20 ways your business can leverage email automation

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HOW TO USE EMAIL TO AUTOMATE YOUR BUSINESS.

Who am I and why should you care?

Ø  8+ years as a digital marketing consultant, working with brands like Best Buy, Target, Accenture, Deloitte…the list goes on.

Ø  Started and scaled a number of my own online businesses.

Ø  Been featured in Forbes, Inc, Moz, Search Engine Journal, Marketing Land and dozens of other authority publications.

+ +Webris | [email protected] | Ryan Stewart | http://webris.org

Ryan Stewart, MBA

Ø  @ryanwashere Ø  Facebook/hellowebris

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USING AUTOMATION TO INCREASE SALES.

Automation is all about the process.


Most businesses fail with automation because they try and make the tool fit their process.


AUTOMATION ONLY WORKS WHEN YOU ADAPT THE TOOL TO FIT YOUR PROCESS.

Building out your processes.


Our process had a ton of inefficiencies.


Contact page form submissions

Footer consultation form submissions

Free report form submissions

Direct email contacts

Direct phone call contacts

Well over 2,000 inbound leads in a few months time.


Managing this had me like…


How can I automate this process?


We used email automation to bridge the gaps.


Contact Us Form Example

Ø  3 day sequence, driving towards consult call

Ø  Link to schedule a time, auto synced to my calendar

Ø  Pre qualification questionnaire sequence

Ø  If they never schedule a call, they get added to our newsletter for a nurture campaign

30% increase in sales post-implementation.


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HOW YOU CAN USE AUTOMATION TO INCREASE SALES.

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1. LEAD NURTURING.

Welcome new subscribers…!

Ø  74.4% of subscribers expect a welcome email

Ø  Those that receive a welcome email show 33% more long term engagement

Ø  96% of website visitors are NOT ready to buy

Ø  Welcome emails generate 4x the open rate and 5x the click rates

Ø  Bottom line: THEY ARE IMPORTANT!

Sales receipts.

Ø  Email receipts have an open rate of 70.9%

Ø  When compared to the average eCommerce open rate of 18%, this is a HUGE opportunity

Ø  They just paid you – you have their trust

Ø  Use it to cross promote other products, build a social following, offer coupons or other high priority items

Solicit feedback.

Ø  Set up an automated sequence that asks customers to click on a number between 1 and 10 about their satisfaction

Webris | [email protected] | Ryan Stewart | http://webris.org

Ø  Each number click can trigger a different email sequence

Ø  Low scores get a nurturing sequence to improve satisfaction

Ø  High scores get asked to take action like leaving a review, sharing on social, etc.

List re-engagement series.

Ø  List quality decays over time

Ø  A Gmail rep stated they look for “evidence” that your recipients want your message

Ø  In other words, having a non active list will hurt your delivery rates

Ø  You need to cleanse your list every so often – that means getting rid of subscribers!

Kill them with content.

Ø  Open rates average in the 20% range, while link clicks average in the 4% range

Ø  By forcing people to your website to read content, you’re cutting off a significant audience

Ø  One of the best ways to nurture an email list is by creating content that natively lives in email, nowhere else

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2. SALES.

Improve customer retention.

Ø  Finding and acquiring new customers is expensive

Ø  A 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75% (Bain and Co)

Ø  What are some ways we can use email to increase retention?


+5%Retention

+75%Profitability

Product expiration notifications.

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Abandoned shopping cart sequence.

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Ø  67% of online shopping carts are abandoned

Ø  IF visitors are logged in on your site, you can easily track abandoned carts (if not, leverage remarketing)

q  Email 1 – reminder (wait 1 day)

q  Email 2 – objection handling (wait 3 days)

q  Email 3 – discount (wait 6 days)

Increase product usage.

Ø  Particularly useful for companies who use free trials to show the benefit of their product (SaaS, info products, etc)

Ø  Goal of this campaign type is to slowly introduce benefits to the user, with the end goal of driving them to use the product

Ø  Each time someone takes action, they get sent to a different list / funnel

Sales outreach.

Ø  Companies that engage in targeted email outreach can experience sales increases of 15% or more

Ø  By gathering the right field inputs ahead of time (name, business name, function) you can automate highly targeted and personalized outreach (cold emailing)

Ø  We used to scrape large lists of digital agencies and send automated emails to inquire about partnering on services (it works)

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Other sales uses…

Ø  Webinars (automated)

Ø  Upcoming events

Ø  Inside sales

Ø  PR outreach

Ø  Meeting reminders

Ø  Text messaging automation

Ø  Appointment scheduling

Ø  Blogger outreach

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3. PERSONALIZATION.

Get to know your subscribers.

Ø  Often times when list building, we get minimum fields (name and email)

Ø  To get to know our list, we can use content to better personalize future communications

Ø  By sending out simple newsletter with links to various pieces of content on our site, we can understand what people enjoy seeing and send better emails in the future

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Send personal messages.

Ø  Sometimes the little things go a long way

Ø  By sending our short emails based on concrete dates, we can build better relationships with customers

Ø  Birthdays, anniversaries and other data points are easy ways to build stronger relationships

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Product recommendations.

Ø  Take advantage of people who trusted you enough to purchase in the past

Ø  Use email platform to track past purchases and make intelligent product recommendations for the future

Ø  This works incredibly well in spaces like tech, where products lapse over a certain period of time

Product discovery.

Ø  Similar to content preference discovery, we can use behavior to better personalize emails

Ø  Trip Advisor sends out deals based on location

Ø  Their engine determines which email to send based on previous purchases OR in email behavior

Ø  If you click a link to view Austin deals, you get tagged with Austin preferences for further testing

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4. INTERNAL COMMUNICATION.

Meeting / appointment reminders.

Ø  If it’s not on my calendar, I’m lost

Ø  Not everything makes it to your calendar

Ø  You can use your email platform as a secondary record to track meetings and appointment requests

Ø  Simply sending out internal communications for meetings saves a ton of time chasing people down

Workflow automation.

Ø  Leveraging remote workers my favorite way to either save on labor costs OR find top talent

Ø  Keeping everyone on the same page and process is a nightmare/ We use email to keep our workflows and project management in sync

Automated billing and invoicing.

Ø  Any way you can save time from having a human do a job, you’re saving money

Ø  Implementing auto invoicing and re-billing allowed us to save money on hiring an accounting firm to manage this for us

QUESTIONS?

Ryan Stewart, MBA http://webris.org @ryanwashere Facebook.com/hellowebris