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Automation is bang on trend at the moment, nearly everyone is talking about it! So what exactly is email automation and how can it be beneficial to your business?

Email automation is one of the most powerful tools available to marketers. It includes the creation and setup of workflows, which are designed to send engaging emails at specific dates and times of a customer’s lifecycle. This helps marketers to nurture and convert potential leads into actual customers.

Just some of the benefits include:

Increase of brand awareness
With relevant, well timed emails being sent to your contacts, your brand, products and services will be stuck in the back of their mind.

Saving time
Having automated workflows able to send multiple campaigns 24/7 is a massive time saver. Once a workflow is set up and running, emails can be sending throughout the day leaving you time to carry out other tasks.

Nurturing leads
Sending relevant emails containing useful information encourages contacts to brush up on their knowledge about your business, services or products. Later on down the line, if they are contacted by your sales team they will have an idea about your company and may be more open-minded when approached.

Sending relevant emails to recipients
Email campaigns will be sent to the right people at the right time with the right message. Having relevant content will encourage more clicks and in return create more conversions.

Campaigns are planned well
Being able to see a workflow in front of you will encourage you to plan more meticulously. Having a workflow and all its stages will open your eyes to more opportunities and will benefit your overall marketing strategy.

Can be personalised
Automated emails and personalisation go hand in hand. Combined they allow you to tailor your emails and send unique content to individuals, creating a more personal and relatable customer experience.

Errors are reduced
Compared to individual emails being sent to new leads, workflows can be created well in advance with ease before going live. This gives you the peace of mind and time to check for any errors before they go out to your audience.

Saving money
The size of your sales team can be reduced as instead of cold calling all the time looking for potential leads, information from automated workflows allows an insight into known interested and engaged users.

Author : Emma Weir

This article originally appeared on Emailcenter UK

The last time we talked about email marketing, we threw out a pretty big number: 2.5 billion, or the number of people around the world using email.

Here’s another big number: 4300%

That’s the average return on investment businesses see from doing email marketing, according to Experian. It’s one of several reasons you should consider launching a B2B email marketing campaign. In this post, we’ll go over some ways to set up your campaign, and offer up some tips for what to do once it’s underway.

First up, here’s how to get started:

The first step in setting up an email marketing campaign is defining what you want it to accomplish. Do you want your email marketing campaign to educate your customers? Do you want to use it to bring in more leads? To increase sales? Before you launch, be sure you’ve determined your objectives.

Tap Into The Powers Of ESP

We’re not talking about extra-sensory perception. In this case, ESP stands for “email service provider,” an online platform that allows a business to manage an email marketing campaign.

Some of the major players in the ESP world include Hubspot, Pardot, Constant Contact, MailChimp, Exact Target and Campaign Monitor, all of them providing a range of costs and features. A careful evaluation will tell you which service is the best fit for your business.

Appoint Someone To Run The ESP

Once you’ve defined the goal for your email marketing campaign and decided on an ESP, it’s time to choose someone on your team to be your point-person for the email service provider. They should immerse themselves in the tool – or better yet, have experience with it already – so they know all the ways it can help your business succeed.

Now that you’ve done all your set-up, here are a few B2B marketing techniques you can use to build relationships with current and potential clients.

1. Create and Build Lists

A good B2B email marketing plan needs a solid list of email addresses, one that you develop with care. The list can be made up of new and old clients, and should be specific to your industry and geared toward a specific objective. Be aware: specific laws govern the collection of email addresses. Be sure everyone on your list knows you, has given permission to be emailed, and can reasonably expect an email from you.

2. Get Segmented

From there, get even more specific with the practice of segmentation. To be clear, this is usually an extra service with an ESP, so it may cost more. What it gives you is the chance to engage certain portions of your audience with content that is most suitable to them: special offers, pertinent blog posts and event announcements.

3. Use Automation

The ESP you pick should include an automation tool that lets you communicate with customers and future customers in a timely, relevant fashion. For example: an auto responder can let you reply to users who fill out a form or download content from your site, letting you take your conversation with new leads to the next step.

4. Say Yes To RSS

With an RSS-to-email feed, you can decide how often an email subscriber receives your content, and send your audience emails every time you create new content for your blog. Your RSS-to-email feed should allow readers the opportunity to opt in or out of reading. If what you send them is good, relevant content, they’ll keep checking in.

5. Leads Need To Be Nurtured

While email can be a great tool to reach existing customers, you can also use it to reach potential customers who are undecided about you. By creating a lead nurturing campaign, you can keep in touch with prospective clients, contacting them on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis.

Author : Greg Cawood

This article originally appeared on IQnection Blog