. Not to mention that these emails could end up in the spam folder, and no one will be able to see all your hard work.
Instead, consider designing your criteria to be met every other time they perform an action, or once a week, month, etc. This way, your customers won’t be bombarded with multiple emails a day yelling at them to take steps they have no interest in taking. God knows there’s enough on the internet already.
4. Designing your emails
Here’s where you can flex those graphic design skills. Ensuring your emails are visually appealing and functional is essential; otherwise, a scenario like the one described above could occur.
Luckily, there are tons of campaign templates to help you with your design. Here we also have some simple tips to make sure your emails look their best.
Colors
Be sure to incorporate the color scheme you use for your website into your promotional emails. This way, customers will immediately recognize them as yours before they even read them.
Don’t clutter it up
If someone receives a workflow email, chances are they already know who you are and what you do. So don’t waste valuable space including a biography of yourself or your company – cut to the chase 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. Make sure the composition you use for your campaign is readable, the right size, and accessible. Remember that people with learning differences are just as likely to receive emails as everyone else – in this case it is advisable to select a sans serif font such as Arial as it looks less cluttered .
It’s also worth bearing in mind that non-native English speakers can also be on your mailing list, so keep your language clear and engaging without being overly complicated.
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5. It’s time for a meeting
So you’ve done the math and worked out your designs – now what? Well, this is where it would be beneficial to video call your team so they can review your plan and see what can be improved. A fresh pair of eyes can do a lot more to move your campaign forward than watching it over and over again yourself.
You can also use PBX cloud services to make sure people in each department can be contacted, but ultimately it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you find the best conference call service for you.
A few things to consider during this meeting:
- Does the campaign appeal to everyone on your team? For example, different age groups, gender or interests?
- Is there enough information in your email? Too much? Is the objective clear?
- Does everyone agree on the appearance of the email? If not, why not? Is it personal taste or was there 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 pay attention to?
First, you will need to decide on a testing method. You can do this in-house or by using free email marketing providers. Whichever you choose, there are some things you need to keep in mind:
- Does the frequency seem correct to you? Should they be sent more often? Less often?
- What feedback do you get from your test subjects? Listen to them and adapt accordingly.
- Keep track of your scans. For example, how many people perform the actions described in the email? How many people are converted thanks to them?
Of course, you can never really know what your workflows will do for your business until you deploy them in the real world. Fortunately, this is the next step.
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7. Go Live
That’s it. The campaign is finally ready to be launched. There’s nothing more to this stage than watching and waiting, which can be nerve-wracking but also very rewarding. It’s always a bit scary when something you’ve worked hard on comes out into the world. But remember: the work doesn’t stop there.
Watch your campaign closely, especially during its first few weeks. Does everyone who is supposed to receive the emails receive them? Are customers doing what you expect them to? How do these marketing workflows influence your statistics? Tracking this would also help reduce churn.
8. Enjoy the results
You did it. Pat yourself on the back. All of your hard work has paid off, and all of your loyal customers appreciate receiving thoughtful professional emails.
If everything went according to plan, your automated email marketing workflow will increase your engagement and conversion rates. By reminding customers of current offers, member benefits, and membership benefits, you can be sure that customers will remember your brand and come back to you again and again.
And then they clicked “Open”
Your campaign will need regular updating to ensure your customers are kept up to date with all the new offers and information coming their way, but this is where having an RPA system in place can be so helpful – you have already programmed it to do all of this for you. You can even add sales process automation to make things easier for your sales team.
Ultimately, these types of marketing workflows are about keeping people informed, letting them know what’s going on, inviting them to receive better offers and customer benefits, and providing them with an overall great experience. Good luck!
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