Inbound marketing is all about building solid customer relationships. But what’s the best marketing tool to nurture customers for the long haul? Email marketing is a useful tool in gaining customers’ trust, but one of the biggest challenges is personalizing email campaigns — a time consuming process. With email automation, your team can personally connect with customers in their inboxes while saving loads of time and money in the process.
What is email automation?
Email automation is a system that makes sending personalized, relevant emails to potential and existing customers much easier for your whole team. This powerful system increases the impact of your emails while lessening busy work overall.
Customers are placed in groups to receive emails based on their behaviors and traits. This process is designed to target customers with campaigns that will interest them right where they’re at in your customer journey. With this strategy, you get to interact with them in a much more personal way.
According to Salesforce, “Automating your email is much more than scheduling messages to send when nobody’s at the computer. With email marketing automation, you can trigger workflows based on specific user actions ranging from signing up for your newsletter to abandoning an online shopping cart after putting items in it.”
Setting up the email automation process
Setting up email automation can seem daunting, but here’s an effective step-by-step process to get it done.
1. Find the right email automation software
There are many email automation options out there. But after years of searching for ways to lighten our load, we’ve found that HubSpot’s email automations software is best at personalizing campaigns and helping customers move through our sales funnel.
2. Pick the target audience and define goals for the campaign
Now to actually build your workflows, you need to decide who you will send emails to and how to group the campaigns. You’ll divide customers into groups based on what you want to accomplish. For example, an upsell campaign could be designed to show existing customers different products they haven’t purchased before.
As always, start with a clear and measurable goal in mind so that you’ll know when you have been successful. And to make your job even easier, HubSpot will automatically unsubscribe customers from email campaigns when the goal is met.
3. Set criteria and the processes you want to automate
The criteria are the factors that determine which workflow a customer belongs in, depending on their place in your customer journey. A workflow on HubSpot can be personalized based on various trigger actions by the customer. This system can use information from an existing database to help trigger the process.
4. Create your email campaign assets
Now that you’ve picked your target audience and worked through the main goals and details of your email campaign, it’s time to build out your emails. In this step, you’re preparing your email assets and placing them into your workflow so they can be added into your campaigns. HubSpot makes this process easy with drag-and-drop functions and fully customizable options for your workflows.
5. Start the email automation workflow and monitor the process
This is the exciting part! When you feel ready, make your email campaign live. Once it’s been sent and recipients have had time to interact with your email, make sure to track the results. This way any problems can be resolved and you can keep building on the workflow for even more growth.
Why do you need email automation?
Now that we know the process involved with email automation, does your business really need it?
Automated email campaigns are like a secret weapon to help turn leads into customers and keep them coming back — the main goal of all marketing efforts! Existing customers will love having the information they need right at their fingertips, and the personalization allows you to choose triggers that will serve them best. Email automation is a key step in inbound marketing that you don’t want to ignore in your strategy.
Email automation also allows companies to gain revenue without increasing marketing costs. Automating emails eliminates having to send emails to each new lead, giving your team freedom to focus on other priorities. Who wants to spend hours on tasks the computer can do for them? Plus, automation is proven to connect with customers better than broadcast emails. Studies show that automated emails get 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails.
Overall, email automation expands the reach of your other marketing efforts. Directly communicating with customers who are active on your site will help them trust and value you. And when they receive personalized emails at various stages of their buyer’s journey, with relevant content and appropriate timing, they’ll feel noticed and taken care of by your business. Remember, you can always adjust the content and timing of your automated emails as customers change their preferences, so that the content continues to follow their line of thinking.
How can Soulheart help you use email automation? 
Soulheart is a Certified Solutions Partner with HubSpot, so our marketing experts can help you create the best possible email automation campaigns. We offer HubSpot onboarding, consulting, and training to take the stress out of applying their software to meet your needs. Our people are here to help you improve your marketing, so you can get back to doing what you’re passionate about. Connect with us today to start your journey with email automation!
Looking for more information on email automation? Want to know how to apply the same ideas to other areas? Check out our blog on marketing automation.
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