As one of the most effective tools in our marketing toolkit, we need to make sure we are maximising the benefits of email marketing. It is predicted that one of the biggest trends in the next 5 years will be email marketing automation. Automation of your communications to your customers is nothing new, but research shows that the majority of businesses are still not embracing this technology. In this article, we take a look at how email marketing automation can benefit your business and what you can do to get started.

Higher Conversion Rates

Companies using automation see over 50% higher conversion rates – and welcome emails play a significant part in this. And there’s a bit of psychology involved in this. Basically, when a contact signs up to receive your emails, they are looking forward to receiving content from you. A welcome email that comes straight away into their inbox gives them instant gratification: confirmation that they are now subscribed and a taster of the type of content that is to follow. Including calls to action right there in the welcome email is a good idea, because in that moment people are excited about the subject matter, eager to find out more and therefore more likely to act on your suggestions. Capitalising on people’s anticipation in this way will mean a higher than average click-through rate.

Easier Lead Nurturing

One of the best way to nurture leads and lead them down the sales funnel to purchase is to keep them interested and engaged with you and your product or service. give them the information they need at the right time. Manually nurturing leads can, however, take up much of your time and energy, so automating the nurturing process is the answer. You can fully personalise and target automated emails, schedule them to be sent at just the right intervals and send further information out, triggered when subscribers perform certain actions, such as clicking on a link. Email marketing automation does all the hard work for you – freeing up your staff to focus on other areas of business.

Faster Lead Conversion – Bigger Sales

Receiving the information needed in order to make a decision about a purchase will help to speed up lead conversion time. Automation has been proven to convert leads faster because they are receiving the right information at the right time and being asked to take action. Furthermore, according to the Annuitas Group, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than leads that have not been nurtured.

Knowledge of What Works (and What Doesn’t)

Most automation software will integrate seamlessly with your CRM system. This allows you to see which of your marketing automation strategies are working and which are not, enabling you to tweak emails to get better results.

Fewer Errors

Finally, automation will help reduce manual, human errors that can look unprofessonal, change meaning and possibly even damage your brand’s reputation. Once composed, the emails in an automation will always be the same (until you edit them, of course).

At harrison digital, we love automation – and a lot of our clients do too. If you would like to discuss email marketing automation for your business, please get in touch. For more information about email marketing, click here.