In a time when the user is solicited and confronted with irrelevant publicity with such intensity, new solutions are popping up to try and fix the wave of ad-blockers by offering interesting, and relevant messages.
This is particularly true of marketing automation tools, which are being used more and more frequently by companies to answer to new expectations internet users have – all of whom are much more receptive to messages that address them personally.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation in a few words
Marketing automation, also known as automated marketing, refers to the practices in which each marketing action (sending of emails, making a phone call…) is carried out automatically whenever a client or lead carries out a specific action or when an event occurs.
When we talk about marketing automation within the email marketing field, we are confronted with the concept of triggers, scenarios and automatic responses, all of which are central parts of this practice.
In order to do so, automated marketing depends on the creation of scenarios of campaigns that will vary, according to the intended goal of said campaigns. The software will allow for the interaction with clients in a personalized way, using the information in your contact list and the client’s behaviour as a base.
Why use marketing automation?
The real advantages of automated emails over traditional marketing
- Save time and gain productivity: the use of a marketing automation software saves a lot of time in the preparation of email campaigns, just set an automatic scenario once and let it work by itself. This will optimize your productivity, so you can focus on the several stages of the project, analysis, reflecting on the results and keep human interventions down to a minimum.
- Customer loyalty: marketing automation can better interact with customers and can be used to send relationship-focused messages. This will show the client that he’s important to the company, and help establish a relationship that will last – all you need to do is schedule those relationship-building emails.
- Increasing revenue: a marketing automation solution has a very positive impact on your revenue. The sending of automatic emails contributes to an increase of expected revenue from each client. This will result in a higher frequency of purchases and the average revenue of each purchase. But that’s not all, as it also allows for an increase in the rate of conversion, and a rate of recurring purchases that is significantly better.
Some numbers about email marketing automation
Marketing automation has proved itself to be particularly efficient in email marketing. In fact, about 64% os internet users find that marketing emails are more interesting to read compared to mass and generic campaigns.
Aside from that, the figures below are shown within the B2C context, and perfectly illustrate the power of good automatic email marketing campaigns.
- 41% of opening rate on average
- Conversion rate stands at 6% on average
- 19% of consumers return to the website after receiving a personalized birthday email
- After receiving relationship-building emails, 33% of clients go on to make another purchase in the website
A few good examples of automatic emails:
Welcome emails
The welcome email is a must. It’s sent immediately after the registration of the creation of a new account. This is the first true point of contact with the company: it will mark the start of your relationship with the customer and will show a preview of future messages to come.
Birthday emails
The birthday email is an essential element in generating customer loyalty and encourages purchases in your website. It offers a profit in terms of reputation for your company e contributes to the general happiness of the customer. Very often, the email is accompanied by a present/discount adapted to the profile of the customer.
Coordinates update emails
As soon as a client updates their contact information, a notification email will be sent automatically to notify them about the change. Generally speaking, this type of automatic email can be used for any change in email address, password, telephone number or physical address.
Automate your emails with Mailify Sunrise
With Mailify, planning a scenario of an automatic campaign has never been easier. Creating an omnichannel campaign, which combines automatic emails and SMS in the same scenario takes only a few minutes.
Here are the main steps on the road to creating an automatic scenario with Mailify Sunrise.
01. Choose the condition of the trigger
The scenarios are created on top of the sending condition, trigger or exit point. It’s most often linked to information within your contact list. Therefore, Mailify offers the possibility of using 3 pre-defined scenarios, based on 3 different triggers.
- Welcome: activate the sending out of an automatic email as soon as a new entry is saved on your database – you can program additional emails or offline SMS (Example: subscribing to a newsletter, creating an account, registering for a customer loyalty programme…)
- Date: an automatic email is sent based on a field of entry in your database as soon as that date is reached (Example: birthday emails, subscription birthdays, contract renewal…).
- Update: As soon as a specific field is altered in you database, an automatic email is sent. You can choose any field you like.
02. Specify the delay before a second email or SMS is sent
After choosing the condition of the initial message, it’s possible to schedule the sendign out of additional emails or SMS – immediately after the first message, or set it up to be sent after X hours or days. It’s up to you to create your own personalized scenario.
Naturally, you can add as many messages to each scenario as you wish. The real trick is to build a marketing strategy that is coherent and analyse the results of each email from the scenario so you can continuously improve.
03. Adding a second automatic campaign to the scenario
It’s also possible to create more elaborate scenarios, creating a second campaign that can complement the first one. In order to do that, you can combine the use of several triggers.
Here are some examples of automatic scenarios that make use of several triggers offered by Mailify.
Example 01: Change of status of order
The first scenario is the case of a client that has placed an order in your e-commerce business – and said order has had a change in status. In this case, the condition to activate the campaign will be an update on the “status of delivery” field within your databse.
- As soon as the purchase status changes from “being processed” to “sent”, an automatic email will be sent to the customer, informing them on the status of their order.
- A second email will be sent to the client after a period of 15 days to carry out a customer satisfaction survey after the order has been delivered – so as to indicate any aspects that can be improved, such as delivery time, packaging, and so on.
Example 02: Customer loyalty scenario after the first purchase
The second scenario is more focused on relationship marketing, aiming to implement a customer loyalty programme. The trigger of the second scenario will be the date of the first purchase.
- Firstly, a thank you email will be sent to the customer automatically once the date of the first purchase is reached, in order to foment a good relationship with the client.
- A second email will be sent, within a period of 3 days, in order to extend an invitation to the customer loyalty programme, introducing them to the benefits of participating (such as discounts, exclusive offers…)
- Finally, a third SMS message containing a promotional code of -20%, will be sent to the customer after 15 days – which will encourage them to make a second purchase.
Here’s the final example of a more complex scenario, which will combine several automatic campaigns.
Example 3: Welcome and customer birthday scenario
The creation of a third scenario occurs in two stages. First, we create a welcome scenario which will later be complemented by the birthday scenario – to wish the client a good birthday, and encourage them to make a purchase.
- Regarding the welcome scenario, the trigger we will use is the creation of a new client account – which will manifest itself in a new entry in your contact list. This action will trigger the sending out of a confirmation email.
- Secondly, the sending out of a second email will be activated after 3 days – giving the client a quick introduction to all the features and resources of your website, and and services available there.
- Finally, a third email will be sent after a period of 15 days: a newsletter to keep the client informed on the news and promotional offers that your company has.
- Beyond all that, a second automatic campaign is created using the date field as the trigger. The date in question is the customer birthday. The sending out of SMS will be, therefore, automatically activated on the birthday of the client – the content of the SMS will be a personalized birthday message, accompanied by a promotional code.
More efficient e budget-friendly than traditional email marketing, marketing automation saves precious time by sending out messages automanamously, reaching the client at the right time. Now, you have all the tools you need to create a successful automatic campaign with Mailify Sunrise.
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