As your business seeks to grow, one method to help is to setup an automated sales pipeline on your website that uses email. This use of automated “drip marketing” emails is an efficient way for a business to grow leaders and nurture a prospect in the journey to becoming a customer. The key is that the emails need to be handled with care to be effective. No customer wants to feel like they're hearing from a pushy, automated sales machine. To find success when communicating with automated emails, there are a number of key to follow. In this article I dive into that in more detail.
Automated email marketing is like having another salesperson on the job operating 24/7/365 for your business. The starting point to get people signed up is a lead capture offer on your website. This can be a free, downloadable resource of value, or a discount coupon. The key is to offer enough value the visitor is interested in signing up with their name and email address to access the offer. The incentive is essential and getting the offer in front of them on your website is very important as well. It must stand out!
At signup, the visitor is invited to join a email list as they submit to get the resource. With their optin to the email list, the email marketing automation begins. Using online software tools like MailChimp, InfusionSoft or Salesforce, just to name a few, a company can setup a sequence of emails that go at specified times over the course of days, weeks, or months, and that have related content that works together. One example would be sending 5 emails over 10 days, basically a email every-other-day. This content conducts the “sales process” with the end user by educating them further, building trust, offering value, and addressing their common questions to help them see how your company product/service can solve their problems.
First, drop the generic marketing greetings of “Dear Reader” and related introductions. When you capture their information on your site you should capture their name and email address. Any good email marketing system will let you add a macro to insert their first name so that your email can read: Dear <first name>, or “Hello <first name>” where their name is inserted. This is much more personal.
Second, beware of generic signatures and email addresses. Instead of signing off with "The 'Company' Team" or some other impersonal signature, choose a spokesperson for the emails to come from. So it’s a person’s name. It's far better to sign an email with a name and bring a human touch. Customers will feel like they're able to connect with a person, and value the interaction more. As well, the “from” email address should be more personal as well. Do not use “[email protected]” or “[email protected]”.
Just because emails are automated, doesn't mean they have to be one size fits all. Demographics or key actions can be used to segment an email list. An email list can be divided by relevant factors like age, geographic location, gender, web page signed up on, resource signed up for, etc. Emails can then be tailored to best suit each group. Customers get a sense that you want to meet their individual needs when the emails are relevant to them and related to what they initially signed up for.
Your email sequences must not be high in sales pitches.
This is a sure way to have high “unsubscribe” rates. “Save more” and “Buy now” language is a good way to get people turned off and tuned out. Offer value in the emails! When they sign-up for a resource, the best path forward with your automated emails is to continue to offer them resources. This is education and help, answering common questions. A builder can explain more about “green building” and “energy efficiencies” in future emails as opposed to “sign with us now” pitches.
Your interaction with a potential customer just learning about your brand should be different than the interaction with an established customer who's been buying your products for years.
Automated emails should reflect these different relationships. Monitoring a customer's interest levels and dedication to the brand is important for communication. Collecting information on response rate and lead conversions from your emails allows you to adjust the emails sent to each customer over time to be more fine-tuned.
Email is an important tool today for marketers. It is powerful for connecting and communicating with potential customers. The key is personalization and resourcing. Careful attention to detail and customization is vital for automated emails to be personal and to add value for the recipient. By putting personal touches on an automated campaign, a business can build trust, grow sales, shorten the sales cycle, and stand out by showing its attention to detail.
How’s your email marketing going? Need help? Let us know!
