Today, the medium of email remains by far one of the most important platforms in digital marketing. Businesses use emails to dish out their products, services, offers, promotions, etc., to their target audience. However, email marketing has undergone a lot of changes. Earlier, the process of emailing each client with personalized email content was time-consuming and wasted company’s resources.
However, today we have email automation tools through which a huge client-base can be reached easily with quality content. If you are looking for a tool for email automation, then do have a look at the solutions provided by the leading CRM company, Salesforce. The digital marketing solution by Salesforce called the Marketing Cloud uses a component called Email Studio for email automation.
Tips for Email Automation
Salesforce Email Studio maybe highly powerful for email automation, but its full power can only be unlocked by choosing the right techniques and strategy in your emails.
Communicating With the Right Audience
Consider you have a business that provides plumbing services in the U.S. state of Florida. Now, you may leverage the power of email automation to mail customers with blog titles like “How to find any signs of plumbing issues in your home?” Now, what a user was only looking for air conditioning services. This is an ineffective strategy as you are not getting the optimum results by sending the emails to the wrong consumers.
Hence, it is necessary that your email nurture strategy appeals to your client-base. The idea of sending emails to everyone is a common business practice, but it often backfires and affects the brand image of the company. Now, the question is, “How should I mail my content to the potential clients?”
First of all, divide your mailing lists into different groups. Each group must contain a common feature or aspect. These common features can include the age group, gender, job designations, area, etc. For example, let’s take our plumbing example. Now, what you can do is that you can categorize all your customers in Florida into different cities and towns.
For example, suppose there has been a flood in Tampa, FL. Now, in order to provide plumbing services for the flood damage, you can send your mailing list with the content that entails the required services. In this way, the affected households can contact you immediately while you save your resources by not mailing to the clients in the cities in Florida that were unaffected and, thus, uninterested.
The Subject Line That Converts
Often, businesses do not realize the importance of the subject lines. The subject line represents a great deal of significance for the customers. Clients who are busy are quick in the deletion of emails that are without a relatable title of your email’s content. With Email Studio, A/B test several subject lines and decide which one can have the biggest impact on the client. For A/B testing, you can also utilize split testing.
Consider you have a business that provides training for .NET development. Now, if you try to promote your services to fresh graduates and students in the IT field, then a bad example of a subject line can be “Learning ASP.NET”. The problem with this subject line is that it is too general and vague. ASP.NET has several releases so which one is your subject line referring to? Similarly, how can your subject line solve the problem for your potential customer through ASP.NET?
Now, for a better subject line, you can write a subject line like “How to Get an Instant Job in Texas through ASP.NET 5 MVC?” This example especially mentions the version of the ASP.NET MVC while it also addresses the problem of job seekers in Texas by pointing to their needs.
You can also experiment subject lines by creating random lists from your client-base and then measure the success of your varied subject lines with all of them. In case you find the Salesforce Marketing Cloud showing a specific subject line with better results, then you can adopt it and use it with a much larger target audience.
However, you should never get complacent with your subject lines. Even if your subject lines are successful, you should keep testing newer ones.
Call to Action
Do you feel that your business is not getting the required results despite creating exceptional content?
You may have your email content filled with extensive research, engaging infographics, and highly engrossing text, but if your Call to Action (CTA) falters, then your brand takes a hit. The right CTA addresses the reader’s requirements and encourages them to use the company’s services and products. For instance, suppose you have added a CTA with your email address, phone, location, and other contact details. However, these details should not be in plain text. The idea of copy-pasting the contact information feels unpleasant to customers. So what to do?
Well, you can try linking your contact information with links. For example, by clicking on your Linkedin profile, the customer can go to the Linkedin page.
Similarly, linking email addresses, locations, and other information can provide convenience to the clients. This may seem like a minor change, but you will be surprised by how crucial it can be for your sales.
One of the methods for testing the effectiveness of your CTA is the above-mentioned split testing. The usage of the terms in CTA like “Visit our website”, “Read more”, and “Purchase instantly” may bring out different results through various placements in your emails.
You can also try changing your promotional style. For example, instead of advertising a 50-page e-book, you can offer a 5-page e-book that can summarize your information. Likewise, in today’s digital world, videos are a wonderful advertising platform. Add your videos with texts and images so your clients do not have to necessarily wear their headphones.
However, try to limit your CTAs. A short CTA is an effective CTA. Likewise, make sure that each of your segmented lists receives a CTA that feels relevant and personalized. Create a CTA atmosphere where the client can get an urge to use your services and products.