Here’s a new year’s resolution for you … email automation

Automation is a term near and dear to the manufacturing sector. Since Henry Ford rolled the first cars off the assembly line – making them accessible and affordable for all consumers – automation has been embraced as a huge time-saver in manufacturing.

Yet, when it comes to marketing, many manufacturers don’t realize those powerful time-saving benefits extend to helping your sales and marketing teams communicate more effectively. It can help you deliver personalized messages that resonate with your customers and prospects, and grow your business.

The secret to higher productivity is automating when the opportunity is there, whether you’re talking automobiles or emails. When you look at the staggering amount of time workers typically spend on emails (an average of 4.1 hours per day, according to one recent study!) it’s quite obvious how email marketing automation can save your sales and marketing teams time and money – and prevent them from burning out from sheer exhaustion!

What is email automation?

Email automation converts the sending of email messages from a manual process to an automatic one. Using it, marketers can create workflows that automatically send emails to segments of your audience based on their behaviors. Triggers to launch email sequences can include: subscribing to your enewsletter, downloading a white paper, signing up for a webinar or having your badge scanned at a trade show.

Effective email automation sequences take a significant amount of time and planning to set up. But once they’re created, they can run unattended for months or years. They can help you build trusted relationships with prospects and customers and position you as a thought leader.

This makes email automation much more powerful – and potentially profitable – than periodically sending out an enewsletter.

How can email automation enhance your 2019 marketing strategy?

Here are some of the ways you can benefit from email marketing automation:

Time savings: Email automation can save a significant amount of time once it’s setup. By automating email responses, your sales team will spend less time drafting, formatting, proofing, and prepping emails to send out.

Sales follow-up: Imagine being able to follow up with all your prospects easily and efficiently after a tradeshow. After your email marketing automation is setup, instead of sending out a generic blanket message, or sending out hundreds or thousands of individual emails, a series of emails will kick-in automatically sending messages that will resonate with your segmented customers on a planned schedule.

More customer touches: In addition to tradeshows, there are many more opportunities to strategically develop and setup a series of email marketing messages. For instance, when a customer downloads a product guide or fills out a contact form on your website, and when someone signs up for your eNewsletter.

67% of marketing leaders currently use automation and the number continues to grow as marketers realize how email marketing automation can be setup to deliver personal and relevant messages to their prospects and customers.

Personalization: Customers now expect emails to include their name and reflect their interests. Communication is no longer one-size-fits-all. With automation, you can segment your customer list based on the size of their business, industry-area, location and more. All of these factors help you target your customers and send them relevant and personalized messages.

51% of customers expect that, by 2020, companies will know their needs and offer relevant suggestions BEFORE they make contact. This is true in both the B2C and B2B worlds. In fact, 80% of B2B marketers said personalized content was more effective than un-personalized content at meeting their marketing objectives.

Get automated in 2019! Make setting up an email marketing automation program your New Year’s resolution. In our next post, we’ll share the best strategies to help you get started.