We have endlessly discussed the benefits of using big data to make the most out of your marketing strategies. Companies that neglect to use data analytics, AI and other forms of big data technology risk falling behind to their competitors.
One of the most important benefits of data analytics has been in implementing email marketing strategies. New advances in AI and analytics have made it possible to automate many email marketing strategies that used to be very difficult and time-intensive to execute.
Data Technology Makes Email Marketing Automation Far More Feasible
The average email marketing earns back $36 for every $1 that they invest. This is partly due to the incredible value that big data has brought to the forefront.
Email marketing automation is a process that enables marketers to send timed or triggered marketing emails to customers businesses have on their mailing list. They can also optimize their email marketing strategies with sophisticated data analytics interfaces. With automated email marketing, online marketers send personalized emails to their subscribers on a prior set schedule, which is . Such emails can be sent to both existing customers and prospects only when certain conditions are met.
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Implementing email marketing automation in your business sets promotional campaigns into an automated process. You can use data from prior subscriber engagements to determine which controls should be instituted and what changes to make to your campaigns to make them more successful. This data-driven approach to email marketing eliminates the trouble of crafting and sending fresh new emails every time a prospect shows up or each time when a new lead is generated for your brand. Hence, emails for customers who abandon their shopping cart automatically. The automated process takes care of sending new emails when a marketer launches a sale.
Email marketing automation increases the number of new leads by 80%, and conversions increase by about 77%. You just need to know how to leverage your email engagement data strategically.
Email marketing automation begins with establishing the set of business objectives that you intend to achieve with email marketing automation. You must identify what kind of automated email experiences will help you achieve your marketing goals.
The following approach will help you get the best results from the implementation of email marketing automation into your business by using big data wisely.
Start Simple
Choose a simple way to start the process. Do not automate just for the sake of automating processes. You need to look carefully at all of your marketing data and figure out what will work the best.
Automation helps marketing a great deal, which is one of the biggest reasons that they are investing more in big data solutions. But just by automating the entire email program, you cannot eliminate all the email marketing problems your business may have. Instead of automating every piece, it is best to start with automation of one part of the email campaign. You can put other elements into automation subsequently as you gain expertise in email automation and know how to utilize big data to use it even more effectively.
Stand out in the subscribers’ inbox.
It is not a good approach to take content for granted. You need to develop a data-driven approach to content generation and syndication if you want to get the highest ROI from your email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing automation rolls out your content automatically. But it cannot create content for you! You must invest in the time and money necessary for creating the content for your marketing emails. The less creative processes can be taken care of by automation and it frees up your time and energy. Hence, you can give that much warranted human touch to your content to enable your emails to stand out in the crowded inbox of your email recipients. However well-timed and better-triggered are your emails; if the content does not provide value, your audience will not take the expected action (purchase/sign-up). This is where data analytics is going to be important. You are going to have to see how your subscribers are responding to your content and optimize accordingly.
Only continuous content changes to suit the changing requirements will lead to long-term success – not just automation!
Monitor Closely
Conduct performance monitoring regularly to enjoy uninterrupted customer engagement. You need engagement data in order to monitor it properly.
Automation infuses more sophistication into your email program and close monitoring with the use of data analytics becomes critical for program success. Key performance metrics are identified and measured. For example, when you notice a decline in your open rates, even with increased automation in play, it is high time that you review your email sending frequency.
The best approach to derive the maximum from the implementation of email marketing automation with data analytics and AI comprises the following aspects:
- Branded email template design: A unique email template design for your campaign improves brand recognition. Email marketing automation services include professional email template(s) without HTML expertise.
- Onboarding series: Welcome emails create a good first impression. Create and send emails tailored to suit your subscribers’ behavior. Include links to your best products and most-visited pages in your emails to enhance your brand image.
- Mailing list segmentation: classification of your subscribers’ list according to their preferences and choices, improves customer engagement, increases CTRs (Click-through-rates), and imminently the sales.
- Nurturing existing leads: By providing relevant educational content in every stage of the sales funnel, you can turn prospects into clients.
- Milestone emails: Automation helps to keep a record of important dates of every customer, and sending milestone emails on those dates like birthday, wedding day, sign-up anniversary, etc. This increases CTRs uplifts client relationships and elevates customer loyalty.
- Make clients return to shopping carts: Automated reminder emails with a time-limited discount will bring back the clients to the shopping carts they abandoned.
- Automatic up-selling and cross-selling: Utilize automation to upsell (promoting expensive products) and cross-sell (promote complementary products) by sending emails right after the client’s order placement.
- Transactional emails: sending automated emails with details such as order confirmation, shipping status, password reset option, etc., facilitate customer retention.
- Re-engage cold clients: Automated re-engagement email(s) win back the cold inactive customers, especially when combined with a luring offer.
- Mailing lists management: According to the sales funnel stage, customers are listed in different groups (mailing lists). Automation makes this easy and efficient.
All of these benefits underscore the value of incorporating big data into your email marketing strategy.
Email Automation Has Become Much More Valuable Due to Big Data
Big data has become a gamechanger for email marketing, since it has paved the way for new forms of marketing automation. Email marketing automation brings along with its benefits, the risk of making your promotional emails look and feel mechanically made! And your responsibility doubles to make sure that the email you send has the human touch in all the areas it is warranted – such as the design, the text, personalization and customer value.