Email your most recent blog post, send a reminder to attendees of your event taking place next week as well as follow up with those who participated in last week's event, jump-start a few good leads, etc. Add to that your meetings with senior management, coordination with your team members, meetings with your suppliers ... do you feel that you would be pulled in too many directions to succeed in fulfilling your role as marketing manager?
Having several tools at your disposal that will do everything for you simultaneously, is what will allow you to automate your email marketing. Therefore, you get rid of your repetitive operational tasks that eat up your precious time to better focus on more strategic activities by trying new campaigns. This will allow you to move forward, to go further and to grow!
In this article, we'll look at 10 functions that you could easily automate using marketing automation tools like MailChimp, Zapier, ActiveCampaign, or HubSpot.
1.Email your New Blog Posts to your Subscribers
Over time, posting blog posts allows you to build a list of subscribers interested in your content. In that sense, it is a very good practice to send them your latest posts by email through marketing automation.
Keep in mind that creating emails every time a new article comes out takes a lot of time. To remedy the situation, marketing automation allows you to be diligent in your tasks. This will prevent anything from slipping through the cracks!
Fortunately, there are some simple and effective ways to optimize this process through automating it by the installation of an RSS feed on your site (if you haven't already). To achieve this, using an email marketing tool, such as MailChimp or HubSpot, you can create RSS campaigns in just a few minutes. This is a very interesting marketing automation initiative !
For example, blog subscribers could receive an email similar to this one every day:
Best Practices to Keep your Subscribers' Attention
Categorization of topics
It is essential to let your subscribers choose their fields of interest when subscribing to your newsletter. This way you can ensure that you send only relevant and interesting content to each person.
Division of Sending Frequencies
Another good practice is to allow subscriptions at various frequencies. The most commonly used are: Instant, Weekly and Monthly. In this sense, it is preferable to offer the choice during the subscription, just as for the subjects of interest, then to set up the RSS sending according to the chosen frequency.
2.Thank New Subscribers to your Blog
When an Internet user subscribes to your newsletter or your blog, it's a magical moment: a moment of “post-conversion”. This is one of the most wasted opportunities by marketers, because website thank you pages and emails are too often used to just say "Thank you" when they should be used as a guide to the next conversion. So when someone subscribes to your content, you should send them an automatic email inviting them to complete a specific task.
Good Practices for Converting after a Thank You
Focus on a single action
Whether it's on the thank you page or in an email, you need to focus on one single action at hand. This action must have a logical continuation with the conversion which has just taken place. For example, if someone has just subscribed to the blog, it might not be the best time to offer to call you to talk about a purchase ... It's a bit abrupt as an approach, but offering him a document for free download might interest him.
Target by Contact
As we have seen before, interests are very important when sending newsletters. It is the same when proposing another conversion. If I subscribe to related articles about technology on a blog, the next posting should be based on that interest. One could, for example, invite me to discover the best tech gadgets of the future or send me to an interesting product page. Forget the generic offers! The future is now and your site should be able to deliver personalized content.
3. Invite your Visitors to Read Content Related to What They Have Already Viewed on your Site
Now is the time to take the level of complexity up a notch. With some automation software such as HubSpot, which uses cookie tracking, you are able to know which pages of your website have been viewed and which have not been viewed by your subscribers. It then becomes easy to determine the rules which allow them to know their subjects of interest and to invite them to consult the additional content that they have not yet seen.
This tactic can be very helpful in engaging your subscribers and educating them about your overall practice, products, and services.
As a marketer, it's your job to know what your visitors want before they know it themselves. You can offer related articles, services and products based on the pages visited. You can set up several rules to do your automation, for example:
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A visitor who has browsed 3 articles on a subject receives an invitation to download a resource;
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A visitor who has browsed more than 5 articles could receive an invitation to subscribe to your blog.
4. Do a Follow up with Visitors Who Haven't Been to your Site in a while
"I have X visits per month to my website." That's good, but do you think it's always the same individuals? Most likely not! There are people who have shown interest in your content a while ago and have not returned since despite all the effort you put into the user experience of your site.
Maybe the solution lies in an automatic email sent to all the people who haven't been to your site for 1 week, 3 months, 1 year (to be determined depending on the length of the buying process in your industry). Yes! It is possible to automate such actions thanks to cookies and marketing automation tools!
For example, Runkeeper, which is a fitness app, sends an email when you haven't worked out for a while:
Source : RunKeeper
Your visitors might not have been interested in your services a year ago, but you may have planted, through your content, a seed that has sprouted over time. However, today they have most likely completely forgotten about you. Don't worry, it's not that your branding or site wasn't special enough, it's just that life goes on. If we don't take a chance in doing a follow up with these people, we will never know if they are now ready to take action.
5.Send a Special Offer to your Subscribers / Customers for their Birthday
Who doesn't like to receive gifts? When people subscribe to your email offers, it can be a good idea to ask them their birthday in order to send them a small gift. This will encourage them to return to your site soon. So, whether it's a discount or exclusive content, you'll warm someone's heart through your marketing. Isn't that wonderful?
Source : Udemy
6. Automate Reminders and Follow-ups with Registrants and Participants in your events
Ah! The events! Always moments of intense stress and frenzy. The logistics before, during and after the event, whether it be physical or online, is a big challenge. In addition, you must make sure to create several reminders for registrants to attend as well as to follow up with people present and absent.
If only you could optimize all those emails that are so similar every time! Well, yes you can! Thanks to decision rules and "Smart content", everyone can receive the right email at the right time with the right information. During this time, you can make sure to create a remarkable event!
The Essentials
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A reminder well in advance (approx. 1 week): Allows you to make sure that the person is not going to plan something else at the last minute;
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The reminder a little in advance (approx. 2 days): Allows you to explain how the event will unfold and gives directions for the location;
- The last-minute reminder: Allows you to ensure maximum participation within a few hours of the event;
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Thank you: Allows you to thank them for attending and to suggest a future event or a future Web conversion;
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Follow-up: Small follow-up so that people who did not show up to the event can still constitute a web conversion.
7. Approach a Qualified Lead After Visiting a Critical Page on your Site
Using the same principle as in point 3, it is possible for you to create a privileged list of contacts with a tool like HubSpot. This will allow you to rank your most qualified leads there and whom you want to email when they visit a critical page.
Examples
- You can send an email with the purpose to make an appointment with a representative when a qualified lead visits a specific product page on your site;
- A visitor who has repeatedly visited your pricing page without ever contacting you probably had questions that they couldn't be answered. It would be important to contact them;
- A visitor who has visited a bottom-of-the-funnel conversion page (request a quote, make a demo, buy) without however completing the action should also be contacted.
8. Nurture Leads until they're Ready to Buy
Marketing automation is one of the main weapons of a tactic known as lead nurturing. As you know, not everyone who subscribes to your newsletter or downloads one of your eBooks will be ready to buy your product or services tomorrow morning. This is where nurturing comes in!
You need to nurture your prospects with different relevant content that will help them move forward in their buying process. What could be better than automated email sending to accomplish such a task?
9. Educate Customers to Make Better Use of your Products / Services
Email automation isn't just for acquiring new customers. It can also be useful in order to retain current customers. For example, when you are selling a product that is complex, people may quickly get bored of it and demand a refund or give bad feedback in the community.
Automated emails, like the one shown below, can help avoid these kinds of situations by helping your new customers get the most out of their purchase.
Consider making one email according to your product and plan a learning process, so that by the last email your customer receives he will be able to be 100% functional on his own. The process should be easy and fun. You can even notify him that he will receive 8 emails in the next month; so he will be expecting them.
You can also use this tactic to promote full use of your product when it comes to SaaS (Software as a Service). Customers who make good use of the products are more likely to recommend them or upgrade. It is quite easy to send, as needed, an email explaining a feature that your customer doesn’t use correctly or very often. He will then get the most out of his investment.
10. Encourage Current Customers to Repurchase or Renew
Finally, if you are selling a consumer cyclical product or a subscription for a product, email automation can help you not lose sales. For example, the Jiffy Lube brand comes into contact with its customers when the time comes for their oil change. They make sure to interact quickly with their prospects and anticipate the needs of their targets. It’s a nice initiative, isn't it?
Source : Jiffy lube
In short, there are probably millions of other things that can be automated on the web, but I hope the 10 ideas that have been presented in this article will help you save time and drive more results!
