In the good ‘ole days, you really didn’t have much of a choice when it came to reaching a target audience. There were only so many print publications, television stations, and radio programs to consider.
Fast-forward to today, and the number of channels has increased exponentially. In addition, companies have an amazing ability to gaze into the activities of their potential customers’ shopping habits and pinpoint target their marketing efforts.
The businesses that take advantage of the power of marketing automation tools will be one step ahead of the competition. Here are four email marketing automation workflow strategies making an e-commerce impact around the world.
Automation Strategy One: Segment Your Audience
Businesses today have the ability to collect amazingly detailed information about individual customers. In fact, many people are happy to share their preferences with products and services in exchange for special deals and discounts.
This allows you, as a company, to finely segment your target audience and then provide very specific information to those customers or prospects through email automation.
For example, you may be able to pull a list of customers who are male, between the ages of 25 and 35, live in colder climates, and have purchased at least one item in the last six months. This may be a great target audience for receiving announcements on the latest men’s winter jacket styles in October.
At the same time, you can compile a list of women over the age of 50 who only made a purchase during the holiday season last year. Send a targeted advertising email with fabulous discounts for those early-bird holiday gift buyers.
Segmentation also allows you to figure out the sweet spots for each audience. If you have a group of customers who spend an average of $50 per order, shoot a promo for free shipping over $50. If you’re building a loyal group of repeat customers, consider starting a membership program to solidify their commitment through email automation.
Automation Strategy Two: Note What Attracts Customers
Data analytics tools are quite amazing these days. With a few simple clicks on Google Analytics, you can see what web site visitors are doing and when. This information is not just merely interesting, it should give you insight on how you should guide the journeys of future web browsers.
For instance, if you notice there is a high purchase rate of a particular page on your site, be sure to link and point to that page frequently through other web pages, influencer marketing efforts, email marketing links, or connections through social media sites. By leading more prospects to this proven conversion page, you’ll most likely increase your sales.
Perhaps one new product release is attracting the most attention from browsers and shoppers. Cherry pick that product and use it on your pop-up windows, paid advertising campaigns, or email marketing messages. What’s popular with those already on your site will likely be popular with those who are not.
By simply being observant about who is browsing your site, what they are reading about, where they return to time again, and what pages they spend the most time on, you’ll have clear answers about how to move forward.
These marketing automation tools give you the information to constantly tweak and better your site as well as your customers’ experiences.
Automation Strategy Three: Test Outreach Emails
Although much information is available through your analytics reports, you can go one step further and set up A/B testing protocols to see what things generate more clicks or lead to further engagement.
Some businesses may find that subject lines with personalized names or emojis garner higher open rates while other companies may discover that discounts offering cash back secure more sales than a percentage off deal.
You can see if your target audience responds to a limited-time offer more readily than one without an expiration date. If you have multiple email addresses for individual customers, you can test whether a promo sent to a business email works more effectively than one sent to a personal one.
Vary the message on your pop-up windows with different products, deals, and information requests to see which ones secure the most email sign-ups.
You can test just about anything by sending out simultaneous emails to groups within the same target audience and easily analyze which one performs better.
Automation Strategy Four: Gather Information Firsthand
Most people today are protective about what information they share online. However, in many cases, customers and prospects are happy to share data such as country, gender, birthday, or email address.
Within workflow automation tools, you should be able to customize the type of information you request to better fill out your customer profiles. The more information you can gather, the more targeted your marketing efforts can become.
First, you want to make sure the pop-up windows requesting information come up at the right times and places. Be sure to disable these windows for those customers who have already signed up. On the other hand, activate the windows featuring deals or more information on specific products on the actual product pages. If someone is looking at shoes and a pop-up offers a deal on shoes in exchange for an email address, you’re more likely to get a response.
Be judicious about how much information you request. One or two fields should suffice for the first round. Email addresses and birthdays are popular fields. Studies show that special birthday deals capture a very high click and conversion rate.
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Email marketing automation workflow strategies can be an amazing investment for any organization. Once these tools are implemented, you can gather and find out so much about your target audience as well as reach them in super effective ways. When customers and prospects receive an email that delivers the exact information and promotions they want, just when they want them, you’ll see your conversions multiply.
In addition, you’ll be creating strong, long-term relationships with your customer base. These customers will feel known and understood by your company, increasing loyalty and long-range sales.
