Email Marketing: 3 resources to help you close the automation gap
Some marketers have noticed that when it comes to using triggered emails, there’s an interesting gap in the perception of automation in terms of “how things should be” and “how things really are.”
Most marketers use automated triggered emails for nurturing early stage buyers, which leaves overlooked opportunities to use automated emails to strengthen existing customer relationships or to win back the hearts and minds of recently lost customers.
In today’s MarketingSherpa Blog post, you’ll find three resources you can use to help your marketing team close the automation gap.
Commit to using automation to build stronger customer relationships
Most marketers in a custom or expensive e-commerce niche are typically not scouting for the impulse buys. Instead, their tactics tend to fall along the lines of supporting a longer sales cycle that requires a little more nurturing.
Indochino, a custom clothing company, decided to test an autoresponder send using hand-picked product suggestions in an attempt to build customer relationships using its email program.
Results: Indochino increased its revenue-per-email 540% in just the first test. To learn more about the campaign and the four-step process the team used to select targets and expand the program into other customer segments, check out the case study “E-commerce Marketing: 540% higher revenue-per-email for automated send.”
Customer behavior matters
For Jermaine Griggs, Founder, Hear and Play Music, communicating with customers through email messaging was a critical part of his marketing efforts. Here’s a short clip of the full presentation from MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013.
During his presentation at Email Summit, Jermaine explained how he transitioned from using his CRM system as a “glorified autoresponder,” to a CRM system based on behavior and personalization for each customer’s unique needs.
Results: Jermaine was able to successfully increase the lifetime value of his customers by 416%. To learn more, you can also watch the entire on-demand replay of Jermaine’s session, “E-commerce: Harnessing the power of email automation and behavior-based marketing to increase conversions,” from Email Summit 2013.
Develop a strategy that moves beyond a “set it and forget it” mindset
A “set it and forget it” approach to thinking about automation can put your team on the fast track to underperformance.
The only truly easy part of using automation in email marketing is you’re a step or two removed from delivering mail by hand after a triggered event.
Sounds terrible, but that’s really about it.
Automation is a powerful tool requiring a solid strategy to deliver optimal results. The strategy takes time, money and testing to dial in success.
Success can transform your organization from working hard for email campaigns to email campaigns hard at work for you.
To help you learn more about marketing automation, you can download a free MarketingSherpa Quick Guide until March 3, 2014, courtesy of eTail.
Related Resources
Email Marketing 2013: The top 10 MarketingSherpa articles for your New Year’s marketing resolutions
Marketing Automation: Implementation drives $550,000 in net new revenue at Crain’s
Watch more Email Summit 2013 video replays at MarketingSherpa.com/Video
Categories: Email Marketing CRM, customer data, customer relationship management, email automation, Email Marketing, event triggered emails, marketing automation, marketing strategy, marketing tactics
Very informative – thanks, John!