It’s no secret that automation makes email marketing work better by increasing your ability to reach more people faster and with more targeted messaging. Although email automation is being used more and more, even seasoned marketers make mistakes with their marketing automation strategy. Whether you are automating your welcome emails or getting more in-depth with your inbound marketing automation, knowing what to avoid will help your business do better.
When measuring the success of a campaign, it’s not just about the open rates. Specific measurements can be deceiving without factoring in the other measurements and how they interact. You need to look at click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, bounce rates, purchase rates, and more. Each has a purpose. It’s also important to check in on your campaigns to make sure they are working correctly, as this can also affect your stats. Knowing if your campaign is effective or not is a powerful tool for moving forward with your email marketing automation strategy.
It’s easy to get excited and want to send email campaign after campaign, but you can go overboard. You can also send the wrong content; that is, content seen as spammy because it doesn’t serve a purpose. This can result in high unsubscribe rates or the potential suspension of your account. Solve this issue using the segmentation feature to break up your lists and send only relevant, smartly-timed emails to the right people. With 67% of people unsubscribing from an email list due to irrelevant content, your content should always add value.
A/B testing is a useful tool that can help you reach more people. That’s because it shows what works and what doesn’t as far as the subject line, call-to-action, offer, and more. For each campaign, you can test a particular variable to see what works and then use it to maximize your results. This can be done on a smaller audience, with the winning option sent out to your broader audience afterward.
Your customers want to hear from you in a personalized, genuine way. With click-through and engagement rates higher for personalized emails, it’s important to use automation as a way to speak to your audience and showcase your personality and business expertise with intent. For example, using emojis in your subject line increases engagement rates because it feels personal and friendly.
Your list is a powerful thing because these contacts have chosen to hear from you. But blasting out mass emails with no leveraging isn’t smart marketing. You need to segment your list using the data you have from your CRM and other sources to target your content to different audiences. This results in higher conversion rates and a more personalized experience for your customers. It’s also important to remember to nurture your existing leads rather than always trying to get new ones. You need leads, but it does no good to capture leads and end communication after the initial email.
If you’ve found yourself making one of these automation mistakes, you’re not alone. Email automation will take some trial and error before you nail it, but that is all part of the process. For more tips on marketing automation and email strategy, download our free Growth Stack guide and learn all about our approach.
