Email marketing is one of the most effective direct marketing channels there is. With an average expected ROI of $32 for every $1 spent, it’s no surprise that 81% of small businesses rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel, and 80% for retention. Or that 73% of marketers have no intention of adopting new channels such as influencer marketing, live video, chatbots, AI, or machine learning in 2019.
When it comes to receiving marketing emails, there’s evidence that customers like to be kept up to date. Statista found that 49% of consumers are happy to receive promotional emails from their favourite retail brands on a weekly basis. According to Hubspot, 59% of customers say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, and 99% check their email every day.
While this might seem like a heavy workload for any marketing department, many companies are now using email automation – automatic email campaigns that trigger when a user performs a certain action or when set criteria are met. These emails triggers are completely automated, and informed by customer behaviour and data analysis.
As a result, open and click-through rates are much higher than for other, non-triggered messages, driving website traffic and revenue for the business.
According to marketing experts Apsis, 73% of leads are generated through email, and 80% of businesses increase their lead generation with marketing automation. This backs up earlier research from Autopilot which found that marketers using automation software were generating twice the number of leads as those using blast email software, and were perceived by their peers to be twice as effective at communicating.
Email automation is a proven way to convert leads into customers, to engage existing customers and to encourage greater brand loyalty, up-sells and additional purchases. When used alongside clear objectives, marketing automation tools have a significant impact on leads and conversions, and also on employee efficiency and use of resources. Integrated automation tools take the work out of email marketing, creating an automated workflow. The potential is enormous.
Unlike one-off campaigns and newsletters that send to a whole list of customers and prospects, automated emails are sent to a particular individual when that person meets a trigger. The trigger action might be a sign-up, after which the user receives an automated ‘welcome’ email. Because these emails are triggered by customer behaviour and data, the purpose and extent of automated messages is only ever limited by your brand’s needs and your creativity.
Just like any other email marketing campaign, automated emails need to be optimised for conversion.
The subject line:
Even though the automated email is triggered by the recipient’s actions, it still needs to have a compelling subject line. Personalise this by including the recipient’s name in the subject heading.
Structure your email for skim-readers:
People don’t read emails in the same way they’d read a book. They scan the email, looking for things that spark their interest. Break your email into chunks and make sure your design and formatting serves up information in a digestible way.
Quality content:
There’s no better way to create desire towards the conversion action than by using compelling, benefit-focused copy.
Call-to-action buttons:
New data from Hubspot shows that personalised CTAs perform 202% better than default designs. Make sure to include buttons to increase click-through and to ease the path towards your desired conversion action, and embrace the customer desire for personalisation in every interactive aspect of your design.
Measure your results:
Email marketing tools like Rezcomm’s CRM system give the user comprehensive data on email-related metrics such as opens and clicks. To truly optimise the results of your automated campaigns, you need to also look at the fundamental numbers that matter to your business: Site visits, revenue and customer numbers and retention.
Some more tips…
Improving sales
Onboarding and retention
Engage Past Clients
Nurture Prospects
Email automation is a fantastic tool. Let your marketing strategy drive how you use the software, and make sure you understand how the technology works before you use it. Test, test and test again, and never, ever automate troubleshooting.
Rezcomm’s world’s first combined platform for airport sales, marketing and customer-centric analytics makes it incredibly easy to set up automated email campaigns that will drive revenue for your business well into the future. If you would like to speak to Rezcomm about how we can help, contact us today.
While email-marketing campaigns form the basis for positive relationships and interactions with customers, easing the processes of customer acquisition, satisfaction and retention, the changing consumer landscape means that customers no longer follow a straightforward buying journey. Purchases take on a fluid and sometimes erratic pattern, with shoppers interacting at different points and on different devices during the engagement-to-purchase path.
Advances in email automation make it possible to influence this journey. By identifying the points at which a customer or potential customer might interact with your brand online through content, buyers can be guided and business goals achieved.
Successful marketing campaigns require a holistic understanding of customer behaviour. Meaningful, engaging personalisation requires a complete knowledge of how customers and prospects interact with the brand at every touchpoint (a touchpoint is any instance when a customer or potential customer interacts with your organisation or product), and across channels.
It’s worth noting that targeted campaigns yield a much higher ROI. In comparing segmented with non-segmented campaigns, Omnisend found that segmented campaigns not only provided a 34.7% higher open rate, they also resulted in 26.5% more conversions than non-segmented campaigns.
This is where customer journey mapping, a graphic portrayal of the customer’s experiences with your organisation across major and minor touchpoints, comes into play.
The journey map is an important tool designed to help businesses better understand what their customers want. Journey maps serve to codify and share relevant information across an organisation in easy-to-understand formats. This helps businesses to identify and prioritise specific initiatives that then inform the planning, design and delivery of the email experience received by the customer.
The statistics are compelling. According to Aberdeen Group research, thorough mapping of customer journeys drives both top and bottom-line value in measurable ways. ROI is significant, with 200% greater employee engagement recorded, and 350% more revenue from customer referrals.
In 2017, the gap between Customer Experience (CX) leaders and those companies that did not place the customer at the centre of their business plan widened. Customer experience is a powerful strategy. CX leaders know their customers, and they accomplish this understanding by leveraging tools such as customer segmentation and journey mapping.
This is likely to involve departments that may not normally work together. Departments that previously focused on operational efficiency now need to consider customer needs too. Remember, even touchpoints relevant to a particular department, for example payment touchpoints, which are the domain of the finance department, play a significant role in shaping the customer perceptions of a company.
CRM and E-marketing software such as that offered by Rezcomm includes advanced segmentation and automation tools. The complete understanding of your customer journey gained from journey mapping can be integrated into the database, informing email-marketing campaigns.
Here are a few suggestions of automated campaigns that can be triggered and organised using data segmentation:
Once you have mapped your customer journey, the steps that will align your company goals with customers’ expectations become clear. This represents a big shift towards customer-focus that is driving CX leaders, and will give clear targets and purpose to your email marketing campaigns, with a greater relevance and ROI to automated mail-outs and a satisfied customer base.
Rezcomm is the partner of choice for airports worldwide. The team is expert in supporting airport sales and marketing through smart, intuitive tech. If you have any questions about how you can use our integrated platform to harness the potential of automated email workflows, contact us for a chat.
Orchestrating digital strategy, Victoria Wallace is Rezcomm’s Chief Digital Officer. With specialisations ranging from digital marketing and CRM to UX design and ecommerce, she is an expert in integrating innovation and technology to deliver outstanding results in sectors like travel, parking, and airports.