‍What is email automation?

Email automation is all about doing more with less time and effort. Imagine having to write thousands of emails, input all those email addresses, and then click send over and over again. Well, automation ensures that you don't have to do any of that nonsense. Instead, you write one email, choose which audience you want to send it to, and click one button to either send the email or schedule it to send at a more opportune time.

And perhaps the best part is that when you use a smart CRM for your email distribution, you can collect data that, over time, will help you improve your overall email marketing strategy.

The benefits of email automation

Besides saving time and money, email automation has some pretty amazing benefits:

• It maximizes your workload–letting you do more with fewer resources.
• It gives you flexibility–send emails during peak times of the day when they are more likely to read them.
• It helps holistic marketing efforts–having automation lets you plan your email marketing around your entire marketing plan.

5 Reasons to start using email automation now

Now that we've explained email automation and some of its benefits, let's get into the real nitty gritty and discuss the reasons you should start using email automation as soon as possible–like now.

1. You can personalize your customers' experience

The stats on personalization say a ton:

• 91% of consumers say they are more willing to do business with a company that provides offers directly relevant to them.
• 70% of Millennials aren't favourable toward brands that don't send personalized emails.
• Marketers typically see a 20% increase in sales revenue when their email campaigns are personalized.
• Using someone's actual name in the subject line increases email open rates by 26%.

Those numbers are pretty mind-blowing! And you know how you can personalize your customers’ experiences? You guessed it–automation.

Let’s look at a few ways to do this:

React automatically to recipient actions

When automating emails, you can create powerful conditions that, if met, will change the next pieces of content that the customer receives. At Cakemail, we support branching conditions like “If / Else” modifiers.

Including conditions like:

• opened or didn't open
• clicked or didn't click
• sent or wasn't sent

For example, say that Customer A in a previous email clicked a link, but Customer B did not. The next email Customer A gets might be one that encourages them to make a purchase or a stronger action. While the next email Customer B receives might be something completely different. Sending content based on actions is a great way to make your communications more impactful and relevant to your customers.  

Also, the split path function allows you to automatically divide your contacts into two separate journeys based on whatever split you choose. This split test lets you test different marketing tactics and discover what’s working and what’s not and better target your audience.

2. Get more out of your team

Instead of someone having the responsibility of manually doing email campaigns, automation allows them to use templates, copy + paste, and schedule emails throughout the week, month, or year. That precious time could be spent doing other things–like figuring out how to help your emails perform even better or building out other aspects of your marketing strategy. Automation allows you to get more done with far less.

3. Improve your customer retention rate

"Out of sight, out of mind." Not being on your customer's radar, especially during times of the year when they are more likely to buy from you, is a great way to lose a customer to the competition. Email automation allows you to spread your communications better and stay on top of their minds. And staying on top of their mind means that there's a much better chance they will buy your goods and services.

4. It can help you grow your business

Remember those extra resources we talked about you having now that you automate your emails? Imagine how much your business could grow by utilizing that time wisely or reallocating those extra resources elsewhere. Setting up triggers for upselling, abandoned shopping carts, or special discounts can help you increase your sales while decreasing the amount of time it takes to get that sale.

5. Gather data to improve your products and sales

Email automation is a great way to collect a lot of data that you can then use to improve products and services and increase your sales. When you try to do these things manually, it's just too difficult. Data points can come in quickly, but without automation, many will get lost–making them worthless. Collecting surveys, demographics, psychographics, open rates, click-thru rates, and more allows you to tweak and amend future campaigns and improve your success over time.

Build better relationships with your customers

Loyalty is everything when it comes to business success. You want your customers to feel like you are their best source for whatever solutions you offer. By receiving valuable emails from you, your relationship with them will get stronger and stronger. Consider an email from another company that starts with, "We miss you" or "It's been a while..." versus, "Hey, we know you loved Product X, and here's why you're going to love Product Y, right now!" You're not just a company to them, you're their problem solver.

Okay, but how?

We’re glad you asked. Cakemail brings together all the right tools to help you engage with your audience and gain meaningful insights along the way. You can create and send branded email campaigns and use automation to create meaningful user experiences.

Here are some of our email marketing features:

• Email marketing campaigns let you send branded emails to engage your audience.
• Audience management tools help you grow, manage, and personalize your email to increase your marketing success.
• Automation allows unique customer experiences that improve the value of every email you send.
• Permission management ensures that you are complying with all anti-spam laws.
• Our marketing API helps you by providing the data to power your campaigns and connect to your favourite apps.

We also offer beautiful responsive emails and hundreds of email templates to choose from, so if you aren’t a designer or don’t have a design team, you can still deliver quality, dynamic content.

Oh, and you can totally start for FREE!

Email automation is an excellent way to improve the success of your business in many different ways. If you're not using it, you're missing out on a lot of potential growth. It's time to get with the times and automate! Your customers (and you) will be glad you did.

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