Marketing is a necessary task for pretty much every business. It brings in new clients and reminds old clients of your services. It can let the world know about a new product or sale. Sometimes your marketing efforts won’t even seem like a marketing piece as it may be a newsletter or blog post that acts to inform customers about your industry to establish your place as an expert. It’s a very powerful tool to have in your business arsenal, but often, it seems like this dreaded task that you really don’t feel like having to tackle in your day. There is needing to know the right words to use, the words that you shouldn’t use, or even knowing the right time to send emails out to clients. For some of these problems, the only answer is to keep moving forward and learning from your mistakes. For others, you should be looking into email marketing automation. Marketing automation is one powerful tool that can help your email marketing campaigns become easier and return a higher return on investment when used right. These five things are what you need to know about marketing automation today to help convince you that this is the right direction for your company.
It’s Not Only For Big Business
It’s easy to assume that email marketing automation is something that is reserved for big businesses with big budgets. It even sounds like something fancy and expensive, but that can be deceiving. Email automation is a tool like any other that can be implemented into any budget. There are a wide variety of services that offer email automation, and with this variety, there are a number of price tags to go along with them. You should calculate the amount your business is already spending on marketing. Look at your marketing costs along with calculating the amount of time that is being paid out for marketing tasks, and you might be surprised at how well marketing automation can fit into your budget since it may help to reduce these costs. Evaluate the different email automation programs available to you, and you may find several that will work for your business no matter the size.
Your business doesn’t have to get the short end of the straw just because you’re smaller than others in your field. Being a strong business means making the right choices that will help your business to grow, and automating your marketing emails is just one way that you’re able to make great business decisions to grow your brand.
Saves Time and Energy
Email marketing automation saves you time and energy. Getting sales can often take up a great deal of a small business owner’s time. These sales are vital to the business’ potential growth, and no one wants to stop making sales. Email marketing automation is a great way to cut back on the time that it takes out of your schedule to make sales while still getting in touch with people that are interested in the product or service that you’re selling. It saves time and energy in that you’re able to set up your automation program to handle the whos and whys of your emails. No more do you need to juggle which emails are right to send out at what time to each individual client. Utilizing marketing automation will save you that headache as it can track where each client is in the process, what emails should be sent out to them, and when they should be sent out.
Imagine all of the things that you could get done without having to worry about your marketing emails? You could focus on all the different things that brought you to wanting to start your own business. You can put more time into creating new products. You can put more time into growing your brand. You could even put more time and energy into getting everything done at a reasonable hour and having some personal time at the end of the day.
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Tracking Opportunity
One of the things that email marketing automation does for your company is increase the return on investment or ROI of your marketing efforts. One way that this is accomplished through the tracking opportunity that automation offers to your business. The way that tracking works with your email marketing automation is that there is a tracking code embedded in the emails that are sent out or in your website that follow the clicks of the user. This information can then be compiled into interesting data points that help you to make future marketing decisions.
For instance, several readers of your newsletter click to get a quote after reading about how important a furnace tune-up is at the beginning of the season whereas a piece mentioning how your service offers furnace tune-ups every year only gets one click. Your tracking code in the automated email marketing campaign is showing you that readers were more interested in your services after reading about how a tune-up is better for their home rather than just knowing that it is an offered service. This will allow you to focus your attentions on those things that get clicks or allow you to improve those things that you want to start getting more clicks on in the long run.
Plus, you can track what users do the next time that they come to your site through the tracking cookies that have been placed by your email marketing automation program. This will allow you to fine-tune further your program to what works the best.
Qualify Leads
Your email marketing automation will also help you to find and qualify more leads. Email marketing automation will free up your time, and this means that you will be able to do more for your business in other aspects. This can open up more avenues of new potential customers coming your way to help you find more leads. You may find that you need to focus more of your time on those leads that may have a better chance of panning out for your business since time is money.
Most email marketing automation programs will help you score the visitors that you have to your website to see which prospects are more likely to be a sale to add to your book. For instance, if the person clicked through several sections of your website, joined your newsletter, and asked for a quote they will earn points for each of these actions. This score can then be compared with the engagement scores of other visitors to your website. You are going to want to be able to pull up this list to see whom to call first. Someone with a much higher engagement score is probably prime for a sales call since they have spent the most time on your website whereas someone that has a lower score may not be as interested in your product or service. This doesn’t mean that you should ignore all those leads with lower scores, but that you should prioritize your time when dealing with whom to call first scenarios.
Real Time Lead Monitoring
One of the problems of not using an email marketing automation program is that it can be hard to remember which emails should be sent out when to which customers. You’re wasting time and money if you’re sending out an email about a new septic system to your clients that just recently had you put in a new septic system for them already. They may see this email that doesn’t pertain to them and their current situation, and assume that your future emails are going to be about similar topics that are no longer their concern since they’ve gotten the new system. They may miss an email further down the line that talks about your services that flush out the septic system or advice on how to keep their system working right.
This is where email marketing automation can come into the picture as it works as a real time lead monitoring system. Not only does it help your emails streams, but it also can help you with the previously mentioned email tracking. Your leads will be monitored to know when might be the best time to give them a call or engage with them in another method. This system leaves very little to chance as you can gain further insights into your customer’s habits. For instance, you may find that most customers that are asking for a quote or are viewing your price list are getting ready to make their final decision. This information can be helpful in giving you the nudge to contact them first before they change their mind and move on to another service provider or abandoned their plans along with their cart.
Marketing automation offers an awesome solution to your marketing woes. You may not have been aware of how it would fit into your business flow or even if you could afford to try out a program like this before reading this article. Now the ball is in your court, and you don’t have an excuse as to why you’re not starting to utilize marketing automation for your business today.
Contact us today to see how we can help you with your business marketing needs. We can help you free up your time to focus on the true passions of your business.
